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The Journal of a Disappointed Man
I was glad yesterday to see the egg season so well in. I shall have to get blow-pipes and egg drills. Spring has really arrived and even the grasshoppers are beginning to stridulate, yet Burke describes these little creatures as being "loud and troublesome" and the chirp unpleasant. Like Samuel Johnson, he must have preferred brick walls to green hedges. Many people go for a walk and yet are unable to admire Nature simply because their power of observation is untrained. Of course some are not suited to the study at all and do not trouble themselves about it. In that case they should not talk of what they do not understand.... I might have noticed that I have used the term "Study of Nature." But it cannot be called a study. It is a pastime of sheer delight, with naught but beautiful dreams and lovely thoughts, where we are urged forward by the fact that we are in God's world which He made for us to be our comfort in time of trouble.... Language cannot express the joy and happy forgetfulness during a ramble in the country. I do not mean that all the ins and outs and exact knowledge of a naturalist are necessary to produce such delight, but merely the common objects—Sun, Thrush, Grasshopper, Primrose, and Dew.
- Taken from "The Journal of a Disappointed Man" written by W. N. P. Barbellion
- Taken from "The Journal of a Disappointed Man" written by W. N. P. Barbellion
148 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 1919
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About the author
W.N.P. Barbellion
11 books29 followersWilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion was the nom-de-plume of Bruce Frederick Cummings, an English diarist who was responsible for The Journal of a Disappointed Man. Ronald Blythe called it "among the most moving diaries ever created"
Cummings was born in Barnstaple in 1889. He was a naturalist at heart and ended up working at the British Museum's department of Natural History in London. Having begun his journal at the age of thirteen, Cummings continued to record his observations there - gradually moving from dry scientific notes to a more personal, literary style. His literary ambitions changed course in 1914 upon reading the journal of the Russian painter Marie Bashkirtseff, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit (see the 14 October 1914 entry of his Journal); in his 15 January 1915 entry he indicated that he intended to prepare his Journal for publication: "Then all in God’s good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication."
Cummings' life changed forever when he was called to enlist in the British Army to fight in World War I in November 1915. He had consulted his doctor before taking the regulation medical prior to enlisting, and his doctor had given him a sealed, confidential letter to present to the medical officer at the recruitment centre. Cummings did not know what was contained in the letter, but in the event it was not needed; the medical officer rejected Cummings as unfit for active duty after the most cursory of medical examinations. Hurt, Cummings decided to open the letter on his way back home to see what had been inside, and was staggered to learn that his doctor had diagnosed him as suffering from the disease now known as multiple sclerosis, and that he almost certainly had less than five years to live.
The news changed Cummings profoundly, and his journal became much more intense and personal as a result. He had married shortly before discovering his illness, and had a daughter, Penelope, in October 1916, but was later moved to discover that his prospective wife, Eleanor, had been informed of his condition long before he himself knew his fate, and his efforts to spare the feelings of his family had been in vain since they had known his condition even before he had.
His diaries up to the winter of 1917, which he revised and corrected prior to publication, were eventually published in March 1919 under the title The Journal of a Disappointed Man. He chose the pseudonym "W.N.P. Barbellion" to protect the identities of his family and friends; he chose the forenames "Wilhelm", "Nero" and "Pilate" as his examples of the most wretched men ever to have lived. The first edition bore a preface by H.G. Wells, which led some reviewers to believe the journal was a work of fiction by Wells himself; Wells publicly denied this but the true identity of "Barbellion" was not known by the public until after Cummings' death.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man, filled with frank and keen observation, unique philosophy and personal resignation, was described by its author as "a study in the nude". The book received both adulatory and scathing reviews; having originally been optioned by Collins, they eventually rejected the book because they feared the "lack of morals" shown by Barbellion would damage their reputation. An editor's note at the very end of the book claims Barbellion died on 31 December 1917, but Cummings in fact lived for nearly two more years. He died in October 1919, having recently approved the proofs of a second short volume of memoirs, Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains; a third brief volume of his very last entries, A Last Diary, appeared in 1920. His identity was made public through his obituaries in various newspapers, at which point his brother Henry R. Cummings gave a newspaper interview providing details of the life of "Barbellion".
Cummings was born in Barnstaple in 1889. He was a naturalist at heart and ended up working at the British Museum's department of Natural History in London. Having begun his journal at the age of thirteen, Cummings continued to record his observations there - gradually moving from dry scientific notes to a more personal, literary style. His literary ambitions changed course in 1914 upon reading the journal of the Russian painter Marie Bashkirtseff, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit (see the 14 October 1914 entry of his Journal); in his 15 January 1915 entry he indicated that he intended to prepare his Journal for publication: "Then all in God’s good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication."
Cummings' life changed forever when he was called to enlist in the British Army to fight in World War I in November 1915. He had consulted his doctor before taking the regulation medical prior to enlisting, and his doctor had given him a sealed, confidential letter to present to the medical officer at the recruitment centre. Cummings did not know what was contained in the letter, but in the event it was not needed; the medical officer rejected Cummings as unfit for active duty after the most cursory of medical examinations. Hurt, Cummings decided to open the letter on his way back home to see what had been inside, and was staggered to learn that his doctor had diagnosed him as suffering from the disease now known as multiple sclerosis, and that he almost certainly had less than five years to live.
The news changed Cummings profoundly, and his journal became much more intense and personal as a result. He had married shortly before discovering his illness, and had a daughter, Penelope, in October 1916, but was later moved to discover that his prospective wife, Eleanor, had been informed of his condition long before he himself knew his fate, and his efforts to spare the feelings of his family had been in vain since they had known his condition even before he had.
His diaries up to the winter of 1917, which he revised and corrected prior to publication, were eventually published in March 1919 under the title The Journal of a Disappointed Man. He chose the pseudonym "W.N.P. Barbellion" to protect the identities of his family and friends; he chose the forenames "Wilhelm", "Nero" and "Pilate" as his examples of the most wretched men ever to have lived. The first edition bore a preface by H.G. Wells, which led some reviewers to believe the journal was a work of fiction by Wells himself; Wells publicly denied this but the true identity of "Barbellion" was not known by the public until after Cummings' death.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man, filled with frank and keen observation, unique philosophy and personal resignation, was described by its author as "a study in the nude". The book received both adulatory and scathing reviews; having originally been optioned by Collins, they eventually rejected the book because they feared the "lack of morals" shown by Barbellion would damage their reputation. An editor's note at the very end of the book claims Barbellion died on 31 December 1917, but Cummings in fact lived for nearly two more years. He died in October 1919, having recently approved the proofs of a second short volume of memoirs, Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains; a third brief volume of his very last entries, A Last Diary, appeared in 1920. His identity was made public through his obituaries in various newspapers, at which point his brother Henry R. Cummings gave a newspaper interview providing details of the life of "Barbellion".
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October 6, 2022
Do you want to read the journal of a guy with an irrepressible delight in all living creatures, a loving wife, a little baby, a brilliant way with our English language and a fatal disease?
