凱瑟琳·曼斯菲爾德/Katherine Mansfield
凱瑟琳·曼斯菲爾德（1888—1923），生於新西蘭威靈頓，本名卡瑟琳·包姍普。1914年，她的小說集《節奏》和《憂鬱評論》在她的第一位房客、後來成為她丈夫的社會學家和前文學評論家米多爾頓·莫裏的協助下編輯出版，後創作了著名小說《序曲》和《園會》。1923年1月9日，常年罹患肺結核的凱瑟琳·曼斯菲爾德逝世，年僅45歲。在凱瑟琳的世界裏，死亡是靜穆和安逸，甚至是美麗的。看，她臨終前的最後的一句話是：“我喜愛雨，我想要感到它們落到臉上的感覺。”
... You see that big nail to the right of the front door? I can scarcely look at it even now and yet I could not bear to take it out. I should like to think it was there always even after my time. I sometimes hear the next people saying, "There must have been a cage hanging from there." And it comforts me. I feel he is not quite forgotten.
... You cannot imagine how wonderfully he sang. It was not like the singing of other canaries. And that isn't just my fancy. Often, from the window I used to see people stop at the gate to listen, or they would lean over the fence by the mock-orange for quite a long time—carried away. I suppose it sounds absurd to you—it wouldn't if you had heard him—but it really seemed to me he sang whole songs, with a beginning and an end to them.
For instance, when I finished the house in the afternoon, and changed my blouse and brought my sewing on the verandah here, he used to hop, hop, hop from one perch to the other, tap against the bars as if to attract my attention, sip a little water, just as a professional singer might, and then break into a song so exquisite that I had to put my needle down to listen to him. I can't describe it; I wish I could. But it was always the same, every afternoon, and I felt that I understood every note of it.