War and Death

Abstract

In 1919, Mansfield, criticising writers whose work she considered remained unchanged by the Great War, wrote to Murry:

And yet I feel one can lay down no rules; It’s not in the least a question of material or style or plot. I can only think in terms like ‘a change of heart’. I can’t imagine how after the war these men can pick up the old threads as tho’ it never had been. Speaking to you, I’d say we have died and live again. How can that be the same life? It doesn’t mean that Life is the less precious or that the ‘common things of light and day’ are gone. They are not gone, they are intensified, they are illumined. Now we know ourselves for what we are. In a way it’s a tragic knowledge. It’s as though, even while we live again we face death. But through Life: that’s the point. We see death in life as we see death in a flower that is fresh unfolded. Our hymn is to the flower’s beauty — we would make that beauty immortal because we know.¹