The spirit of the narrative is mankind"s reflexive consciousness, or poetic genius ? our unique access to ourselves, our desperate endeavour " to be REAL ". It brings to light the dark unknown which is the zest of our lives; it gives shape to the tremor of our inner souls ? otherwise nearly imperceptible. "Ah, what is it? ? that I heard", Katherine Mansfield wondered throughout her whole life and writings ? poems and stories, letters and notebooks. Through the metamorphic movement of her highly sensitive, perceptive mind, she highlights the deep ambivalence of light and dark, mirth and awe, fear and longing which is the keen feature of our naked existence. She sketches her epic motifs with a dedicated sense of wonder. A true poet, she returns, as Baudelaire, Keats, Hopkins, Proust, or Shakespeare, to the origins of language ? this poignant contrast of light and dark following the alternate rhythm of night and day, of yielding to darkness and converting it into speech: "Let there...