Category: Mrs. Dalloway

Just another mid-June Wednesday

…or maybe not – of course not; not this day! For this one gifted to us nearly a century ago, and more recently to have become a quiet but special celebration of literary reflection.

This year the weather plays its part as written (by Virginia Woolf, and today – in Germany anyway) and though bad tidings continue to whirl (wars and pandemics; in the here and now as once they haunted the streets of 1922 London), there is always some time to give to a Dalloway Day. At the Royal Society of Literature there are some links for this year and previous years, but the embedded clip below is something lighter and bit different.

This Lit Hub video is a good-humored discussion; presenting some transatlantic perspective through the person of Elif Batuman in conversation with the young, Black and British writer Yomi Adegoki. Though they divert quickly from talking specifically about Virginia Woolf, it was not before Batuman set the tone of the discussion by relating the peculiar atmosphere of unresolved grief, personal and societal, that pervades Mrs. Dalloway to her own method of working in these uncertain times. Specifically, the hazards of moving between writing as a journalist, concerned often with matters of the real world, and those of the novelist which can’t help but reach into an interior life for inspiration. Such so-called ‘life writing’ brings with it responsibilities – to one’s own self and to others. These were, of course, concerns that Virginia Woolf was aware of and attended to in her own way; this to be discerned in an informed reading of Mrs. Dalloway.

Modern Reading

Whether over lunch, or in the midst of bedtime ritual, beginning tomorrow and for ten consecutive weekdays (Jan 24 – Feb 4), BBC Radio 4 presents a reading of Mrs. Dalloway; embedded within what the BBC calls a “celebration of the birth of Modernism a hundred years ago”. Here, the reference is to literary Modernism and the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 (and Eliot’s The Waste Land). Virginia Woolf’s ‘one day’ novel was published three years later, but fits very well in the modernist tradition – and may justifiably be considered (by the broadcaster) more readable (and listenable) than Joyce’s epic work; dense as it is in allusion and parody.

Start the Week tomorrow morning (with Kirsty Wark – the third presenter in three weeks – and I am still getting used to NOT starting the week with Andrew Marr!) starts the season with a discussion that broadens the scope of modernism beyond the literary – into the visual arts, music and the public space. One of the guests is Matthew Sweet whose ten part series 1922: The Birth of Now also begins tomorrow (through to Feb 4). [BBC is quite generous, and most of these links should remain live for some time.]

Presumably, there is more in store across the BBC but I can’t find the theme centrally organized (generally this is a problem with Sounds – and I know I’m not alone in this opinion!). I actually only became aware of an upcoming “Modernism” project through a passing reference on Feedback at the end of last year and was reminded with a programming note on Open Book last week. That episode, by the way, is all about Ulysses, and listening to the very interesting participants has motivated me to consider (and not for the first time, and as an important condition) diving in. Given this interest of mine in the modernists, and my interest in their interest in the ancients, I shouldn’t need to be pushed (one would think), and rather have been tempted to jump in long ago. Or do I have an insurmountable interest conflict?

Anyway, I have at least tracked down a very good digital version of Ulysses, and there is no shortage of study material, so I will collate what I have in a separate post for future reference. For the moment, may I just refer to Virginia Woolf’s struggle with Joyce (which she never really resolved – personally, I’m not totally convinced she read Ulysses in its entirety nor any of his other works) in particular and, more generally, Volume 2 of her diary which includes this year; one which for her was just another, and was to become for us (and maybe posterity), and unbeknownst to her, much more.

Housekeeping at the Dalloways

With the end of year two of the pandemic, I note with pleasure – whereby, in these complicated days, that a relative state of being – where it was that one of our literary flights of fancy led. And, that was back to the London of a century ago, and all that could happen on just one day traversing the topography between Westminster and Bond Street – on the ground, in the heart and in the head.

Penguin ed. 2021

A particular literary journey inspired, at least to some extent it seems, by the publication of two new editions of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway – one from Penguin Random House (with a forward by Jenny Offill and introduction and notes by Elaine Showalter) and an annotated edition from Merve Emre published by Liveright (w.w. norton). Or was it the other way round, and these publications came with an awareness of renewed interest and the potential of a new readership amongst younger generations?

