Night thoughts

Friday, November 21st., Thorpe-le-Soken.

Thorpe-le-Soken, Station Road

Walking last night for exercise along the Station Road (6.30 p.m.) I saw the light of Clacton (not the lights - the light) and of Frinton, over the brows; a reflection in the sky ... Idea of a desolate coast (relatively) with human settlements rather precariously here and there upon it. Darkness everywhere and just those lights on the clouds from below. Sense of the adventure of living on the earth at all; and of the essential similarity of all human existences. Idiocy of loathing or scorning a different kind of existence from your own; e.g. my attitude towards the primness of Frinton and its golf-club.
I am putting rather more work into draft of "Don Juan" than usually in my drafts of plays. The realistic idea has gone nearly altogether in this play. In its ignoring of realistic detail in order to get an effect required, it is rather impressionistic. This is the first time I have realised the possibility of a similarity between literature and art in impressionism. I expect that in looking for a parallelism to art in literature, I had been looking for the wrong thing, while the right thing was under my nose all the time.