The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

II. JOURNALS

Editors’ note: AW recorded her journal entries in two notebooks and on loose-leaf papers. The arrangement of AW’s journals within this volume represents a chronological ordering for the ease of the reader, and brief notes in angle brackets identify the source document. The first journal is a red exercise book with “AW” and “October 1962” written in AW’s hand on the cover and consists of handwritten entries with some typewritten pages tipped into the journal.

MONDAY APRIL 8TH ’63.1

In GALWAY, driven here in a small fiat and increasing waves of thick, serious downpours. I’m waiting for an order of bacon and tomatoes in the D.B.C. café and ices—all pastel-Green mottled freshly, 3 daffodils per table, and tables covered with embossed white plastic. There’s a dark waitress in a black uniform and starched apron (this would be practically extinct in London) and many smiles. Prices are high—“tea” for two will amount to 12/-. The town is dour—smug, catholic-clean and bereft, utterly bereft of joy. There was a que of miserable “young people” at the cinema. We followed a red-cheeked girl and a boy who held hands, confidently. They’re probably engaged, although she cavorted self-consciously on heels. Most Irish women are next to plain, most over 25 look ugly. They look to be without spirit, and suffer from piety. Piety makes plain women. The men though, shine with something, sex maybe, or dissatisfaction, or good looks. The red, blue and black looks they have are masculine, women fade with it, because their hair is coarse, and unaccustomed, like all European peasants’ hair.

It smells of peat, looks like all the Isles of Wight, only with deeper, blacker alleys. The same Goods in all the shops, Cadbury’s2 Easter bunnies and Yardley 4/9 talcum powder3 repeated a dozen times in every street.

The Irish have no sense-of-looks whatsoever. Their villages are ugly; there are no gardens, their clothes are ugly, their food is unspeakable. Only the country4 is beautiful, bereft, untouched, like Tinker5 children.

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