Let’s let Mr Barbellion describe himself :
I am over 6 feet high and as thin as a skeleton; every bone in my body, even the neck vertebrae, creak at odd intervals when I move. So that I am not only a skeleton but a badly articulated one to boot. If to this is coupled the fact of the creeping paralysis, you have the complete horror. Even as I sit and write, millions of bacteria are gnawing away my precious spinal cord, and if you put your ear to my back the sound of the gnawing I dare say could be heard.
He had what is now called multiple sclerosis, it killed him at the age of 30, but it had been slowly killing him for about ten years. So …. Well, this must be a misery memoir then? No – not at all. This is a book full of joy.
Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little coups d'œil, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path, the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree tops in the wind.
Well, all right, joy and pain, life grasped and dragged away by insidious treachery.
For a long time past my hope has simply been to last long enough to convince others of what I might have done—had I lived. That will be something.
He begins the journal as a 13 year old boy living in the countryside full of delight in birdsnesting and collecting stuff and forming a burning ambition to be a naturalist and work for the Natural History Museum. But father can’t afford university fees so he becomes a journalist for the local paper and meanwhile crams his brain with all botanical, zoological, biological and anatomical knowledge and applies to museums for jobs and gets ignored and tries again and finally one golden day he scores THE JOB at the great Natural History Museum
which is still there in South Kensington and has a fabulous brachiosaur in the foyer
(I have stood under this beauty)
Well, so he gets the dream job but then he is assigned to the crummiest most tedious section : lice. Yeah, lice. Taxonomising the leg joints of the common louse and some other species. You know, we can’t all be David Attenborough and swan around canoodling with gorillas in the mist. No, some of us have to count the number of joints on the legs of several hundred species of lice.
Anyways, this means a move to the big smoke, and he becomes a keen observer of London life – well, as much as a penniless bachelor can observe.
I saw a pavement artist who had drawn a loaf with the inscription in both French and English: "This is easy to draw but hard to earn."
So he is 19, 20, 21, and the dread disease is beginning its grisly creep at precisely the same time that diplomacy in Europe is flailing and failing and troops are loading onto trains and trains are being pointed westwards… none of these terrifying events gets a mention until way after half way through the Journal, and then only in a few throwaway comments
How may I excuse myself for continuing to talk about my affairs and for continuing to write zoological memoirs during the greatest War of all time?
Well, he is constantly eyerolling himself – he loves to skewer the banalities of civilised life this for instance -
Endured an hour's torture of indecision to-night asking myself whether I should go over to ask her to be my wife or should I go to the Fabian Society and hear Bernard Shaw.
(he went to the Bernard Shaw lecture and didn’t enjoy it)
and this
I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own fantastic soul.
Eventually the disease and the war become the main subjects, he just can't avoid them any more.
At times World War I and his horrible disease compete to see who can kill him first:
At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin Raid.
This Journal ends at age 28 when he was too ill to write and was published in time for him to see it in print, then he died. Throughout its delightful pages he never stops asking himself well – why am I doing this? But it gradually becomes clear to him that his life’s work is not the counting of insect legs or the essays that keep getting sent back by the magazines or the longed-for contribution to biological science but this very Journal is his life’s work. And so it was.
You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless, paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.
The reader may be forgiven for snapping back well, excuse me, Barbellion – if that’s your real name (it wasn’t) - I do not envy YOU, you supercilious thing you. But, well, we can find ourselves almost envying him, when wandering with this strange, loveable man through the lanes recognising the wagtails and peewits or coughing through the streets on his way back to his sweet wife and baby, with ten thousand thoughts twangling in his never still mind, and it’s a mournful experience to turn the last page and say goodbye.
Let’s let Mr Barbellion describe himself :
I am over 6 feet high and as thin as a skeleton; every bone in my body, even the neck vertebrae, creak at odd intervals when I move. So that I am not only a skeleton but a badly articulated one to boot. If to this is coupled the fact of the creeping paralysis, you have the complete horror. Even as I sit and write, millions of bacteria are gnawing away my precious spinal cord, and if you put your ear to my back the sound of the gnawing I dare say could be heard.
He had what is now called multiple sclerosis, it killed him at the age of 30, but it had been slowly killing him for about ten years. So …. Well, this must be a misery memoir then? No – not at all. This is a book full of joy.
Sunlight and a fresh wind. A day of tiny cameos, little coups d'œil, fleeting impressions snapshotted on the mind: the glint on the keeper's gun as he crossed a field a mile away below us, sunlight all along a silken hawser which some Spider engineer had spun between the tops of two tall trees spanning the whole width of a bridle path, the constant patter of Shrew-mice over dead leaves, the pendulum of a Bumble-bee in a flower, and the just perceptible oscillation of the tree tops in the wind.
Well, all right, joy and pain, life grasped and dragged away by insidious treachery.
For a long time past my hope has simply been to last long enough to convince others of what I might have done—had I lived. That will be something.
He begins the journal as a 13 year old boy living in the countryside full of delight in birdsnesting and collecting stuff and forming a burning ambition to be a naturalist and work for the Natural History Museum. But father can’t afford university fees so he becomes a journalist for the local paper and meanwhile crams his brain with all botanical, zoological, biological and anatomical knowledge and applies to museums for jobs and gets ignored and tries again and finally one golden day he scores THE JOB at the great Natural History Museum
which is still there in South Kensington and has a fabulous brachiosaur in the foyer
(I have stood under this beauty)
Well, so he gets the dream job but then he is assigned to the crummiest most tedious section : lice. Yeah, lice. Taxonomising the leg joints of the common louse and some other species. You know, we can’t all be David Attenborough and swan around canoodling with gorillas in the mist. No, some of us have to count the number of joints on the legs of several hundred species of lice.
Anyways, this means a move to the big smoke, and he becomes a keen observer of London life – well, as much as a penniless bachelor can observe.
I saw a pavement artist who had drawn a loaf with the inscription in both French and English: "This is easy to draw but hard to earn."
So he is 19, 20, 21, and the dread disease is beginning its grisly creep at precisely the same time that diplomacy in Europe is flailing and failing and troops are loading onto trains and trains are being pointed westwards… none of these terrifying events gets a mention until way after half way through the Journal, and then only in a few throwaway comments
How may I excuse myself for continuing to talk about my affairs and for continuing to write zoological memoirs during the greatest War of all time?
Well, he is constantly eyerolling himself – he loves to skewer the banalities of civilised life this for instance -
Endured an hour's torture of indecision to-night asking myself whether I should go over to ask her to be my wife or should I go to the Fabian Society and hear Bernard Shaw.
(he went to the Bernard Shaw lecture and didn’t enjoy it)
and this
I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own fantastic soul.
Eventually the disease and the war become the main subjects, he just can't avoid them any more.
At times World War I and his horrible disease compete to see who can kill him first:
At lunch time, had an unpleasant intermittency period in my heart's action and this rather eclipsed my anxiety over a probable Zeppelin Raid.
