Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)

Bliss was Mansfield's second short story collection. The most conspicuous story in the book is not "Bliss", but "Prelude", a long piece about a middle-class New Zealand family, obviously modelled on Mansfield's own, moving to a new out-of-town house with a big garden. Apart from being rather longer than most, this has pretty much all the hallmarks of a Mansfield story. We are thrown in at the deep end without any explanation of who is who or what's happening, so that we have to work it out show more for ourselves from a series of little clues, and will make a few false assumptions before we get it all straight. Nothing obviously important happens, and the story stops as inexplicably as it started, with the lid of a jar falling off a table and not breaking. But in the meantime, we have somehow or other discovered a surprising amount about the members of the family and what is going on in their minds, information that would have made all their lives much easier if they had been able to express it and exchange it with each other. It's a story about things that mostly don't happen, connections that are not made, feelings that can't be shared. (An earlier version of this story was later published posthumously as "The Aloe".)

The title story, "Bliss", the one Virginia Woolf threw down with the expression "She's done for!" the first time she read it ("...the whole conception is poor, cheap, not the vision, however imperfect, of an interesting mind. She writes badly too."), is perhaps the most direct in the book - Bertha is a young housewife who's feeling inexplicably much happier than is justified by being about to host a dinner-party. She discovers over the tomato soup that she's fallen desperately and completely in love - without realising it - with one of her guests. They share a perfect moment together over the pear tree, then Mansfield disillusions her horribly, and brings the story to a rapid halt before we've quite decided in which way everything is going to continue badly - for continue badly it must.

The remaining stories in the collection all seem to touch on similar themes of people being stuck in situations where they are permanently at cross-purposes, doing some kind of slow, painful harm through their inability to be open and honest about something. Sometimes it's a marriage, sometimes employer and employee, sometimes a group of people trapped in the same social convention. The mood is steered by important little details of setting, speech, weather, plants (Mansfield always brings significant plants in somewhere), but there's always something nasty for us to discover about human nature, and it's usually something that we wouldn't have discovered without Mansfield to lead us to it. show less

“Ở nhà trọ Đức” là tập truyện ngắn đầu tay in năm 1911 của nữ nhà văn Katherine Mansfield. Những câu chuyện ở đây được viết sau khi bà trở về từ Bad Wörishofen, một thị trấn nghỉ dưỡng của Đức, vào năm 1909, sau cuộc hôn nhân thảm khốc cùng cuộc mang thai (và sảy thai) ngoài ý muốn.

Đó là câu chuyện dài của sự cô đơn: không thể viết mà không có nó, Mansfield đã hiểu điều ấy show more ngay từ đầu. Có lao vào bao nhiêu cuộc tình, có viết (rồi lại đốt) bao nhiêu bức thư, có khẩn thiết gọi những người thân đến bên để được chiều chuộng chăm sóc đến thế nào chăng nữa, Mansfield vẫn chỉ thực sự viết được khi bị tước đi mọi điểm tựa. Một cuộc trốn chạy vô vọng và tuyệt vọng từ giây phút đầu tiên, phía nào cũng là đau đớn, chỉ có thể là đau đớn, nhưng chẳng thiếu ân sủng và cả niềm vui.

Ở nhà trọ Đức, dù đứng riêng hẳn với các sáng tác sau này của Mansfield về phong cách, không được tác giả cho phép tái bản khi còn sống vì nhiều lý do, thậm chí ngấp nghé vận mệnh bị từ bỏ, vẫn cứ chiếm vị trí quyết định đối với văn nghiệp của Mansfield: chỉ sau Ở nhà trọ Đức, Katherine Mansfield mới thực thành nhà văn. Những cái nhìn sắc lẹm cùng miêu tả lạnh lùng của tác giả là điều khiến cho tất cả phải thừa nhận bà như một trong những người viết truyện ngắn tài năng nhất của thế hệ bà. show less

After the death of a loved one, in this story it is the loss of a son, we think that we'll never stop mourning, never stop grieving deeply every day.

Although Time will never heal all, we do go on living. Even, one day, we might even go so far as to engage in a very minor entertainment. It's the way life works. It goes on.

Splendid writing and crushing truth. I must read more Mansfield.

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do--Georgia O'Keeffe, maverick and painter of flowers.

In this short story, Mansfield paints for us, with exquisite brush strokes of close up detail, of not one but two flowers.

Shrinking violets. Sisters.

The old hateful buzzard of a father dies, leaving this earthly coil by giving his two middle aged unmarried daughters only an angry one-open-eye farewell. Whatever show more will happen to the poor dears who have devoted their lives to his care and his happiness?

First, they learn that their father does not wait, propped up in his bed, to severely chastise them for his funeral expense. That does take them a little to be convinced. It happens by default.

Then they must clear out his things. The first attempt of just opening a drawer or a wardrobe fills each with such certainty that he will jump out that they decide, maybe it's better we wait until another day, and lock the wardrobe behind them, half certain he is in there. But cobwebs will soon enough indicate the true nothingness that now lives in that room.

Also there is that lone servant, Kate, who is a mini tyrant in her own right. Instead of ordering tea after the anxiety of it all, the sisters order, nay, politely beg if she would mind bringing hot water. No need to bother to put in a pot, just two cups and the kettle would be fine, thank you ever so much. Later they commiserate and plot: really we can do without her, can't we? Make our own meals and tea? No decision is needed this day. But later a tiny uprising is tentatively made by one sister against Kate's rudeness. It's the first impromptu attempt at getting the new hang of things.

That is the week following their father's death. Just a week. There will certainly be more and more weeks ahead, wearing black, ever being the dutiful, respectful daughters, while making all decisions they had never before made.

I say give the two timid dears a year. They will become accustomed to not hearing, to not seeing, to not being shadowed by the dark domineering presence--there will be peace and silence and the breaking light of agency.

In the sun for the first time, I predict the two dear flowers will at last bloom, with some trembling, into happiness. show less