Whichever, as a matter of ‘housekeeping’, and before they go astray amongst my chaotic collection of bookmarks and the like, following are links to just three of the articles that I have collected during the year. (Some other good pieces, unfortunately, require subscriptions.)

Doing the Bloomsbury Walk

This warm mid-June Wednesday (June 16th 2021), decreed this year to be “Dalloway Day”, is just the most perfect opportunity for a city stroll. Not the famous London walk from Westminster to Bond Street that Clarissa Dalloway made all those years ago to buy flowers for her party, but a virtual guided tour with Bonnie Greer through some of the haunts of Clarissa’s creator and her friends – and, what a radical bunch they were; more than queer, however one chooses to define the word, some were, like Duncan Grant, unabashedly taking the private into the public space – and making art out of it.

Each Dalloway Day, then, can be none other than an opportunity for a sometimes loud, but often reflective, celebration of Virginia Woolf and those in her orbit; artists all, who were inspired by their favorite haunts in a city coming to terms with the monumental intellectual and material changes of modernity – its tempo and its promises.

A very good year

“Was 1925 Literary Modernism’s Most Important Year?” Such is the title of an essay by Ben Libman in the NYT, in which he begins with Virginia Woolf’s rather infamous opinion (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 2, August 16, 1922) of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and continues to make a case for the literary importance of 1925 over the more often championed 1922 – being the year in which Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land were published. A timely article; for, of course, with the passing of 95 years, on January 1st of this year, works copyrighted in 1925 entered the public domain.

Lidman contends that both as prose and lyric, the two aforesaid works did indeed signify a radical break with literary tradition, but they were also notoriously difficult; allusive, obscure, cantankerous. Ulysses, of course, was just plain notorious, scandalous it has to be said, a matter for the courts (of justice and public opinion).

And in 1925? Four books are published, and without fanfare or legal proceedings or grand ambition, that could be read by the mainstream (or what Woolf may have thought of as her ‘common reader’); Mrs. Dalloway, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer and Ernest Hemingway’s collection of short stories, In Our Time. Libman makes his case well, that it is these works of early modernism that have been, and will remain, the more enduring; for the stylistic innovations they initiated left a lasting legacy and profoundly influenced the literary form.

For Fitzgerald, it is the tool of Symbolism. In the person of Jay Gatsby, he creates a legendary symbol for the transmutation of the American Dream into an American greed and the shattering consequences. How ‘Great’ is it anyway to wallow in the shallow? Dos Passos lays bare a Realism that dared not be, writes as a down and dirty cinéaste might, an editor of the streets of New York; an assembler with the sharpest scissors, cutting bare – only to expose. Or overexpose. He is the town crier, the publicist of the city; a truth-teller and a dissembler, refining the cut and paste long before Word. A fast and furious operator. Then, there is the papa of the modern minimalists; Hemingway saying out loud only that which must be said. What remains after paring back the trees to lay bare the wood? Either it is there to be found, or it’s just not there – or dead. Pay attention to what I say, not what I do not.

And, then, there is Mrs. Woolf, with whom Libman actually begins his argument, and who I quote (in some length; I hope not too much! I hope the link remains live!), because it is important.

[...] As the critic J. Hillis Miller once put it, the reader most often finds that she is “plunged within an individual mind which is being understood from inside by an ubiquitous, all-knowing mind.”
This is evident to us not from the novel’s immortal opening line — “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” — but from the one immediately following, which serves as a kind of mirror to the first, tipping us off that we must reread it as something other than objective assertion: “For Lucy had her work cut out for her.” Suddenly, with the lightly colloquial “cut out for her,” we are in the mind not of an omniscient narrator but of a character — Clarissa Dalloway, as the succeeding lines make clear. The reader ceases to think that she is being told what Mrs. Dalloway said about getting the flowers, and begins to think instead that Mrs. Dalloway is just remarking on that fact, as if to herself. And that changes everything.