This Journal ends at age 28 when he was too ill to write and was published in time for him to see it in print, then he died. Throughout its delightful pages he never stops asking himself well – why am I doing this? But it gradually becomes clear to him that his life’s work is not the counting of insect legs or the essays that keep getting sent back by the magazines or the longed-for contribution to biological science but this very Journal is his life’s work. And so it was.
You would pity me would you? I am lonely, penniless, paralysed, and just turned twenty-eight. But I snap my fingers in your face and with equal arrogance I pity you. I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. Your body has never been flayed into tingling life by hopeless desire to love, to know, to act, to achieve. I do not envy you your absorption in the petty cares of a commonplace existence.
The reader may be forgiven for snapping back well, excuse me, Barbellion – if that’s your real name (it wasn’t) - I do not envy YOU, you supercilious thing you. But, well, we can find ourselves almost envying him, when wandering with this strange, loveable man through the lanes recognising the wagtails and peewits or coughing through the streets on his way back to his sweet wife and baby, with ten thousand thoughts twangling in his never still mind, and it’s a mournful experience to turn the last page and say goodbye.
January 21, 2019
I can't remember the last book where I underlined as many lines, as in The Journal of a Disappointed Man, or laughed as much, or cried. Actually cried, quiet rolling tears, while my husband slept beside me in bed.
This journal starts in 1903 when Barbellion (a pen-name) is 13 and wants desperately to be a naturalist (the journal is full of wonderful descriptions of nature), but has to follow his father and become a local journalist. Still, he is determined, and despite ill-health and being completely self-educated takes an exam and gets a job at The Natural History Museum in London (unfortunately, and rather amusingly the job he is given is to measure the legs on lice). He becomes more ill, but (after much indecision) marries and has a child. All the while recounting his illness, and his thoughts on life and death. Eventually, while still in his twenties, he learns he has multiple sclerosis, only because he opens a letter from his doctor that was not addressed to him. He worries about money, and how his wife and child will manage, but he lives to see his journal published. He dies age 31.
So it is desperately sad, but W.N.P (or Bruce) is funny, and clever, and witty, and thoughtful, and despairing. This year is 100 years since his death, and yet he seems so very real and close.
This journal starts in 1903 when Barbellion (a pen-name) is 13 and wants desperately to be a naturalist (the journal is full of wonderful descriptions of nature), but has to follow his father and become a local journalist. Still, he is determined, and despite ill-health and being completely self-educated takes an exam and gets a job at The Natural History Museum in London (unfortunately, and rather amusingly the job he is given is to measure the legs on lice). He becomes more ill, but (after much indecision) marries and has a child. All the while recounting his illness, and his thoughts on life and death. Eventually, while still in his twenties, he learns he has multiple sclerosis, only because he opens a letter from his doctor that was not addressed to him. He worries about money, and how his wife and child will manage, but he lives to see his journal published. He dies age 31.
So it is desperately sad, but W.N.P (or Bruce) is funny, and clever, and witty, and thoughtful, and despairing. This year is 100 years since his death, and yet he seems so very real and close.
March 24, 2012
Couldn't recommend this enough, probably the most underrated of modern literary classics. How can you beat this:
"To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you."
"To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you."
May 7, 2025
This human being Journal, or
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
, is evidence of self-mastery or cutting through the creeping paralysis. One of the most troublesome outcomes of any sort of paralysis. It just simply cuts out from your mind that you could be, achieve, and live out any desire, that you could be whatever you want to be. But this freedom to be or do absolutely anything is not possible at all. Yet the person is expected to be realistic and practical.
It turned out to be an overwhelming Journal.
The amount of personal, intimate information has completely exploded way beyond my capacity for effective human processing. I seem to have not evolved fast enough psychologically to receive, assimilate, and fully appreciate the volume of thoughts and opinions that were thrust upon this humble reader. Could be I was or am affected by a sort of choice paralysis. Guess it’s a way to protect my self from the universal noise 😊...
It turned out to be an overwhelming Journal.
The amount of personal, intimate information has completely exploded way beyond my capacity for effective human processing. I seem to have not evolved fast enough psychologically to receive, assimilate, and fully appreciate the volume of thoughts and opinions that were thrust upon this humble reader. Could be I was or am affected by a sort of choice paralysis. Guess it’s a way to protect my self from the universal noise 😊...
January 28, 2021
The Journal of a Disappointed Man are the diaries of Bruce Frederick Cummings. He lived from September 7, 1889 to October 22, 1919. Begun when he was thirteen, they continue through December 1917, approximately two years before his death. He died at the age of thirty due to multiple sclerosis. W.N.P. Barbellion is simply the author’s pen-name.
We follow this Devonshire lad, from his early teens exploring nature, to London. He is self-taught, eyes the girls and is employed at the British Museum of Natural History, where he works as an etymologist--counting the joints of insect legs, when he isn’t relegated back to bed. In his twenties, both of his parents have died. He is alone, poor and attempting to eek out a living. The museum job is as close as he can get to his dream of becoming a naturalist. He works as a journalist too.
The lad does not know that he suffers from the disease we today identify as multiple sclerosis! Having ever worsening palpitations of the heart, dyspepsia, blurry vision, tingling, pain and numbness, debilitating fatigue and eventually paralysis, he is not informed of the cause of his physical problems. Lack of information can be more frightening than the truth!
How he discovers what ails him is a story in itself. In November 1915, he was called for enlistment to fight in the First World War. He had a sealed letter . He had recently married, and a child was om the way. He comes to learn that his wife had been informed of his illness when they married, been advised against the marriage but had ignored the advice. The love between husband and wife came to be very strong.
This book grabs at your heart. When Barbellion speaks, no matter what the subject may be, the reader is pulled in. When he describes the beauty of nature, you perceive it with all your senses and your heart. When he goes to a concert, he conveys movingly the effect the music has on him emotionally. You know how music can move a person; this he captures in words. Barbellion’s fear, his despair and his anger are all emotively expressed and convincingly drawn. The engagement you will feel is extraordinary. This is what I must make clear to prospective readers.
A person soon to be deprived of life, finds the words to express what is taken from him. He had never traveled, and he had never seen “Niagara Falls by moonlight” he complains. He knew of the world solely though books. He had the intelligence and the imagination to fully understand what he was missing. Truly heartbreaking!
At the same time, what is drawn is realistic. We see also his anger, self-pity and frustration. He is not always a nice guy.
This book is by no means an easy read, but it is beautiful.
In 1915, Barbellion decides he wants his papers to eventually be published. They would help support his wife and child after his death. He modifies portions and in later entries adds information previously lacking. These added portions are few, and in my view, easy to spot—they lack the heartfelt resonance of the day by day entries. In one, he looks back on the years of his childhood. In a second, he relates grievances with editors and publishers.
