« Something dreadful has happened. No-nothing has happened » : « The Wind Blows », de Katherine Mansfield

Abstract

Written in 1915, ‘ The Wind Blows ’ is one of Katherine Mansfield’s New-Zealand stories, although it is probably less famous than ‘ Prelude ’, ‘ At the Bay ’, or ‘ The Garden Party ’. It recounts one day in young Matilda’s life as she is caught between childhood and maturity. Mansfield’s narrative technique is clearly modernist in the way her art of ellipsis contrasts with a proliferation of typographical, lexical and metaphorical signs. Right from the start, and throughout her painful yet exciting journey towards revelation, Matilda is shown to hesitate between the certainty that ‘ something dreadful has happened ’ and the incapacity to put words on what upsets her. Mansfield’s writing thus relies on a complex tension between uncertain ‘ somethings ’ and meaningful ‘ nothings ’. I’d like to suggest that this powerful tension enables her to explore the workings of affect and the significance of epiphanic moments. It is also symptomatic of her conception of the short story as genre.

Keywords

• K. Mansfield
• “The Wind Blows”
• affect
• blank
• ellipsis
• epiphany