This narrative technique, known as free-indirect speech, was part of Woolf’s quiet revolution. [...] Woolf perfected this mode, coloring it with the anxiety of modern subjectivity. [...]

[...] we have in “Mrs. Dalloway” the innovation of an enduring, deep structure — something like geometric perspective in painting, that contributes to the development of technique, rather than driving it up a dead end. 

- "Was 1925 Literary Modernism's Most Important Year?" by Ben Libman, in the NYT, March 20, 2021

I like Libman’s analysis very much, and I should say he also mentions, and quotes from, Woolf’s 1919 essay, “Modern Fiction” (linked to in my commentary to her diaries) in which, to my mind, though still only hinted of in her own work at that time, she articulates the most succinct case for her evolving literary philosophy and lays the foundation for the direction her writing is about to veer towards.

Before she was dead she was very alive – & very often ill

Last year, Olivia Laing suggested in a piece for the NYT that, as we navigate the trials and tribulations that the Covid pandemic is demanding of us, we should take heed from Virginia Woolf when it comes to matters of illness; use these uncommon times of seclusion to sharpen our perception and turn loneliness into a creative force. And at the The New Yorker at about the same time, Evan Kindley pondered that famous one day which we have been gifted to share with Mrs. Dalloway as she steps out into the June sunshine and savors the vibrating life of the city; coming as it did after years of war and grief and illness. Of all these things Woolf was so very well acquainted.

Reading these pieces at the time, I wondered whether only the most privileged would have the luxury of time and resources to spend in such moments of profundity. And, how many of us could accept the hardships bestowed upon us, certain of our day in the sunshine? Now though, on reflection, I think my hesitation was based on a very narrow and materialistic view of what creativity is and from where it comes, and ignores its diversity in forms of expression and reception. An inner life and an imagination have we all – and it is affordable for most. And an imagined future has a sort of reality; one that spans each fleeting moment and affords a myriad of possibilities.

Writing up my notes on Woolf’s diary recently, I was prompted to reread her 1926 essay “On Illness”, which was received without much enthusiasm for publication by T.S. Eliot, and having thought about her death in the last days, the trials of her physical well – and not well – being during her life time are never far away.

In this spirit of reflection, I liked very much this piece in The Conversation by Cardiff University lecturer, Jess Cotton; she writes of how after a year of pandemic and difficult conditions for teachers and students alike, and now with some reason for optimism, Mrs. Dalloway provides one way to rediscover the simple joys and pleasures of life – a way that does not deny nor is vengeful, rather that looks inward; mining all the moments and memories that allow one to regret and to mourn, and then move on. (The essay may also be read here.)

Introducing Mmes. Woolf & Dalloway

Today at The New York Times: an essay, excerpted from the introduction by Michael Cunningham (famously, a Woolf disciple) to a new edition of Mrs. Dalloway, to be published by Vintage in the US in January…

“Mrs. Dalloway” (new ed. 2021, Vintage)

And, to my mind anyway, a most finely wrought tribute to this exquisite gem. Mrs. Dalloway is modest in length and deceptively so in ambition, yet Michael Cunningham identifies its epic character and its grandeur that I too have for so long admired; how within a rigorous time frame of just one day and through the eyes of one woman, Woolf’s novel expands out into time and space and allows memory to work its magic; to magnify and enhance, and to expose the true largesse of life, right there all the time in the apparently ordinary – just waiting to be discovered.

For some time, I have been very much wanting to write something about Mrs. D., but Cunningham’s essay is so good, and says so many of the things I would like to say, and so much better, that … Enough! I refuse to be deterred! Rather, inspired to add my bit to the multitudes.

When one thing leads to another

Listening to BBC Radio 4 this morning, as I mostly do, and with various degrees of attention, I caught up with, for the first time in quite a while, Melvyn Bragg’s long running cultural programme “In Our Time” – the topic: Fernando Pessoa. This, a name, ringing somehow familiar, but hard to place. May I be forgiven my ignorance, for he is a man of many names – just check out this impressive list of heteronyms! Now somewhat enlightened, I will surely dedicate some attention to him (or them!). On the programme website are a number of references, that may offer a good start.