I listened to the book read by Adam Whybray at Librivox. A free download is available here: https://librivox.org/the-journal-of-a... It takes a while for Whybray to get into his stride, but then the reading becomes very good. He has an English accent which is appropriate here. This is better than most recordings at Librivox. Whybray is a reader I will seek out in the future. The narration I have given four stars.
I will close with a few quotes. Taste the prose; see how you react.
“The sun did not simply shine today—it came rushing down from the sky in a cataract and flooded the sands with light.”
“Just below the densely black projecting gable of the house, I saw the crescent moon lying on her back in a bed of purple sky.”
“Nature with clockwork regularity had all her taps turned on—larks singing, cherries ripening, and bees humming.”
“This morning how desirable everything seemed to me—the world intoxicated me.”
“Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk.”
“My world is a life of consummate isolation.”
“I am terrified for the menace of the future.”
“I am intimidated by my own littleness.”
“I wanted everything, so I got nothing.”
“To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them—the ignominy of being dead!”
We follow this Devonshire lad, from his early teens exploring nature, to London. He is self-taught, eyes the girls and is employed at the British Museum of Natural History, where he works as an etymologist--counting the joints of insect legs, when he isn’t relegated back to bed. In his twenties, both of his parents have died. He is alone, poor and attempting to eek out a living. The museum job is as close as he can get to his dream of becoming a naturalist. He works as a journalist too.
The lad does not know that he suffers from the disease we today identify as multiple sclerosis! Having ever worsening palpitations of the heart, dyspepsia, blurry vision, tingling, pain and numbness, debilitating fatigue and eventually paralysis, he is not informed of the cause of his physical problems. Lack of information can be more frightening than the truth!
How he discovers what ails him is a story in itself. In November 1915, he was called for enlistment to fight in the First World War. He had a sealed letter . He had recently married, and a child was om the way. He comes to learn that his wife had been informed of his illness when they married, been advised against the marriage but had ignored the advice. The love between husband and wife came to be very strong.
This book grabs at your heart. When Barbellion speaks, no matter what the subject may be, the reader is pulled in. When he describes the beauty of nature, you perceive it with all your senses and your heart. When he goes to a concert, he conveys movingly the effect the music has on him emotionally. You know how music can move a person; this he captures in words. Barbellion’s fear, his despair and his anger are all emotively expressed and convincingly drawn. The engagement you will feel is extraordinary. This is what I must make clear to prospective readers.
A person soon to be deprived of life, finds the words to express what is taken from him. He had never traveled, and he had never seen “Niagara Falls by moonlight” he complains. He knew of the world solely though books. He had the intelligence and the imagination to fully understand what he was missing. Truly heartbreaking!
At the same time, what is drawn is realistic. We see also his anger, self-pity and frustration. He is not always a nice guy.
This book is by no means an easy read, but it is beautiful.
In 1915, Barbellion decides he wants his papers to eventually be published. They would help support his wife and child after his death. He modifies portions and in later entries adds information previously lacking. These added portions are few, and in my view, easy to spot—they lack the heartfelt resonance of the day by day entries. In one, he looks back on the years of his childhood. In a second, he relates grievances with editors and publishers.
I listened to the book read by Adam Whybray at Librivox. A free download is available here: https://librivox.org/the-journal-of-a... It takes a while for Whybray to get into his stride, but then the reading becomes very good. He has an English accent which is appropriate here. This is better than most recordings at Librivox. Whybray is a reader I will seek out in the future. The narration I have given four stars.
I will close with a few quotes. Taste the prose; see how you react.
“The sun did not simply shine today—it came rushing down from the sky in a cataract and flooded the sands with light.”
“Just below the densely black projecting gable of the house, I saw the crescent moon lying on her back in a bed of purple sky.”
“Nature with clockwork regularity had all her taps turned on—larks singing, cherries ripening, and bees humming.”
“This morning how desirable everything seemed to me—the world intoxicated me.”
“Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk.”
“My world is a life of consummate isolation.”
“I am terrified for the menace of the future.”
“I am intimidated by my own littleness.”
“I wanted everything, so I got nothing.”
“To think that the women I have loved will be marrying and forget, and that the men I have hated will continue on their way and forget I ever hated them—the ignominy of being dead!”
November 29, 2016
I decided to read ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’ having come across an old Penguin copy on a market stall. (I have a very low resistance to rows of old Penguin paperbacks.) It is an extraordinary book, unlike any non-fiction I’ve read before. I was reminded a bit of Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, but this has the rawness of reality. The book is a diary, kept over years by a sickly young man who wishes to become a zoologist. His endeavours are frequently frustrated and his ill-health persists, coming to a crisis at the end of 1915 when he learns that he has multiple sclerosis. Realising that he is dying, he chronicles his thoughts and feelings about it, with a moving vividness that never descends into glum morbidity.
Barbellion (a rather splendid pseudonym) writes alternately of his internal life and external events, although I found the former more striking. His diary isn’t simply written for his own satisfaction, but is intended for an audience. Thus he expresses a wish that someone, at some point, reads it, sympathises, and perhaps even understands. I found this especially moving, to be directly addressed in this way. I wanted to reassure Barbellion that, although I can’t imagine how terrible his suffering was, I certainly relate to his thoughts about life, death, and ambition. In particular, there is a point where he expresses frustration at not knowing ‘what I am worth’, which I’m sure many can relate to. I have had many moments of introspection when I’ve wondered what good I am and whether I have any talent for anything. This desire for success tempered with self-doubt is beautifully articulated by Barbellion.
Although I highly recommend the journal, it is painful to follow Barebellion’s deterioration. He was just thirty when he died, after a life of perpetual illness and pain. His diary really conveys what a fascinating mind was imprisoned in a terribly weak body. It would be unreadable if it was unalloyed tragedy; what makes it truly memorable is the intense joy of life that accompanies the fear of impending death. It is a beautiful book, just do not expect to be in an especially light and sociable mood after reading it.
Barbellion (a rather splendid pseudonym) writes alternately of his internal life and external events, although I found the former more striking. His diary isn’t simply written for his own satisfaction, but is intended for an audience. Thus he expresses a wish that someone, at some point, reads it, sympathises, and perhaps even understands. I found this especially moving, to be directly addressed in this way. I wanted to reassure Barbellion that, although I can’t imagine how terrible his suffering was, I certainly relate to his thoughts about life, death, and ambition. In particular, there is a point where he expresses frustration at not knowing ‘what I am worth’, which I’m sure many can relate to. I have had many moments of introspection when I’ve wondered what good I am and whether I have any talent for anything. This desire for success tempered with self-doubt is beautifully articulated by Barbellion.
Although I highly recommend the journal, it is painful to follow Barebellion’s deterioration. He was just thirty when he died, after a life of perpetual illness and pain. His diary really conveys what a fascinating mind was imprisoned in a terribly weak body. It would be unreadable if it was unalloyed tragedy; what makes it truly memorable is the intense joy of life that accompanies the fear of impending death. It is a beautiful book, just do not expect to be in an especially light and sociable mood after reading it.
