Life Regained: Diaries 1970-1972: Volume 6

Noted English diarist and former Bloomsbury group member Partridge opens this sprightly journal in 1970 as she turns 70. Active and alert in mind and body, she discusses Shakespeare and Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories, goes to the opera and theater, plays Ping-Pong, translates Jorge Luis Borges, travels to Poland, Spain, Russia, Corfu and Italy. An elegant and poised stylist, she punctures the egos of friends and acquaintances with rapier wit, analyzing their relationships, sex lives, neuroses, marriages. We get glimpses of Cyril Connolly, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Duncan Grant, Quentin Bell, Iris Murdoch, William Golding and Rebecca West. Partridge was linked to the Bloomsbury circle by family ties as well as by friendships; her husband, Ralph, who died in 1960, had been previously married to painter Dora Carrington; the author's brother-in-law, novelist David Garnett (son of eminent translator Constance Garnett), later married Angela Grant, daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. True to her credo of never saying no to a new experience, Partridge strives to carry on the Bloomsbury ideals of living life as an art form, cultivating friendship and creativity. And she is often amusing: ""I was unfortunately put next to my host `Dandy Kim' (a well-known crook)... He had no conversation whatever and kept jumping up and leaving the room. It was strange, but not quite strange enough to be interesting."" As her contemporaries move to the right, supporting the establishment, she increasingly opposes jingoism, xenophobia, war, class distinctions and stale conventions. While much of this gossipy, rarefied diary consists of ephemera, Partridge astonishes and delights with whiplash turns of phrase, epiphanies and thumbnail character sketches, and by growing old with grace and art. Photos. (Aug.)