PARTISAN REVIEW
in private." This, alas, is the kind of reaction I have myself occasion–
ally felt when attacked.
Yet, really, what we are in ourselves and in intimate private
relations, is very different from what we are in public. Is it not the
most absurd kind of vanity that we should try to exercise a censorship
over our public personalities? To a limited extent, perhaps we
are entitled to expect that our friends should be careful in what
they say about us, not so much for our own sakes as for the sake of
not putting too great a strain on the friendship itself, which we value.
But we have no patent over that image of ourselves which we project
into other people's minds and which has far more to do with them–
selves than with what we really are.
If
we analyze it, only base reasons
of prestige and commercial status make us object to what is said
about us by people for whom we do not care greatly in any case.
And even those who do care have the right to distinguish our private
from our public personality, and to discuss the public, which is
public property, publicly. Extreme sensitivity to criticism shows a
commercial spirit. Virginia Woolf once said to me: "Criticism upsets
me sometimes as I would be upset if someone came into this room and
broke the most,expensive vase in it. I am very annoyed at the moment,
as I would be about the vase. But then I forget." This is a very
accurate account of .a right state of mind.
(To be continued in the next issue)
66
