The Journals Volume 1 by John Fowles

Author:John Fowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446402443
Publisher: Random House

6 May

Unhappy times; Denys has been here for several days, prior to his departure to Indonesia; a sense of his going – not particularly any loss, but a dissociation of physical presence; his going and E threatening to go. Blindly, desperately determined that she must go. It saddens me, this falling apart, this air of separation between us; as if it is necessary to destroy our love in order to forget we ever possessed it. E is moody, temperamental, looking for any chink in our relationship, trying with a fixed and blind wilfulness to find some escape from love. Goading me also to try and retain her – that I should show her how high I value her.

She is a morbid, spiteful creature at times nowadays; quite unable to reconcile herself to any decision, an involvement of loss. And so critical – so pathologically critical of any attempts I make to be objective. ‘Roy’s so objective,’ she said, ‘he’s in love with me, but he remains objective.’ I try to explain that love and objectivity are incompatibles. But she is so hoplessly blind still where R is concerned – and of course, that braggadocio, that easy air of self-confidence, that dogmatism, are all winning to a woman; they are qualities which require full abandonment. E wants to be able to forget herself – but only at times; and that she should suppose she can do it through R is her own pathetic fallacy.

I have moments of struggle – anxious to control, to fight for her, as R is fighting. For a conviction of inner rightness – Denys agrees that R’s basic drive is domination. Any other man but he would in the normal circumstances – for E is as cold as ice to him – refuse to humble himself so far. E believes it is a disinterested love of her that makes him so persistent. But he desperately needs to recover her for his own peace of mind.

I find horrible in E, too, the evidences of her two-year cycle – a fascination for the new man, the new lover. I feel ashamed that I can’t conquer that; alarmed that there’s not enough pride in her to make her fear its recurrence.

But I’m convinced that it is love not to force her to stay, since one cannot force love. E loves force and respects it; but I’ve felt at times she was growing out of that primitive sense of mind. Now I feel I was wrong. I hide many things from her; ambitions which are certainties. I have stopped any attempts at publishing anything. As if I wanted her to decide for me at my worst, to take me at the lowest valuation, and not because, as she so desperately wants, I am worth marrying, marriageable. I may lose my resolution, and call her bluff; I suppose I’d get some moral satisfaction in being the dynamiter and not the dynamited.

The other aspect of this is literary; that reduction of all emotion

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