Pale Blue Eyes.
The Velvet Underground.
1969.
Kavan, Anna. Detail from Self-Portrait.
Kavan, Anna.
'Just Another Failure'. {Excerpts}
Asylum Piece.
London: Peter Owen.
1940.
[Nota Bene : I first posted this excerpt from one of Ms Kavan's palely luminous short-stories on this blog more than four years ago, on March 27, 2009. Eclipses of the sun darken our morning skies cyclically. In those moments when the moon mystically aligns itself in symmetry with the sun, we live our lives united in communion with our shadows; our world lit up in the glow of the sun's corona, geometrically perfect circle burning with pale blue fire, crown of purest light radiantly adorning a black sun.]
I was so hurt by D's unexpected attitude that I believe I was thinking more about him than about my own trouble as I went out into the wintry London twilight. I felt mortified at having asked him for a favour which he was unwilling to give. I was ashamed of having presumed too much on a friendship which might, all the time, have been a very one-sided affair. Quite possibly I had allowed my own wishes to delude me into mistaking that sympathetic manner of his for the sign of some warmth of feeling towards me personally. Now that I came to consider it, I could not recall a single occasion during our acquaintanceship when his behaviour had expressed anything more than the generalized benevolence of a humane, understanding and intelligent man. The idea of having made such a mistake was specially distressing to me because I am by nature very reserved and afraid of receiving rebuffs from the people around me. Now I felt that I had given myself away... Although these humiliating thoughts were far from pleasant, I clung to them as long as possible, actually exaggerating to myself my own recent mortification, as if my relations with D were of more importance than anything else in the world.
But of course I couldn't succeed in driving the real problem out of my head. It was there all the time, like a toothache which gradually grows more and more insistent until it finally drowns every other sensation. (...). Was I capable of accepting emotionally the situation to which, in discussion, I had already given an intellectual acceptance? With what smile, with what words, should I greet this stranger, younger, more beautiful, more fortunate than I? With what unnaturally hardened gaze should I observe glances, gestures, long familiar to my heart, directed towards a new recipent? The recurring sequence of these questions, to which I seemed fundamentally incapable of replying - to which indeed, I did not hope or expect to find any answers - began to assume by its very monotony a quality of horror and torment impossible to describe. I began to feel that if I did not succeed in breaking out of the loathsome circle I should suddenly become mad, scream, perpetrate some shocking act of violence in the open street. But worst of all was the knowledge that the laws of my temperament would forbid me even a relief of this kind; that I was inexorably imprisoned behind my own determination to display no emotion whatsoever.
I was cold and tired. I realized that I must have been walking for a long time without taking any notice of my direction. Now I saw that I was in a street which I did not know very well. Night had fallen, the lights glowed mistily through a thin haze. I looked at my watch and saw that the hour arranged for the interview had almost arrived. No sooner had I discovered this than a change seemed to come over everything. It was as though, in some mysterious way, I had become the central point around which the night scene revolved. People walking on the pavement looked at me as they passed; some with pity, some with detached interest, some with more morbid curiosity. Some appeared to make small, concealed signs, but whether these were intended for warning or encouragement I could not be sure. The windows lighted or unlighted, were like eyes more or less piercing, but all focused upon me. The houses, the traffic, everything in sight, seemed to be watching to see what I would do. (...)
Even now I half believed that I should go inside, keep the appointment, and behave creditably, too, at the interview. But then my feet were carrying me away, and I knew, what I think the watching eyes had known all the time, that rather than face the situation I would escape anywhere, into no matter what shame, what guilt, what despair. Shall I be able to handle my self-condemnation now? But that is only a rhetorical question, because, although it is difficult to live with so much unhappiness and so many failures, to die seems to be harder still.
Vivan Sundaram. Re-take of Amrita (2001–2002). Asia Art Archive.