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As Bion writes in the Prelude to this unfinished narrative, memories were aroused by our train journey in France on August 3rd 1958. I remember his being visibly moved as he talked of his painful recollections; I became heavy-hearted, thinking of the lost generation of young men and those who were left to carry with them the burden of bitterness and disillusionment throughout their lives.
He writes in the third person and becomes the story-teller, attributing some of his own actions and experiences to other characters. It is a solemn chronicle of tired men grown cynical after years of futile losses and dashed hopes, unable to feel any enthusiasm now that the tide has turned in their favour and an end to fighting is at last a possibility. The only relief from the atmosphere of anxiety and fear is in the wry, ironic picture he draws of Major de Freine, although at the time, as he told me, he (transposed to Cook) found it impossible to see the ‘funny side’ of that living caricature of a cavalry officer of the ‘old school’.
The account ends in mid-sentence – other more pressing commitments intervened. He was working on Learning from Experience at the time , followed by four more books published by 1970. I know he did not read my typescript, which was filed and half forgotten by me over the ensuing thirty years until recently, when publication of the diary became a possibility. I have edited it, as I did many of his writings, in the way of which he approved. The titles, Prelude and Fugue, are my choice, the latter meaning ‘loss of one's identity, often coupled with disappearance from one's usual environment’ (OED).
Francesca Bion