Katherine Mansfield and Rhythm (Essay‪)‬

'That which suggests the subject to the artist is the unlikeness of it to what we accept as reality. We single out, we bring into the light'. (1) Mansfield's fiction is memorable for its ability to single out, and to bring into the light. It creates what Virginia Woolf calls 'moments of being' by playing with time, and holding an object or a moment in stasis as a perceiving consciousness observes it, directing the reader's gaze. The surrounding scene is often out of focus as the reader is invited to contemplate the aloe in 'Prelude', or the pear tree in 'Bliss', or the corpse in 'The Garden Party'. The visual image is enigmatic and haunting, like many of the paintings produced by Mansfield's friends during what is arguably the most formative phase of her development of her own aesthetic: her involvement with the magazine Rhythm.