Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

First published: 1973

Type of work: Diary

Time of work: 1970-1971

Form and Content

In 1970, May Sarton, poet, novelist, and writer of two volumes of memoirs— I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959) and Plant Dreaming Deep (1968)—began to write a journal that would eventually cover a year of her life, from September 15, 1970, to September 30, 1971, and would be published in 1973 as Journal of a Solitude. Sarton deliberately chose the form of a journal intended for publication as opposed to that of the polished essays that had comprised her previous memoirs. Her rationale was twofold: The journal form accommodated purposes both private and public. Writing for herself, Sarton was able to use the journal to express momentary insights that were vivid and intense, to explore, reflect upon, and give order to her ideas and experiences and to take a deep and honest look at her own personality in an attempt to address unresolved anger, recurring depression, and a perpetual conflict between her deeply felt need for friendship and love and for solitude. Writing with her readers in mind, Sarton conceived Journal of a Solitude as a corrective to the “false view” of herself, the “myth of a false Paradise,” that she believed that she had created in her previous memoir, Plant Dreaming Deep. In that volume Sarton had written of her struggles, after the deaths of her parents, to put her life back together when she moved to the isolated village of Nelson, New Hampshire, where she purchased and restored an old, dilapidated house. Plant Dreaming Deep created a striking portrait of a productive writer who had deliberately chosen a solitary life. It evoked many admiring responses from readers, which disturbed Sarton: “The anguish of my life here—its rages—is hardly mentioned. Now I hope to break through into the rough rocky depths, to the matrix itself,” she announces in the first entry in the journal.

The eighty-five entries in this volume range in length from a brief paragraph to seven printed pages; the average entry is two to three pages long. Interspersed throughout the volume are photographs of Sarton and her world. Predominant in the photographs is her home in Nelson, where all the entries were written. Sarton’s very special relationship with her home is one of the prevailing concerns of the journal. This theme is intimately related to her self-analysis, to her reflections upon the lives of women in her day, and to solitude, her principal subject.

The journal is full of reflections on and reactions, both positive and negative, to solitude, and it was written exclusively in solitude: When there are temporal gaps between entries, they usually occur at times when Sarton was attending to other people, either at or away from home. Solitude, Sarton declares, is the essential condition of her “real” life:

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my “real” life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and “the house and I resume old conversations.”

The passage above, from the first page of the journal, is echoed deliberately in its last paragraph:

This is the first “Nelson day” for weeks, a day when I can stay home, work at my desk in peace, no appointment looming ahead, a day when I can rest after work, and garden in the afternoon. Once more the house and I are alone.

Together, these two passages allude to some of the other important concerns in the journal: friendships, love, work and interruptions thereof, gardening (a vital and meaningful occupation for Sarton), and the need for peace, balance, order, and self-understanding.

Although Sarton echoes the beginning of her journal as she ends it, the book does not merely trace a circle. The period chronicled in the journal was, despite violent mood swings between quiet happiness and raging anger and panic, between spells of fruitful work and unproductive boredom, a year of growth; growth is one of Sarton’s most cherished values. She connects growth with solitude:

When it comes to the important things one is always alone, and it may be that the virtue or possible insight I get from being so obviously alone—being physically and in every way absolutely alone much of the time—is a way into the universal state of man. The way in which one handles this absolute aloneness is the way in which one grows up, is the great psychic journey of everyman.

In order to grow, not only solitude but also a willingness to change proved essential for Sarton. The journal records her particular psychic journey toward two major changes in her life, both of which involved parting, letting go. One of these changes was in her relationship with her lover, whom she identifies in the journal only as “X” and of whom she usually writes reticently. Sarton began the journal partly because she needed to learn to control her “deep and destructive angers,” which threatened, she declared,

to wreck what I care for most—to drive me back into solitude that has, since I have been in love for a year and a half, ceased to be fruitful, become loneliness instead. And now I am trying to master the Hell in my life, to bring all the darkness into the light. It is time, high time, that I grew up.

In the end, “growing up” meant coming slowly to the realization “that the time has come to break away from X,” not because of her problems with anger but because “there were things between X and me that could not be solved, a clash not only of temperaments but of fundamental values, the vision of life itself.”

