Brittain, Vera, Diary, 22 August 1915

00000298-11.jpg
Description: 
Diary of Vera Brittain

Tabs

Case Study: 
From Youth to Experience: Vera Brittain’s Work for Peace in Two World Wars
Creator: 
Brittain, Vera
Source: 
diary
Date: 
22 August 1915
Collection/Fonds: 
Contributer: 
McMaster University Libraries
Rights: 
Vera Brittain estate; McMaster University has a non-exclusive licence to publish this document.

Identifier: 
00000298-11
Language: 
eng
Type: 
image
Format: 
jpg
Transcript: 

this world. After all if there is another life the conditions in it will be so changed, so different that they cannot appeal to us in this world, now. And when the chances of ever being united, ever being constantly together at all in this life are so very much against us, the possibility of even a few short years of intimate communion with one another seem the best Heaven I can desire. I sometimes feel that if only I could know that
"Hand in hand, just as we used to do,
We two shall live our passionate poem through
In some serene to-morrow,"
I should not be troubled much by an absolute certain denial of the immortality of the soul. After all, most of my ideals are independent of whether it is immortal or not -- as all ideals, to be of any value, should be. And yet -- if he never came back to be part of my life -- with what anguish I should seek to believe that "there are no dead". (Alas! no conversation, no argument, no discussion, even his & mine, can bring light to penetrate "the veil of terrible mist over the face of the Hereafter.") As for Roland himself, his thoughts of death seem to be associated very little with either hope or fear. He looks upon the ending of life as a terrible & indescribable thing, but five months at the Front seem to have taught him to look upon actual death itself as something inconsiderable & small. In consequence he seems to combine a passionate love of life with an indifference to death quite remarkable even in a soldier. One sees the artist in his keen enjoyment & appreciation of life itself & all things vital & living; the soldier in his resolute schooling of his artistic imagination, the keeping it strictly apart from fear, either of danger or of death. At times again he paradoxically drops both