W. N. P. Barbellion – författare

The young naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion described this remarkably candid record of living with multiple sclerosis as 'a study in the nude'. It begins as an ambitious teenager's notes on the natural world, and then, following his diagnosis at the age of twenty-six, transforms into a deeply moving account of battling the disease. His prose is full of humour and fierce intelligence, and combines a passion for life with clear-sighted reflections on the nature of death. Barbellion selected and edited this manuscript himself in 1917, adding a fictional editor's note announcing his own demise. This Penguin Classics edition includes 'The Last Diary', which covers the period between submission of the manuscript and Barbellion's actual death in 1919.

Published shortly before the author's death in 1919, this remarkable memoir addresses struggles with poverty, inadequate education, and the creeping paralysis of multiple sclerosis. Yet Barbellion still manages to write with uplifting eloquence and passion of his love for family, natural history, music, and literature. Told with a thoroughly modern voice, the unjustly overlooked Journal is reprinted here with its posthumous successor, A Last Diary. Introduction by H. G. Wells.

The life of Bruce Frederick Cummings, who wrote under the name of W. N. P. Barbellion, was short, tragically curtailed by multiple sclerosis. He was born in 1889 and died in 1919. Started when he was thirteen, this remarkable journal, described by Ronald Blythe as 'among the most moving diaries ever created', documents the rest of his life. Filled with devastating frankness, keen observation and a sort of stoicism, it is, in the words of the author 'a study in the nude'. One of the last entries can act as his epitaph: 'I am only twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a tolerably long life: I have loved and married, and have a family; I have wept and enjoyed, struggled and overcome, and when the hour comes I shall be content to die'.

I dessa anteckningar möter vi en destillerad personlighet av osedvanlig storslagenhet i alltifrån livets glädjeämnen till livets stora sorg. Barbellion verkar i samma tanketradition som de stora cynikerna, stoikerna och livsskärskådarna; de som läst och beundrat Witold Gombrowicz, Émile Cioran och många andra som fostrats under första världskrigets fasor, måtte känna en läsning av Barbellion som att komma hem till en sällsynt leibhaftig farbror till hela nittonhundratalets tankegods. Ur utgivarens förord. "Det är en välgärning att denna bok åter görs tillgänglig, och jag vet att jag kommer att återvända till den, både när jag är jublande glad och frisk och när jag är hopplöst pessimistisk och svartsynt. Det är få privata dagböcker som består det provet". (Kristianstadsbladet)