As is often the case with me, one thing often leads to another. In the process of googling Pessoa, a link was returned to a NYT Q & A interview with the academic André Aciman from last year; in which (amongst other things) he names Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet as “the last great book” that he had read.

Skimming through the piece further, I was immediately distracted – irritated would be a better description – by Aciman’s assertion that Mrs. Dalloway is overrated – neither “gripping” nor “interesting”, he states – and badly written! Each to his own, I could say; reading after all is a very subjective activity. That Mrs. Dalloway doesn’t interest him, well so be it; though one is tempted to presume that he doesn’t know terribly much about her person nor her writing life and how they intersected to produce her fiction, for should he do so, Mrs. Dalloway could not help but enthral. But that a literary scholar would fail to recognise the consistent quality of Virginia Woolf’s prose surprises me. I mean to say, Woolf’s hastily scribbled asides to herself (diary) or others (letters) are mostly always druckreif – whether fragmentary gems of observation or gossipy meanderings. And her fiction, absolutely so, even when structurally imperfect or not to her satisfaction.

What is interesting, and probably unbeknownst to Aciman, is that some of the names he drops (we won’t count Proust – of whom he is an expert and Woolf a devotee) were likewise people of interest also to Virginia Woolf a long time ago.

Firstly, Dorothy Strachey. Yes, one of the Stracheys! But I couldn’t think which, and then realised that Woolf always referred to her by her married name of Dorothy Bussy.

Sons and daughters of Sir Richard and Lady Strachey. Left to right: Marjorie, Dorothy, Lytton, Joan Pernel, Oliver, Dick, Ralph, Philippa, Elinor, James.

Woolf’s first reference to Dorothy appears to be in a diary entry on Saturday 14 June 1919; made upon visiting with her (and her sister-in-law Ray Strachey) in Hampstead and, as all the Strachey family, she will turn up again over the years in Woolf’s diary and correspondence. Bussy’s only novel, Olivia (1949), cited by Aciman – a lesbian schoolgirl narrative; an experience it is presumed she is not unfamiliar with – was in fact published by Hogarth Press, albeit eight years after Woolf’s death, and was dedicated (or so says Wikipedia) “to the very dear memory of Virginia W.” I should say, Aciman says “nothing happens” in the novel he recommends, but unlike the dull Mrs. Dalloway that seems enough. Further, a new Penguin Classics edition was published in June, in which he writes an introduction, and one wonders whether he approached Penguin or vice versa, and whether a little bit of marketing wasn’t going on here. Just a suggestion. Irrespective, any Strachey interests me, so I certainly intend to read Olivia; now credited to Dorothy Strachey. Thanks for the tip, Mr. Aciman! (My tip: the Vintage UK edition is a bit cheaper, at least on Amazon outside the US.)

And in the same segment, Mr. Aciman announces the virtues of another great “unread” – La Princess de Clèves by Madame de La Fayette – Woolf loved this, though she only wrote about it in passing – in her “On Rereading” essay for instance. In my reading notes of Volume 2 of Woolf’s diary I make reference to her February 18 1922 entry, and include an excerpt which clearly illustrates her enthusiasm for La Princess. Though, I am not that sure, it is is as so “unread” as Aciman suggests – certainly not in France, and I thought it to be also well known in wider feminist literature studies. Fortunately, for the interested, La Princess de Clèves is easily found on the internet.

Finally, Aciman’s favourite book to assign students. Here, he nominates Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, for which Virginia Woolf wrote an introduction for the 1928 Oxford World’s Classics edition (also included in The Common Reader Second Series), and which begins with her observation that maturity grants a writer certain privileges – with language and composition. I make the observation that at the time this essay was written, being just a couple of years after Mrs. Dalloway was published, Woolf was of an age such that she too had granted herself permission to be messy – to write what was in head; messy, as I said. It is a riddle to me how Sterne can be so admired and not Woolf. Maybe it is only Mrs. Dalloway that Aciman dislikes; but why do I think otherwise? He didn’t qualify his verdict, but Woolf certainly possessed some prejudicial traits that are not easy to disregard by everyone.