It is often true for me that something on one website or in one book will lead to another website or book, and that one to another one, and so it was that I recently discovered May Sarton’s journals in a rather round-about way.
An English major, I had never heard of Sarton before, but I have been thoroughly enjoying reading her journals.
Her works, which include novels, books of poetry, and journals, were written and published between 1932 and 1995, when she died.
Checking out what was immediately available at the library, I necessarily ended up starting toward the end of her series of journals, with At Seventy (1984) and After the Stroke (1988), then read The House by the Sea (1977), and May Sarton: A Self-Portrait (1982), which is a transcript of the film World of Light: A Portrait of May Sarton and which also includes some of her poems and her commentary on them. I have just finished Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992) and have started Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993).
In the next few months, I plan to read all the rest of her non-fiction: I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959), Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), Journal of a Solitude (1973), A World of Light (1976), Recovering: A Journal (1980), and At Eighty-Two: A Journal (1995).
The idea of Sarton as a single woman living alone most of her life, loving her solitude, needing to write as much as she needed to breathe air appealed to me and still does. I find that she and I share some things – a love of flowers and nature, never being able to keep up on correspondence and other things that need to be done, a fierce independence, a strong love of home, the need for plenty of time alone.
One of the most valuable things for me is watching her age and become ill and dependent on others to help her, as I went through much of this when I had a serious surgery several years ago, and as I am getting to an age where I can expect to have more health problems. She paints a realistic portrait of old age and how she feels like a stranger in that land, feels she is not herself anymore, yet manages to adapt and go on. Her friendships sustain her as much as her cherished solitude does. At times she seems whiny and self-preoccupied, at others her open-heartedness comes clearly through, as well as her vulnerability. I watch her hope – even as she has cancer – that she will be well again, suffer through a solid year of at times debilitating pain, pull in the borders of her world to the home and small town she lives in after a life-time of traveling, and complain about not getting the recognition she feels she deserves, even while giving standing-room only readings of her works and receiving many honorary degrees and too many fan letters to answer them all.
What shines through her work is her total honesty, her ability to present herself as a complete person, flaws and all. She shows us the difficulties of aging and illness and the need to accept becoming dependent on others. Throughout it all, she strives to hold on to who she is and gives the reader much food for thought about how they will face old age and/or illness.
Sarton was certainly not one of the very best writers of her time, which may be why she didn’t receive the critical acclaim she felt so strongly that she deserved, but her journals are definitely a worthwhile read and worth a re-read as well.