January 15, 2021
"Am mers cum am putut pe cărări până pe deal și m-am așezat pe câmp, la soare, rezemat de o căpiță de fân. De tristețe, am rămas atât de nemișcat, încât muștele și lăcustele s-au apropiat și s-au așezat pe mine. M-am înfuriat. Le-am spus: "N-am murit încă, la o parte!" și le tot goneam... O nefericire oribilă..."
October 26, 2020
Soy lectora por libros como éste. Libros que te conmueven, que te hacen reír y llorar, releer y reflexionar, anotar muchos fragmentos. Suspirar.
Nunca llegué a leer este Diario cuando pasó delante de mí, cuando me juzgaba desde el estante hace quince o quizá veinte años (¿veinte? ¿En serio?). Mi yo adolescente jamás lo escogió. Sólo pasó alguna página, apenas si llegó a leer la sinopsis.
Mi yo adulta casi se tira de los pelos por no haberlo leído entonces.
Mi yo de 2020 que ha acabado viviendo cosas que jamás imaginó, se alegra por haberlo leído en este momento.
Voy a recomendar este libro, lo voy a mencionar, lo voy a regalar. Este diario pasa a ser uno de los libros que más me han gustado en este malogrado 2020. No lo dejéis pasar.
https://lahierbaroja.com/2020/09/28/d...
Nunca llegué a leer este Diario cuando pasó delante de mí, cuando me juzgaba desde el estante hace quince o quizá veinte años (¿veinte? ¿En serio?). Mi yo adolescente jamás lo escogió. Sólo pasó alguna página, apenas si llegó a leer la sinopsis.
Mi yo adulta casi se tira de los pelos por no haberlo leído entonces.
Mi yo de 2020 que ha acabado viviendo cosas que jamás imaginó, se alegra por haberlo leído en este momento.
Voy a recomendar este libro, lo voy a mencionar, lo voy a regalar. Este diario pasa a ser uno de los libros que más me han gustado en este malogrado 2020. No lo dejéis pasar.
https://lahierbaroja.com/2020/09/28/d...
December 28, 2024
O carte de 5 🌟 , un jurnal scris cu o forță obiectiv-realistă greu de descris.
W. N. P. BARBELLION este pseudonimul lui Bruce Frederick Cummings, un tânăr englez pasionat de științele naturale.
În 1915 este respins la examenul medical pentru recrutare deoarece suferea de o boală incurabilă, scleroză în plăci. Visul de a face o cariera stiintifica i se spulberă și în jurnal găsim dezamăgirea lui în acest aspect al vieții. Astfel, Barbellion acordă atenție totală jurnalului pe care-l ține încă de la 13 ani. Jurnalul devine singura lui arma împotriva bolii fizice care l-a împiedicat să se bucure de viața de familie și de o posibilă carieră militară.
Este o carte care descrie personalitatea și fețele ființei umane; un jurnal de o filozofie și resemnare personală unică asupra vieții și morții. Autorul însuși îl descrie ca fiind „un studiu în nud" pe care îl încheie în 21 octombrie 1917, anunțând că a murit pe 31 decembrie 1917.
"Jurnalul unui om dezamăgit" apare în martie 1919, cand el este încă în viață.
W. N. P. BARBELLION este pseudonimul lui Bruce Frederick Cummings, un tânăr englez pasionat de științele naturale.
În 1915 este respins la examenul medical pentru recrutare deoarece suferea de o boală incurabilă, scleroză în plăci. Visul de a face o cariera stiintifica i se spulberă și în jurnal găsim dezamăgirea lui în acest aspect al vieții. Astfel, Barbellion acordă atenție totală jurnalului pe care-l ține încă de la 13 ani. Jurnalul devine singura lui arma împotriva bolii fizice care l-a împiedicat să se bucure de viața de familie și de o posibilă carieră militară.
Este o carte care descrie personalitatea și fețele ființei umane; un jurnal de o filozofie și resemnare personală unică asupra vieții și morții. Autorul însuși îl descrie ca fiind „un studiu în nud" pe care îl încheie în 21 octombrie 1917, anunțând că a murit pe 31 decembrie 1917.
"Jurnalul unui om dezamăgit" apare în martie 1919, cand el este încă în viață.
October 30, 2020
I discovered this lost gem through the brilliant Backlisted podcast, which in itself has been a glimmer of light in the long weeks and months of 2020. There are many reviews on here which pay homage to the work and do it a fine justice, so I'll leave it to Barbellion himself to draw the prospective reader in should you need further enticing:
"The reason why I do not spend my days in despair and my nights in hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own ruin".
Wow - and there's lots more where this came from. It's a really moving work, upliftingly joyous and heartbreaking in equal parts. How is this brilliant work not more widely known?
"The reason why I do not spend my days in despair and my nights in hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own ruin".
Wow - and there's lots more where this came from. It's a really moving work, upliftingly joyous and heartbreaking in equal parts. How is this brilliant work not more widely known?
May 19, 2016
What a beautiful book, a beautiful book.
It's so honest and deep. Sad and tragic yet touching and life changing. I felt like a different person once I put it down. As I closed the book, I thought I lost a friend, a very very close-friend.
Barbellion is my new hero.
PS:
You can read it for free here or here
It's so honest and deep. Sad and tragic yet touching and life changing. I felt like a different person once I put it down. As I closed the book, I thought I lost a friend, a very very close-friend.
Barbellion is my new hero.
PS:
You can read it for free here or here
April 12, 2019
This journal, first published in 1919, spans 14 years in the life of its author and starts when he was only 13.
Barbellion was a brilliant and self-taught naturalist who could never fully fulfill his colossal ambitions due to his ill-health. It taught him how to live with a sense of impending doom very early on, knowing that death would come early for him, which it did when he was only 29.
Ill-health also turned him into a huge egotist whose whole world was often limited to the confines of his own suffering body. This led him on a quest to try and know himself truly and completely, going beyond self-deception to deliver what he himself called « a self-portrait in the nude », never trying to embelish or hide his flaws. I think few people can pretend to know themselves as well and as truthfully as he did.
The book is really just made up of his journal entries, a format that doesn't always make for the smoothest reading experience. Some entries are really short and set days or weeks apart from each other and this lack of continuity can sometimes be bothersome.
But what it lost in fluidity it made up for in authenticity and proximity with the reader.
If you choose to read this book, be prepared to entertain a relationship with the author that sometimes becomes quite intimate, and not always in a friendly way !
It felt strangely moving to read his doubts about whether or not anyone would ever read his journal and what they would think of it.
« What I would give to know the effect I shall produce when published ! »
Well here we are, a 100 years later and someone's writing about your book on Goodreads . I wonder how he would have felt about that !
It was often heartbreaking to see his illness progressively take everything away from him, down to what was most precious to him, his writing ability.
And yet, however fatalistic and pessimistic he got, he never stopped cherishing his life and the few people who mattered to him, even egotistically finding merit in his own illness :
« I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. »
I would really recommend this book. Like I said, its format isn't always the most pleasant to read but it's really worth it in the end. It also has to be one of the most quotable books I've read, many of the things Barbellion lived and wrote will stay with me and I feel like we've all got something to learn from him.
