An Experiment in Leisure

225 Pages·2011·0.847 MB·English

by  Marion Milner

MARION MILNER
WitMh aa unedw iEnltrlomduacntionn by
An Experiment
in Leisure
An Experiment in Leisure
What is it that stops people from knowing what they want? How often
do we wonder where we are going and what our world is all about?
Written in 1936 as a companion piece to A Life of One’s Own, An
Experiment in Leisure further charts Marion Milner’s illuminating
and rewarding investigation into how we lead our lives. Instead of
drawing on her daily diary, she turns to memory images – images
not only from her own life but also from books, mythology, travel
and religion that seem to point to a suspension of ordinary, every-
day awareness. From this condition of emptiness springs an
increasing imaginative appreciation both of being alive and of the
world we live in.
With a new introduction by Maud Ellmann, An Experiment in Leis-
ure remains a great adventure in thinking and living and will be
essential reading for all those from a literary, an artistic, a historical,
an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background.
Marion Milner (1900–1998) was a distinguished British psycho-
analyst, educationalist, autobiographer and artist.
Maud Ellmann, formerly Reader in Modern Literature at
Cambridge University, is currently Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin
Professor of the Development of the Novel in English at the Uni-
versity of Chicago. She has written widely on literary modernism
and psychoanalysis: her latest book is The Nets of Modernism:
Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Sigmund Freud
(Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Emma Letley is a writer, academic and psychoanalytic psycho-
therapist, trained with the Arbours Association, and practising
in Notting Hill Gate and at King’s College London. She is the
biographer of Marion Milner.

An Experiment in Leisure
Marion Milner
(Joanna Field)
New introduction by Maud Ellmann
Series Editor: Emma Letley
Literary Executors: John Milner and Margaret Walters
First published 1937 by Chatto & Windus under the name of Joanna Field
Reprinted 2011 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
© 2011 The Estate of Marion Milner by arrangement with
John Milner and Margaret Walters c/o Paterson Marsh Ltd.
Introduction © Maud Ellmann
Typeset in New Century Schoolbook by
RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Paperback cover design by Andrew Ward
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict
environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Milner, Marion Blackett.
An experiment in leisure / Marion Milner (Joanna Field) ; new introduction
by Maud Ellmann.
p. cm.
“First published 1937 by Chatto & Windus under the name of Joanna
Field.”
1. Imagery (Psychology). 2. Leisure—Psychological aspects. 3. Diaries—
Therapeutic use. 4. Introspection. 5. Milner, Marion Blackett. I. Title.
BF367.M55 2011
790.01′9—dc22
2010051709
ISBN: 978–0–415–55066–6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–0–415–55067–3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–0–203–81676–9 (ebk)
Again
to
D. M.

‘All of which, stated simply, in a brief poetic lie, would
run: ‘I was pleased to see Selina.’ That’s somehow plain
and powerful. A man’s statement, carrying one sanguinely
along the surface of life that is so plain and simple-oh:
“Tell me, my dear, exactly what you mean, in a few words.”
My God!’
Dorothy Richardson
‘I found that, taking almost anything as a starting-point
and letting my thoughts play about it, there would
presently come out of the darkness, in a manner quite
inexplicable, some absurd or vivid little incident more or
less relevant to that initial nucleus. Little men in canoes
upon sunlit oceans would come floating out of
nothingness, incubating the eggs of prehistoric monsters
unawares; violent conflicts would break out amidst the
flower-beds of suburban gardens; I would discover I was
peering into remote and mysterious worlds ruled by an
order logical indeed but other than our common sanity.’
H. G. Wells

Contents
New Introduction by Maud Ellmann xiii
Introduction xliii
1 Memories of hobbies, the over-powering
interest of birds, animals, plants, seasons. Certain
trivial memories carry a great feeling of
importance – why? Feeling seems concerned with
the thought of inner fires of the earth. 1
2 Memories of travel, concern with a variety of
themes – unexplored country, unknown birds,
snakes, dry river-beds, thunder, mines, ancient stone
monuments – and the horned beast. 11
3 Interest in witchcraft, I suspect that there is a
connection between this and a present fact of
personal relationship – discovery of how deep is the
impulse to submit. 20
4 Images of pagan ceremonial, burning the god.
These remind me of an inner gesture I had once
before discovered – use of this gesture to combat
anxieties by forestalling the idea of them. 28
5 Looking for pictures of what one submits
to – Nature as destructive, a poisonous centipede,
destroying Nature within oneself – then how dare
one relax from effort? 40
6 Fairy tale: ‘THE DEATH’S HEAD EMPEROR.’ 50
PART 1: Little fishes look for a playmate and
find a skeleton in the five-mile depths of the sea. 50
PART 2: A lame old woman eats the fishes and
is driven to make a shield of seven metals and sail
to the Magnetic North. 56