Virginia Woolf – Page 3 – My Own RE:public

The many lives of St. Ives

As the G7 gathers for the first time since the wretched Covid-19 pandemic took grip, and dignitaries and media descend upon Cornwall to do whatever it is they do, it seems an appropriate time to pay a visit too, albeit only in one’s head – and that of Virginia Woolf.

In 2018, NYT had a very nice travelogue feature (the usual “subscriber access” proviso applies) entitled “In Search of Virginia Woolf’s Lost Eden in Cornwall”. I know, of course, from my own reading, how very much Woolf cherished the childhood Summers spent at “Talland House”; how those memories found their way into so much of her later writing – Jacobs Room, To the Lighthouse, The Waves. Mentioned in the above article; this letter written by Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, in the summer of 1884, describing the “pocket paradise” that the two year old “‘Ginia” was getting to know and explore.

St. Ives, Porthminster Bay, Cornwall, 1895

The above postcard image from 1895 is particularly poignant; although from the year after Virginia Woolf’s mother’s death, and the first Summer in Virginia’s young life that the Stephen family did not spend at “Talland House” (instead at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight), it still must be very illustrative of the St. Ives town and coastal landscape that so enriched her own memories of the time and later literary work.

Woolf and Music

Following on from a previous post, and beyond The Waves, some (probably many!) others have been thinking and writing about the role played by music in Virginia Woolf’s work. And creating their own musical response.

In 2015, one of the guests on the Radio 3 program celebrating The Waves, the pianist Lana Bode, founded a collaborative concert project, Virginia Woolf & Music, with Dr Emma Sutton from the University of St Andrews. A project that happily appears to continue. Video clips and notes from previous concerts are available on the website; for instance, embedded below a 2016 concert at the Clothworkers’ Centenary Hall at the University of Leeds.

In this post at The Conversation, the aforesaid Emma Sutton gives an interesting, plainly written appraisal of classical music being an essential element in both Woolf’s creative thought processes and the literary form of her composition. Such a worthy read, and The Conversation being so fair, that I have republished Sutton’s piece to a page on my site.

Eighty years ago, and a last walk…

Virginia Woolf’s letter to Leonard written a few days previously.

On Friday 28th March, 1941, Virginia Woolf walked across the downs to the flooding River Ouse near her beloved home in Sussex, as she would have done so many, many times before; but on this day she filled her coat pockets with stones aplenty and just kept on walking into the watery depths.

On her desk she had left a note to Leonard, written a few days previously. Her body was not found until the 18th April. In the midst of war and tormented by mental illness and personal anguish, Virginia Woolf departed the mortal world.

Juliet Stevenson reading Virginia Woolf’s suicide note.

Not long ago I dug up this review at The New Yorker by W.H. Auden of the so-called “Writer’s Diary” published in 1954 – and admiring and generous it indeed is, of Woolf in particular but also of a neglected generation of women writers in general. I don’t think Auden lived long enough to read the whole kit and caboodle; which I suggest would have delighted him even more. He finished his piece thus:

I do not know how Virginia Woolf is thought of by the younger literary generation; I do know that by my own, even in the palmiest days of social consciousness, she was admired and loved much more than she realized. I do not know if she is going to exert an influence on the future development of the novel—I rather suspect that her style and her vision were so unique that influence would only result in tame imitation—but I cannot imagine a time, however bleak, or a writer, whatever his school, when and for whom her devotion to her art, her industry, her severity with herself—above all, her passionate love, not only or chiefly for the big moments of life but also for its daily humdrum “sausage-and-haddock” details—will not remain an example that is at once an inspiration and a judge. […]
“A Consciousness of Reality” by W. H. Auden in March 6, 1954 issue of “The New Yorker“.

In retrospect, Auden would perhaps have been surprised at just how profound and enduring Woolf’s influence has been on following generations of writers and readers alike, and that it is an influence that is intrinsically emotional and psychological rather than stylistic – for most know only too well, that to be so tempted would certainly end in, what Auden rightly predicted as, “tame imitation”.

Virginia & Vita

A pre-publication extract in The Guardian drawn from Alison Bechdel’s introduction, alerts me to Love Letters: Vita and Virginia by Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, published by Vintage (Penguin) on 4 February.

“Love Letters: Vita and Virginia”,
Vintage Classics, 2021

As things will have it, I am deep in Volume Three of Woolf’s diary, and therefore in the period when Virginia’s first tentative interest in Vita is beginning to evolve into something more. And though I have read some of these letters in the past in other collections, brought together and standing alone, this very affordable little tome is a must have!

Every day is a day to remember…

…but maybe some more than others, and at least provides for an opportunity to link to a really nice and informative site dedicated to today’s birthday girl. Though, she seemed not to enjoy her birthday very much (with the exception of funny little gifts from Leonard) – too much did it remind of the passing years – and may not appreciate this reminder from her distant future – or on the other hand, perhaps delighted at being remembered still!

Happy 139th birthday, Virginia Woolf!

Blogging Woolf.org

The Diary of Virginia Woolf (2)

VOLUME Two: 1920-1924

My Copy of Vol. II of The Diary of Virginia Woolf

Posting here only to report that I have now completed writing up “my reading of” Volume Two of The Diary of Virginia Woolf (or see the menu). I think I remember aspiring at least to a more condensed form than with the first volume; but this absolutely did not eventuate! In fact, I was tempted into ever wider tangents, and uncovered some interesting associations that made the time well spent. I will (again!)endeavour to take a more stringent approach with Volume Three – to be started in the new year – otherwise I fear I may be doing this to my dying day!

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…

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.

Pleasure in reading

Start the week with Andrew Marr and a good listen, then read on.

“Derrida, Woolf, and the pleasure of reading”

Read Derrida, should you dare! Lighter work, for sure, to deconstruct the person. The philosopher, Julian Baggini, reviews Peter Salmon’s book An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida here.

Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader found critical acclaim and a worldwide audience, but had its detractors in Germany – not an apologist work, but, if sought, excuses for a nations fall into barbarism are too easily to be discerned. His 2018 novel Olga, just published in English, received here a fairly tepid reception – a woman’s fate through the panorama of German history from the Kaiserreich through the 20th century; and character just too good to be true? History tells us, there were many more “Hannas” (the illiterate guard of The Reader) than there were “Olgas”.

Enjoyed very much (hardly a surprise!) Alexandra Harris’s perceptive commentary on Virginia Woolf’s reading habits and expectations. In Virginia Woolf’s own words, “How Should One Read a Book” from The Common Reader, Second Series. Woolf may have suggested to Schlink’s young reader (in The Reader), to keep the best of it to himself.

Reading, with all its extended connotations, may well bind them, but strange bedfellows these three. I love Andrew Marr – he can bring together disparate voices to a successful ménage à trois.