Barbellion was a brilliant and self-taught naturalist who could never fully fulfill his colossal ambitions due to his ill-health. It taught him how to live with a sense of impending doom very early on, knowing that death would come early for him, which it did when he was only 29.
Ill-health also turned him into a huge egotist whose whole world was often limited to the confines of his own suffering body. This led him on a quest to try and know himself truly and completely, going beyond self-deception to deliver what he himself called « a self-portrait in the nude », never trying to embelish or hide his flaws. I think few people can pretend to know themselves as well and as truthfully as he did.
The book is really just made up of his journal entries, a format that doesn't always make for the smoothest reading experience. Some entries are really short and set days or weeks apart from each other and this lack of continuity can sometimes be bothersome.
But what it lost in fluidity it made up for in authenticity and proximity with the reader.
If you choose to read this book, be prepared to entertain a relationship with the author that sometimes becomes quite intimate, and not always in a friendly way !
It felt strangely moving to read his doubts about whether or not anyone would ever read his journal and what they would think of it.
« What I would give to know the effect I shall produce when published ! »
Well here we are, a 100 years later and someone's writing about your book on Goodreads . I wonder how he would have felt about that !
It was often heartbreaking to see his illness progressively take everything away from him, down to what was most precious to him, his writing ability.
And yet, however fatalistic and pessimistic he got, he never stopped cherishing his life and the few people who mattered to him, even egotistically finding merit in his own illness :
« I pity you your smooth-running good luck and the stagnant serenity of your mind. I prefer my own torment. I am dying, but you are already a corpse. You have never really lived. »
I would really recommend this book. Like I said, its format isn't always the most pleasant to read but it's really worth it in the end. It also has to be one of the most quotable books I've read, many of the things Barbellion lived and wrote will stay with me and I feel like we've all got something to learn from him.
June 26, 2019
One of the best books I have read this year and in fact one of the best books I have ever read. I believe that all readers who are interested in the human condition should read it. From the point of view of what it means to be a living person, it contains the spectrum of everything. Really amazing and I think it could be more than amazing: it could be an epiphany. It's one of the most quotable books I have ever read (as quotable as Cocteau; high praise indeed!) and also one of the most poignant. And it is totally relevant to everything that the philosophically-minded reader has probably been turning over in their own minds for years and years, our cosmic insignificance, the fact that life is terrible but worth living anyway, the nature of truth and falsity, etc, and because Barbellion goes through almost the whole range of possible feelings and views on every subject he raises, it feels like he has uploaded his soul onto the page and then we find that our own souls overlap with his at many points. It was a privilege to read this book, which I plucked at random from a library shelf, started reading with no special motivation but then with immense enthusiasm as I became completely captivated by the work.
July 12, 2013
Esta mierda cambió básicamente mi vida para siempre.
September 25, 2023
The diaries of a man - Bruce Fredrick Cummings (1889-1919), better known under the pseudonym Barbellion - who lived to be only thirty. He had a huge interest in nature and through self-study he managed to become a great expert in this field. His extensive knowledge of nature landed him a position at the British Museum. Due to his poor health - he suffered from a form of MS - his world became increasingly limited. Eventually he married and through this marriage he more or less escaped the increasing loneliness.
It is not only nature he is talking about. Very many conversations with friend are stipulated in the diary. And Barbellion had a particular joy in attending concerts of classical music, with Beethoven and Chopin as his heroes, well the enthousiasm about the magic called music lead to admirably emotional utterings. And such an avid reader this fellow was. Around the age of twentyfive he starts to edit his diary, because he wishes it to be published. From that point gradually the text gets a more literary signature. And from 1914 onwards the war has its influence on Barbellion in his daily life in London.
This is a diary that makes quite an impression because of the writer's courage and perseverance. The reader gets the impression of a full and meaningful life, even if it only lasted thirty years. The book breaths struggle and resignation, gloom because of physical pain and happiness and joy about many details in nature, so much ambition and so little time. JM
“To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe – such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part – I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me – but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.”
It is not only nature he is talking about. Very many conversations with friend are stipulated in the diary. And Barbellion had a particular joy in attending concerts of classical music, with Beethoven and Chopin as his heroes, well the enthousiasm about the magic called music lead to admirably emotional utterings. And such an avid reader this fellow was. Around the age of twentyfive he starts to edit his diary, because he wishes it to be published. From that point gradually the text gets a more literary signature. And from 1914 onwards the war has its influence on Barbellion in his daily life in London.
This is a diary that makes quite an impression because of the writer's courage and perseverance. The reader gets the impression of a full and meaningful life, even if it only lasted thirty years. The book breaths struggle and resignation, gloom because of physical pain and happiness and joy about many details in nature, so much ambition and so little time. JM
“To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe – such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part – I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me – but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.”
August 15, 2019
Beginning when its author was 13 years old and ending not long before his death from Multiple Sclerosis at just 31, the journal of W.N.P. Barbellion is a punch in the gut (revealingly, the name of his disease is blanked out in the text, an indication that he could never quite look his fate squarely in the face). The final three entries of the main diary are heartbreaking, containing as they do the multiple and contradictory sentiments that define all the entries that come before: egotism coupled with self-hatred, compassion coupled with misanthropy, hope turning on a pin to despair; both funny and tragic. Barbellion (a nom de plume; Barbellion was the name of the author’s favourite pastry shop on Gloucester Road) is sympathetic for being relatable. All of us understand that self-aggrandisement and self-disgust are two sides of the same coin, we’ve all been simultaneously arrogant and embarrassed at our arrogance (what I’m saying is, we’ve all been teenagers). Kudos to Barbellion for his frankness. Often throughout the book, he worries that his journal will be unread and ignored. How nice it would be to somehow let him know that over a hundred years later people are still reading his words writing about them, just like me, here, on this train.
Want to read
January 12, 2026F. Scott Fitzgerald also owned a copy of this book.
A Book Owned by F. Scott Fitzgerald: https://static-prod.lib.princeton.edu...
A Book Owned by F. Scott Fitzgerald: https://static-prod.lib.princeton.edu...
