Alma de Groen, the author of The Rivers of China, is an Australian playwright, born in New Zealand.
In The Rivers of China two plots interweave: the Fontainebleau narrative
and the Sydney narrative, both involved with the life and death of the
New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield, and both concerned with the
place of women and artists in a patriarchal society. In 1923 the writer
Katherine Mansfield went to the guru Gurdjieff in Fontainebleau that he
might "cure her soul." In the 1980s (or 'today') in Sydney, a young man awakes in a
hospital to find himself in a world dominated by women. As they struggle to
discover their true identity, their separate stories intriguingly
interweave. Alma De Groen makes free use of Mansfield's journals and
letters and the writings of Gurdjieff.
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At 19, Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became a friend of modernist writers such as D H Lawrence and Viriginia Woolf. Her life-style was 'bohemian'. She had lovers of both genders and whilst romantically engaged with Arnold Trowell took his brother, Garnet, as her lover. Pregnant by Garnet, Mansfield quickly married George Bowden, but left him the same evening before the marriage could be consummated and returned briefly to Garnet, but lost the baby after her mother dispatched her to Bavaria. Shortly after her mother cut her out of her will.
She then began on a tempestuous relationship, and marriage, with the magazine editor John Middleton Murry.
Mansfield was greatly affected by the loss of her brother in France during WW1.
Mansfield spent her last years seeking increasingly unorthodox cures
for her tuberculosis. The play The Rivers of China is a based on the time she spent Georges Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau, France. She died of TB aged only 34 in 1923.
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866–1877? - October 29, 1949), was an influential spiritual
teacher of the early to mid-20th century who taught that most humans
live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is
possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve
full human potential. At different times in his life, Gurdjieff formed and closed various
schools around the world to teach The Work. He claimed that the
teachings he brought to the West from his own experiences and early
travels expressed the truth found in ancient religions and wisdom
teachings relating to self-awareness in people's daily lives and humanity's place in the universe.
Gurdjieff was born in culturally diverse Kars, a former outpost of the Ottoman Empire, and grew up speaking Armenian, Pontic Greek, Russian and Turkish before acquiring various European languages. He traveled widely, funding himself through various 'business' enterprises along the way. As well as seeking 'the Truth', Gurdjieff was a writer, choreographer, composer and lecturer who gave assistance to members of his extended family fleeing from Russia.
The establishment at Fontainbleu was spartan and Gurdjieff put into practice his teaching
that man needs to develop physically, emotionally and intellectually,
hence the mixture of lectures, music, dance, and manual work and Gurdjieff was often harsh on his pupils. He acquired notoriety as "the man who killed Katherine Mansfield" after she died under his care. However, another school of thought is that Mansfield knew she would soon die and that Gurdjieff made her last days happy and fulfilling.
During the play the author directs some of Gurdjieff's music to be used. You can find it here:
The Rivers of China also makes reference to various other works, most notably the three poems below:
The Soul has Bandaged
moments - Emily Dickinson
The Soul has Bandaged
moments -
When too appalled to
stir -
She feels some ghastly
Fright come up
And stop to look at her
-
Salute her, with long
fingers -
Caress her freezing
hair -
Sip, Goblin, from the
very lips
The Lover - hovered -
o'er -
Unworthy, that a
thought so mean
Accost a Theme - so -
fair -
The soul has moments of
escape -
When bursting all the
doors -
She dances like a Bomb,
abroad,
And swings opon the
Hours,
As do the Bee -
delirious borne -
Long Dungeoned from his
Rose -
Touch Liberty - then
know no more -
But Noon, and Paradise
The Soul's retaken
moments -
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the
plumed feet,
And staples, in the
song,
The Horror welcomes
her, again,
These, are not brayed
of Tongue –
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - Keats
Much have I travell'd
in the realms of gold,
And
many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round
many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty
to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse
had I been told
That
deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet
did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman
speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some
watcher of the skies
When
a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez
when with eagle eyes
He
star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other
with a wild surmise—
Silent,
upon a peak in Darien.
Rarely, rarely,
comest thou - Shelley
Rarely, rarely, comest
thou,
Spirit
of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou
left me now
Many
a day and night?
Many a weary night and
day
'Tis since thou are
fled away.
How shall ever one like
me
Win
thee back again?
With the joyous and the
free
Thou
wilt scoff at pain.
Spirit false! thou hast
forgot
All but those who need
thee not.
As a lizard with the
shade
Of
a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art
dismay'd;
Even
the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that
thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt
not hear.
Let me set my mournful
ditty
To
a merry measure;
Thou wilt never come
for pity,
Thou
wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and
thou wilt stay.
I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit
of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new
leaves dress'd,
And
the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the
morn
When the golden mists
are born.
I love snow, and all
the forms
Of
the radiant frost;
I love waves, and
winds, and storms,
Everything
almost
Which is Nature's, and
may be
Untainted by man's
misery.
I love tranquil
solitude,
And
such society
As is quiet, wise, and
good;
Between
thee and me
What difference? but
thou dost possess
The things I seek, not
love them less.
I love Love—though he
has wings,
And
like light can flee,
But above all other
things,
Spirit,
I love thee—
Thou art love and life!
Oh come,
Make once more my heart
thy home.
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