Sarton gradually found that in order to affirm her vision of life she must leave not only X but her home in Nelson as well. On January 27, she notes that “the real adventure of coming to Nelson alone is over now and I simply maintain what I was once busy creating. I feel old, dull, and useless.” Slowly and steadily, she conquered these feelings and made plans to move to a house in Maine, fulfilling a long-held dream to live by the sea.

Critical Context

Sarton’s autobiographical writings have been widely appreciated for their intense and honest depiction of solitary female experience. They are of interest in the context of a considerable body of twentieth century women’s autobiographical writing in the United States. Unlike many such works, however, Sarton’s journals and memoirs transcend narrowly ideological purposes. Although she frequently reflected upon the oppression of women, her concerns were ultimately deeper and more universal, addressing issues of human survival and growth both in solitude and in the context of love, friendship, family, and community. Journal of a Solitude is important, moreover, in that it is a rare portrait of a middle-aged person (Sarton was fifty-eight when she wrote it) who was a successful poet and novelist. It communicates what a professional literary artist’s life can be like from day to day.

Journal of a Solitude is a pivotal work in May Sarton’s numerous autobiographical endeavors. In turning from the memoir form to that of the journal written for publication, Sarton was able to explore her own life more fully in writing than she had before and to communicate the rhythms of that life more vividly. The journal form became a powerful medium to which she would return again, in The House by the Sea (1977) and in Recovering: A Journal (1980). In the former volume, she described Journal of a Solitude as “a way of dealing with anguish.” As such, it was important for her personally and, by way of dramatic example, for her readers.

Bibliography

Bailin, George. “A Shining in the Dark: May Sarton’s Accomplishment,” in May Sarton: Woman and Poet, 1982. Edited by Constance Hunting.

Evans, Elizabeth. May Sarton, Revisited. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Sketches Sarton’s early years and focuses on the development of themes in her writing. Contains a chronology, notes, an index, and a series of letters to Sarton from her editor, Eric Swenson, to whom Sarton dedicated Journal of a Solitude.

Frank, Charles E. “May Sarton: Approaches to Autobiography,” in May Sarton: Woman and Poet, 1982. Edited by Constance Hunting.

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. “May Sarton’s Memoirs,” in May Sarton: Woman and Poet, 1982. Edited by Constance Hunting.

Kallet, Marilyn, ed. A House of Gathering: Poets on May Sarton’s Poetry. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Gives close attention to Sarton’s work in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Contains not only poets’ reviews of Sarton’s poetry but also Sarton’s comments on her work. An introduction, a bibliography, a list of Sarton’s works, a chronology, and an index are also provided.

Nishimura, Kyoko. “May Sarton’s World,” in Kyushu American Literature. XX (1979), pp. 35-41.

Owens, Suzanne. “House, Home, and Solitude: Memoirs and Journals of May Sarton,” in May Sarton: Woman and Poet, 1982. Edited by Constance Hunting.

Sarton, May. At Seventy: A Journal. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Beginning on May 3, 1982, and ending on May 2, 1983, this journal focuses on Sarton’s views on solitude and aging, reflecting upon her seventy years of life.

Sarton, May. Conversations with May Sarton. Edited by Earl G. Ingersoll. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. This series of interviews is organized chronologically from 1972 to 1990. Contains an introduction, a chronology, and an index.

Sarton, May. The House by the Sea: A Journal. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. This illustrated journal is set in Sarton’s house on the seacoast of Maine and covers the time from November 13, 1974, until August 17, 1976.

Sarton, May. I Knew a Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography. New York: Rinehart, 1959. A series of Sarton’s memoirs, arranged chronologically, from childhood in Massachusetts to her early twenties, when Sarton left the theater for poetry.

Sibley, Agnes. May Sarton. New York: Twayne, 1972. The first chapter is a biographical sketch of Sarton, and the remaining four chapters explore her poetry and novels. Contains notes, an index, and a chronology.

Woodward, Kathleen. “May Sarton and Fictions of Old Age,” in Women and Literature: Gender and Literary Voice, 1980. Edited by Janet Todd.