Die Britse outeur Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) se Diaries and Letters, 1930-1939 (London: Collins, 1966, 448p), geredigeer deur sy seun Nigel Nicolson (1917-2004), bied aan my, as ’n liefhebber van die Nicolsons se skryfwerk, interessante leesstof. Ek bespreek in hierdie skrywe (in twee dele) die eerste van drie boekdele. Dit handel oor die tydperk voor die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. In volgende skrywes sal ek aandag aan die ander twee boekdele skenk. Omdat sommige lesers ’n renons in my politieke kommentaar het, plaas ek dit tussen vierkantige hakies sodat dit maklik oorgeslaan kan word.
Ek moet byvoeg dat ’n tweede uitgawe van hierdie boek in 2004 gepubliseer is, maar ek het nie toegang daartoe nie. Die oorspronklike drie boekdele, wat oor die tydperk 1930 tot 1962 handel, is toe in ’n enkele band saamgevat, met Nigel steeds die redakteur. ’n Langer tydperk, 1907 tot 1964, word gedek, maar die teks van die oorspronlike uitgawe is drasties ingekort. Entoesiastiese lesers van Harold se geskrifte sou die oorspronlike uitgawe verkies en hulle leesavontuur dan met die tweede uitgawe aanvul.
Die byhou van ’n dagboek was vir Harold ’n gewoonte. Hy het elke oggend na ontbyt oor die vorige dag geskryf. Daarna het hy gewoonlik ’n brief aan sy vrou, Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), geskryf. Sy het ook feitlik daagliks aan hom geskryf, want hy het weeksdae in Londen deurgebring, terwyl sy op hulle landgoed Sissinghurst gewoon het. Die boekdele bevat hoofsaaklik geselekteerde dele (slegs sowat ’n twintigste) van Harold se dagboek, maar dit word kundig aangevul met uittreksels uit hulle briewe.
Sy dagboek is volgens Harold "not a work of literature or self-relevation, but a mere record of activity put down for my reference only" (p 357). Nigel: "Writing always came very easily to him: his typewriter was an extra tongue ... The diary was an anthology of his daily experience; but it also traced the oscillations of an unusually active and sensitive mind" (p 14). Nigel skryf ook van Harold se "amused outlook on the world, and his gift, his impulse, to nail down fleeting impressions in words, almost as if they had not happened until recorded" (p 24).
In hierdie eerste deel van my skrywe beperk ek my tot treffende uitdrukkings van Harold en ander mense. Harold: "It's the things that you haven't done that you regret in life ... never the things that you have done" (p 28). "It is more satisfactory to succeed on a small scale than to fail on a big one" (p 35). Die joernalistiek "is a mere expense of spirit in a waste of shame. A constant hurried triviality which is bad for the mind" (p 62). "All the jobs which pay humiliate. And the decent jobs do not pay" (p 110). Harold was ’n natuurliefhebber: "People who care over-much for the works of man end by losing all sense of the works of God, and even their friends become for them mere pieces of decoration to be put about the room" (p 76).
"I have learnt that shallowness is the supreme evil" (p 88). "I am doing nothing, therefore I do not fail" (p 112). "'Have you and Mrs Nicolson ever collaborated on anything?' 'Yes', I answer, 'we have two sons'" (p 140 ). Vir ’n onderwyser is dit moeilik om raad aan die jeug te gee. Volgens een van hulle: "All one can do is to throw it out daily like crumbs for the birds and hope that they may peck at it sometimes" (p 144). "Our decent literary people are all Bohemians, and our social literary people aren't decent" (p 157). Samuel Johnson "is the only conversationalist who truimphs over time" (p 163).
"I feel this evening my inability present in front of me like a huge piece of furniture in a servant's bedroom: le bureau de Louis XV in the attic of a housemaid" (p 169). "The only thing about which I know anything is myself" (p 170). "I am generally a benevolent person, but sentimentality awakens in me something quite definite and hostile" (p 189). "He started serving questions at me much as a tennis pro serves balls. I returned these services as well as I could" (p 219). "It is very difficult to be a host without having guests" (p 244). "I steered my conversation onwards in the same course as before but with different sails" (p 245).
