I am I

 

To John Middleton Murry

Mid-April (?), 1925, London

In the last 10 years — gradually, but deliberately — I have made myself into a machine. I have done it deliberately — in order to endure, in order not to feel — but it has killed V. In leaving the bank I hope to become less a machine — but yet I am frightened — because I don’t know what it will do to me — and to V — should I come alive again. I have deliberately killed my senses — I have deliberately died — in order to go on with the outward form of living — This I did in 1915. What will happen if I live again? “I am I” but with what feelings, with what results to others — Have I the right to be I — But the dilemma — to kill another person by being dead, or to kill them by being alive? Is it best to make oneself a machine, and kill them by not giving nourishment, or to be alive, and kill them by wanting something that one cannot get from that person? Does it happen that two persons’ lives are absolutely hostile? Is it true that sometimes one can only live by another’s dying? (...)

 

 

Cartas inéditas de T. S. Eliot

 

V (Vivienne Eliot) - mulher de T. S. Eliot

 

John Middleton Murry - escritor, crítico literário e marido da escritora Katherine Mansfield