February 1, 2021
"Nimeni nu poate înțelege fără să fi simțit pe propria-i piele faptul că o creatură excesiv de introspectivă cum sunt eu este cum nu se poate mai nefericită când n-are altceva de facut decât să se consume singură. Am ajuns să mă detest: firea mea pisăloagă, hipersensibilă, morbidă, faptul că gândesc, vorbesc, scriu despre mine întruna de parcă restul lumii nici n-ar exista! Sunt inele peste inele, cercuri concentrice și intersectate, un labirint, o încurcătură: mă observ când mă comport bine sau rău, mă întreb mereu ce impresie las celorlalți sau ce cred alții despre mine. (...) Egoismul mă face emotiv, și prin urmare, atât de bizar, de stângaci și de orgolios, încât nu știu să fac conversație - și vai de celălalt." (16 martie 1911)
"Într-adevăr, duc o viață dublă, tare ciudată: în ochii celor mai mulți oameni trec drept o creatură împăciuitoare, amabilă, lașă, moale, deși îngâmfată. Aici, în jurnal, mă dezvălui - un nemulțumit disprețuitor și arogant. Viața m-a înveninat "au fond", am un temperament acrit de om dezamăgit, totuși nu încă suficient de dezvoltat încât să răzbată prin natura mea înnăscută afabilă, modestă, umilă, timidă și veselă." (10 septembrie 1916)
"Mă tem să nu mă înșel pe mine însumi, detest să mă dezvălui sau să-i dezvălui pe ceilalți. Și totuși fac asta de fiecare dată. Creierul meu analizează fără preget. Disec pe oricine, chiar și pe cei pe care-i iubesc, și de multe ori descoperirile mele mă amărăsc. "Totul este curat pentru cei curați", de unde presupun că bârna se află în ochiul meu. Dar n-aș suporta să fiu înșelat nici cu privire la bârna mea, nici cu privire la paiul altora." (11 martie 1917)
"Într-adevăr, duc o viață dublă, tare ciudată: în ochii celor mai mulți oameni trec drept o creatură împăciuitoare, amabilă, lașă, moale, deși îngâmfată. Aici, în jurnal, mă dezvălui - un nemulțumit disprețuitor și arogant. Viața m-a înveninat "au fond", am un temperament acrit de om dezamăgit, totuși nu încă suficient de dezvoltat încât să răzbată prin natura mea înnăscută afabilă, modestă, umilă, timidă și veselă." (10 septembrie 1916)
"Mă tem să nu mă înșel pe mine însumi, detest să mă dezvălui sau să-i dezvălui pe ceilalți. Și totuși fac asta de fiecare dată. Creierul meu analizează fără preget. Disec pe oricine, chiar și pe cei pe care-i iubesc, și de multe ori descoperirile mele mă amărăsc. "Totul este curat pentru cei curați", de unde presupun că bârna se află în ochiul meu. Dar n-aș suporta să fiu înșelat nici cu privire la bârna mea, nici cu privire la paiul altora." (11 martie 1917)
July 20, 2023
Nothing like a depressed half-dead man writing about war and illness to remind you just how alive you are !! Well written but felt very repetitive and self-indulgent at times (then again, it is his journal so fair enough) x
February 7, 2024
Review of a Disappointed Woman!
Well this was a barrel of despair hey! I tried, I really tried. It's taken me weeks to wade through the desperation but I'm giving it up as a job badly done!
We go from the author's childhood of catching, maiming, killing and dissecting animals with his mates, to a young adulthood full of bitterness, vitriol and hatred which seems to have come on very early in life.
Between snippets of sudden wonder and joy at the world, we get pages and pages of self-loathing, despondency and disillusionment. I mean I know I'm a pessimist but this dude takes the biscuit! And that's before his illness!
Overall this book felt like falling into a quagmire of misery and struggling to fight your way out. Yes it's sad that the author got a shit diagnosis, prognosis and died very young but his writing is neither inspirational nor entertaining. It is negative, depressing and not worth reading.
1 star tripe.
Well this was a barrel of despair hey! I tried, I really tried. It's taken me weeks to wade through the desperation but I'm giving it up as a job badly done!
We go from the author's childhood of catching, maiming, killing and dissecting animals with his mates, to a young adulthood full of bitterness, vitriol and hatred which seems to have come on very early in life.
Between snippets of sudden wonder and joy at the world, we get pages and pages of self-loathing, despondency and disillusionment. I mean I know I'm a pessimist but this dude takes the biscuit! And that's before his illness!
Overall this book felt like falling into a quagmire of misery and struggling to fight your way out. Yes it's sad that the author got a shit diagnosis, prognosis and died very young but his writing is neither inspirational nor entertaining. It is negative, depressing and not worth reading.
1 star tripe.
June 12, 2017
I like the confessional poetry and writings. I have an interest in the exploration of an author's psyche and a penchant to delve into his intimate emotions and existential thoughts. It's probably an intellectual voyeurism (I just made up this expression).
I was touched by Barbellion's diary that also reveals his maturity, though he died at the age of 30, 4 years older than Lermontov but much younger than Rimbaud..
His diary expatiates on many aspects of the metaphysical interrogations and the psychological torments of a young man facing his inescapable death because of his excruciating illness. He also reveals his deep emotional fears and shares his existential dilemmas and, as a naturalist by passion, ponders upon many Scientific observations and studies..
Barbellion's prose is poetic.. The poetry in his diaries could be read between the lines, in the way he expresses his emotions and impressions.. when describing his honest views and opinions on the issues of life, melancholy, anxiety, sadness and bitterness pervade through this book.
Allow me this side note: Poetry could be assimilated to all subjects and could be found everywhere.
In an extremely boring paper on the administrative decentralization in the European Law, the author wrote this: the world is like a house, with few more walls
Most probably, you will be intrigued by Barbellion's personal "dissection" of the human nature as much as I did, à la Nietzsche in the assumptions expressed in his philosophical aphorisms like in his famous opus Human All too Human.
Here is an excerpt:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
"For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
The introduction by H.G. WELLS of the GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Edition is great.
(available as a free ebook online https://archive.org/details/journalof...
This is an excerpt that I particularly like from his preface:
Your egoist, like the solitary beasts, lives only for himself; your altruist declares that he lives only for others; for either there may be success or failure but for neither can there be tragedy. For even if the altruist meets nothing but ingratitude, what has he to complain of? His premises abolish his grounds of complaint. But both egoist and altruist are philosophical abstractions. The human being by nature and necessity is neither egoist nor altruist; he trims a difficult course between the two; for the most part we are, within the limits of our powers of expression, egotists, and our desire is to think and if possible talk and write about this marvellous experiment of ourselves, with all the world—or as much as we can conveniently assemble—for audience. There is variety in our styles. Some drape the central figure; some let it rather appear than call attention to it; some affect a needless frankness: "I am an egotist, mind you, and I pretend nothing else"; some by adopting a pose with accessories do at least develop so great and passionate an interest in the accessories as to generalise and escape more or less completely from self. An egotism like an eggshell is a thing from which to escape; the art of life is that escape. The fundamental art of life is to recover the sense of that great self-forgetful continuous life from which we have individually budded off. Many people have done this through religion, which begins with a tremendous clamour to some saviour god or other to recognise us and ends in our recognition of him; or through science, when your egotist begins with: "Behold me! I, I your humble servant, am a scientific man, devoted to the clear statement of truth," and ends with so passionate a statement of truth that self is forgotten altogether..
November 4, 2021
I don't know why on earth did my review dissapeared.
So here we go again, i will not be silenced.
The print is so small there is no way you don't end up having vision problems after reading it.