Pierre Flandin "has got all his thoughts perfectly in the right order, and he deploys his procession of argument quite gently but firmly, like a nun escorting a crocodile of foundlings to church" (p 250). "We allow the communists to work above ground where their foolishness is exposed" (p 299). "One can never write a biography of anyone for whom one did not have real enthusiasm" (p 312). Oor die naderende Tweede Wêreldoorlog: "If we are likely to lose our life it is obviously better to sacrifice a few of our fingers" (p 313). "What, after all, is happiness? Occupation in congenial surroundings" (p 349).
James Joyce se woonplek in die Rue Galilée in Parys is "a little furnished flat as stuffy and prim as a hotel bedroom" (p 164). Joyce se vrou is "a young looking woman with the remains of beauty" (p 83). Joyce "told me that a man had taken Oolissays [Ulysses] to the Vatican and had hidden it in a prayer-book, and that it had been blessed by the Pope" (p 165). "My impression of the Rue Galilée was the impression of a very nervous and refined animal – a gazelle in a drawing-room. His blindness increases that impression. I suppose he is a real person somewhere, but I feel that I have never spent half-an-hour with anyone and been left with an impression of such brittle and vulnerable strangeness" (p 165). Iemand anders het gesê: "Joyce is not a very convenient guest at luncheon" (p 84). Oor Joyce se Finnegans Wake: "It is almost impossible to decipher, and when one or two lines of understanding emerge like telegraph poles above a flood, they are at once countered by other poles going in the opposite direction" (p 401).
Harold se beskrywings van mense was tekenend: "I am a sociable person and much enjoy observing the oddities of my fellow beings" (p 402-403). Oor Winston Churchill: "A great round face like a blister" (p 41). Bob Boothby oor Churchill tydens die konstitusionele krisis (die abdikasie van koning Edward VIII): "He was silent and restless and glansing into corners. Now when a dog does that, you know that he is about to be sick on the carpet. It is the same with Winston. He manages to hold it for three days, and then comes up to the House [of Commons] and is sick right across the floor" (p 284). Churchill was bekend as ’n uitstekende orator. In die aanloop tot die Tweede Wêreldoorlog het hy gesê: "This great country [is] nosing from door to door like a cow that has lost its calf, mooing dolefully now in Berlin and now in Rome – when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing" (p 328). Harold: "If we assuage the German alligator with fish from other ponds [countries], she will wax so fat that she will demand fish from our own ponds" (p 345).
Neville "Chamberlain (who has the mind and manner of a clothes-brush) aims only at assuring temporary peace at the price of ultimate defeat" (p 345). Oor Chamberlain se paaibeleid teenoor Adolf Hitler: "We feel we are on the very edge of the railings lining the cliff" (p 359-360). Ivone Kirkpatrick het van Hitler gesê: "When he is host in his own house, he has a certain simple dignity, like a farmer entertaining neighbours" (p 414).
TS Eliot "is without pose and full of poise. He makes one feel that all cleverness is an excuse for thinking hard" (p 111). DH Lawrence se vrou, Frieda, vertel dat haar man aan haar gesê het: "If people really new what you were like, they would strangle you" (p 124). Vita, Harold se vrou, het volgens hom die soort klere gedra "that Beatrice would have worn had she married Dante" (p 129). "Viti is not a person one can take for granted. She is a dark river moving deeply in shadows" (p 158). Harold skryf aan haar: "To replenish ... I rush to you like a petrol-filling station" (p 267).
Leslie Howard "looks like an assistant master at some inferior private school" (p 144). "Max Beerbohm ... is quite round; his cheeks are chubby with a scarlet nose, like two melons with a peppercorn between them" (p 166). Oor Stanley Baldwin: "A strange movement of the head, with half-closed eyes, like some tortoise half-awake smelling the air" (p 228). "HG Wells is delighted with the failure of the League [of Nations], since it provide him with a perfect illustration of human muddle-headedness" (p 260). Volgens Wells "homo sapiens has failed ... because we have not developed the right type of brain" (p 404). "Madame de Polignac sat herself down near the piano to listen to Rubinstein. I have seldom seen a woman sit so firmly: there was determination in every line of her bum" (p 264). Edouard Daladier "looked like some Iberian merchant visiting the Roman Senate" (p 298-299). Rex Hoare se vrou "has that discontented look that settles upon the face of English society women who marry English diplomatists" (p 335).
Vervolg.
Johannes Comestor