The correct way of putting notes is either at the end of each Page or at the end of the book, or you could at least be consistent, but most of the notes are at the end of each year, and then when he got married the notes are at the wedding 🤡 that's me realizing the notes did make sense, just not the ones I was reading.
It doesn't use any name either for people nor for places, by half the book I had no idea what was going on, nor i cared for it.
Then I bought this thing because it was suppose to contain beautiful descriptions of nature, which it doesn't, and because it was suppose to describe the way his sickness advanced, but it doesn't even mention which sickness it was and most of the time simply says he is too tired.
Ontop of all that, he is not an interesting person, in fact he is plain pitiful and that's it.
So here we go again, i will not be silenced.
The print is so small there is no way you don't end up having vision problems after reading it.
The correct way of putting notes is either at the end of each Page or at the end of the book, or you could at least be consistent, but most of the notes are at the end of each year, and then when he got married the notes are at the wedding 🤡 that's me realizing the notes did make sense, just not the ones I was reading.
It doesn't use any name either for people nor for places, by half the book I had no idea what was going on, nor i cared for it.
Then I bought this thing because it was suppose to contain beautiful descriptions of nature, which it doesn't, and because it was suppose to describe the way his sickness advanced, but it doesn't even mention which sickness it was and most of the time simply says he is too tired.
Ontop of all that, he is not an interesting person, in fact he is plain pitiful and that's it.
August 2, 2018
Es maravilloso de principio a fin. Lo empecé por casualidad y va a ser de los libros que dejen huella.
Barbellion, que padecía esclerosis múltiple aunque lo supo después, ve como sus sueños de convertirse en naturalista se trunca por su falta de formación, y aunque consiguió un puesto en el Museo Británico de Ciencias Naturales en el departamento de Entomología nunca llegó a labrarse un nombre.
Las primeras entradas cuando era sólo un niño aprendiendo a ser naturalista son curiosas, cuando ya los últimos años la enfermedad ocupa casi todo el tiempo la lectura se vuelve más profunda, donde la muerte inminente,el amor a su esposa y las ambiciones rotas ocupan casi todo el contenido.
Muy recomendable.
Barbellion, que padecía esclerosis múltiple aunque lo supo después, ve como sus sueños de convertirse en naturalista se trunca por su falta de formación, y aunque consiguió un puesto en el Museo Británico de Ciencias Naturales en el departamento de Entomología nunca llegó a labrarse un nombre.
Las primeras entradas cuando era sólo un niño aprendiendo a ser naturalista son curiosas, cuando ya los últimos años la enfermedad ocupa casi todo el tiempo la lectura se vuelve más profunda, donde la muerte inminente,el amor a su esposa y las ambiciones rotas ocupan casi todo el contenido.
Muy recomendable.
March 2, 2018
'If I go to a sculpture gallery, . . . I will be a sculptor. If I go to the opera, then I am going to take up music seriously. Or if I get a new beast . . . nothing else can interest me on earth, I think. But something does, and with a wrench I turn away presently to fresh pastures. Life is a series of wrenches, I tremble for the fixity of my purposes; and as you know so well, I am an ambitious man, and my purposes are very dear to me. You see what a trembling, colour-changing, invertebrate, jelly-fish of a brother you have . . .'
June 20, 2024
abia acum simt că a început vara, după genul ăsta de lectură liberă.
31 mai 1913
Puțini oameni știu ce fire amoroasă am, pe lângă bărbierul meu. El trebuie să-mi radă buzele sinuoase.
6 octombrie 1917
În crizele mele de autocompătimire zaharisită, încerc să-mi imaginez Belgia, Armenia, Serbia etc. și de obicei exercițiul mă vindecă.
31 mai 1913
Puțini oameni știu ce fire amoroasă am, pe lângă bărbierul meu. El trebuie să-mi radă buzele sinuoase.
6 octombrie 1917
În crizele mele de autocompătimire zaharisită, încerc să-mi imaginez Belgia, Armenia, Serbia etc. și de obicei exercițiul mă vindecă.
Currently reading
March 20, 2009Hey, if H.G. Wells liked it enough to write a preface, it's got to be up my alley. So far, it's adorable... but I'm just in the teen years. I feel one of those moments coming on, where I feel total communion with an author. I greatly anticipate this.
November 11, 2020
I never read reviews prior to reading a book. I don't want my opinions set for me by someone else. On the downside, it sometimes takes me a while to understand what I'm reading. The disappointed "Man" in the journal's title was born in 1890. The first entry is 1903 as a teenager. My first opinion about the Man was that he was more sickly and more self-absorbed than Proust. I complained about that. However, he was similarly well read and similarly adept at putting feelings and observations into prose, so I kept going. This book is only 170 pages, yet I have more highlighted passages in it than I have in 1700 pages of In Search of Lost Time. The journal reached the start of WWI before it dawned on me that the Man was really sick, that he would be deferred from serving in the war, and that he was gong to die early (at 28 years.) Then I knew why the Man was Disappointed! My vexation turned to compassion as I journeyed with him through his final trials and took on board his observations and conclusions about life and death. So poignant for me at age 73. Another one of those books I didn't like until well past halfway, but that I could not put down.
wish-list
February 22, 2022
Begun when its author was 13 years old, the Journal at first catalogues Barbellion's misadventures in the Devon countryside - collecting birds' eggs, spying girls through binoculars - but evolves into a deeply moving account of his struggle with poverty, his lack of formal education, his flailing attempts at love, and most harrowing of all his slow death from multiple sclerosis.
Yet, for all its excruciating honesty, W.N.P. Barbellion has an extraordinary lust for life. As Zeppelins loomed above the streets of South Kensington, the humour and beauty he found in the world around him - in music, friendship, nature and love - deepens not just the tragedy of his own life, but the millions of lives lost during the First World War.
May 2, 2022
Thanks to the Backlisted Podcast for making me aware of the existence of this remarkable book. Not much can be said without revealing spoilers, other than that it is a true story (it is an actual journal of the author from the age of 13 to 28, a major part of it taking place during the First World War). I've never read anything like it. 4.5 stars.
Read
January 16, 2018a haunting journal tracing the diarist's transformation from an aspiring zoologist to a patient dealing with the gradual effects of multiple sclerosis. He reminded me of the character 'Victor Frankenstein' in "Penny Dreadful": single-mindedly ambitious in making his mark in science and discovery, sensitively intelligent, and rather self-absorbed. He is full of youthful energy and grandiloquent pronunciations about love, death, and the meaning of life, but flits from one thoughtless romantic entanglement to another, and radiates with contemptuous conceit towards the 'ordinary' working-men that form the background of his impoverished surroundings, when he spares them a thought at all. But then one learns of his lack of formal education despite his deep desire to be an eminent academic zoologist, and one concludes that his conceit of specialness is all that rescues him from settling into misery from the impossibility of his social and medical conditions. It is a wonderful book to read from an eloquent young diarist from the Victorian era, in whose dreams, energies, loves, and ultimate defeat from an inevitable death we may recognize ourselves..
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