An epic wait nears its end. A tweet from Emily Wilson in April (overlooked by me because an aversion that began with Trump a few years ago morphed into an aversion to Musk – from which it follows that I visit ‘X formerly known as Twitter’ but infrequently) alerts to the September 26 publication of her Iliad translation. I sort of knew this, but the official word is always reassuring. And, yes, the cover design is ‘glorious’ I think – I note the red hues in contrast to the blues of the Odyssey cover; the colors of bloody battle and wide seas respectively.
Dear Mrs. Woolf …
As a sort of prelude: How small England is (or was) it often seems to me. And, I am not talking geography, rather the closeness amongst many of a certain class. Perhaps that holds for all social and economic classes, and I suppose it could hardly surprise given our compulsion to acquiesce to the norms we are encouraged to think of as predetermined, but one cannot deny the bleedin’ obviousness of it when it comes to that socioeconomic group that includes the ‘great and good’ – or at least the broadly defined English (and British) literati. The entanglements of people and paths crossed every which way can make one quite giddy at times.
From where comes this musing? In the last days I have mentioned David Runciman and his new podcast. Now I know a bit about Runciman (who seriously has a hereditary dingsbums!), mostly from the LRB, and I knew he was married to the writer, Bee Wilson, and I also actually knew that to be past tense (not a pun on his podcast!), because Wilson wrote about it here. (She also writes a lot of good stuff for the LRB and elsewhere – mostly about food in a wide ranging, cultural sense, but not only.)
I could of course not help but be delighted by the enthusiasm David Runciman exhibits for Virginia Woolf in his podcast. Whether he has always been so enamored I have no way of telling, but his marriage to Bee Wilson did indeed bring him within a few degrees of Woolf, and certainly less than the six of.
To get to the point then: Bee Wilson and her sister Emily are the daughters of the Elizabethan scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones who died last year (which I posted on here, at that time also having been moved by familial relationships), and her mother was Elsie Duncan-Jones. Now, it was as the young Cambridge student, Elsie Elizabeth Phare, that she was there in the room at Newnham College on the evening of 20th October 1928 when Virginia Woolf delivered to the Arts Society the first of the two lectures (the other was a week later at Girton College) that were to form the backbone of “A Room of One’s Own” published the next year.
E.E. Phare later reviewed the evening for the student magazine, Thersities; the following passage from the Newnham College website celebrating their 150th anniversary last year offers some further insight.
When Woolf addressed Newnham students at the Arts Society, she discussed the consequences to the lack of spaces for women to learn, write and their lack of access to knowledge, or write. Poet and Newnham undergraduate E.E. Phare wrote a review of Woolf’s talk in the Newnham student magazine Thersities. Phare highlighted that for Woolf ‘the reasons why women novelists were for so long so few were largely a question of domestic architecture; it was not, and is not so easy to compose in a parlour,’ where women could very easily be interrupted. Woolf also ‘exhorted her audience to write novels and send them to be considered by the Hogarth Press, which she had founded with her husband Leonard Woolf in 1917. If Newnham students were to submit work, they should not try to adapt themselves to the prevailing literary standards which are likely to be masculine, but… should remake the language so it becomes a more fluid thing and capable of delicate use.’ [2]
[2] E.E. Duncan-Jones (Phare) 1926, ‘Mrs Woolf Comes to Dine’ in Ann Phillips (ed) A Newnham Anthology (Cambridge University Press, 1979) p. 12 [originally in Thersities].
Newnham College, University of Cambridge, 150 Years Website
Unfortunately, neither the above foot-noted anthology nor another academic tome in which Phare’s review is included can be got to by me – the first, because of (in)accessibility; the second, cost factor(!). Given the influential reach of Woolf’s talk to a room full of young women all those years ago in Cambridge, surely this would be an interesting addition to the public domain.
This tweet from Emily Wilson a few days ago led to some new information (for me anyway): that not only was her grandmother present on that evening but that it was, in fact, she who invited Virginia Woolf to Newnham. I had always presumed that Woolf was there at the invitation of Pernell Strachey. (Certainly she and Leonard stayed the night with Strachey.)
Following is a link to the revealing essay by Ann Kennedy Smith on her website.
And, as I have, you now too have read the piece, and know that “Elsie’s confidence in inviting Virginia Woolf to Newnham was characteristic of the determination she would demonstrate throughout her life. She was born in Devon in 1908 into a working-class home, in which neither parent had received education beyond elementary level…”.
Whereupon my ‘class’ argument comes tumbling down like a house of cards; mitigated only by the fact that Elsie Duncan-Jones was the recipient of some good fortune and was able through her intelligence and strength of character benefit from the opportunities presented to her and rise above the hurdles put in her way; establishing the foundation from which her descendants have been able to cement their place amongst the cultural elite.
Past Present Future
I was a big fan of David Runciman’s previous podcast Talking Politics that wound down last year (here still on Spotify), and was delighted to discover that he was making a new start. Past Present Future is a weekly podcast (in conjunction with the LRB) discussing the triangulation of those three spaces of time – in culture, society, politics, philosophy, science.
Already a diverse range of subjects and guests has been offered; with episodes as varied as Ian McEwan talking about Italo Calvino’s “The Watchman”, on “Dallas” (the TV soap, that is) and the economics of oil, about the history and threats of space and that of population trajectories – and all the accompanying noise and propaganda. And gladly a return to his History of Ideas series that was previously embedded in Talking Politics. For this latter, it is only David Runciman who speaks to us – an audio essay if you will, and about a significant essay and it’s author.
Fittingly, the first episode can not help but be about Montaigne – he who all but invented the essay form. And then there was one on Hume and on Thoreau, and next week George Orwell (“The Lion and the Unicorn” – this I know!). And just now: Virginia Woolf’s 1929 legendary work “A Room of One’s Own”!
5 March 2024 ….Oh! The from Spotify embedded pod has disappeared. Here it is at LRB.
This episode an excellent companion to the Melvyn Bragg offering I mentioned not long ago. Oh! And Runciman says: the greatest essay of the 20th century. Neither imagined, nor exaggerated by me. He says that. I can say no more. But then there is always more to be said …
So, much more than rules of grammar or the world according to Disney, Past Present Future a welcome addition to my podcast library.
Bon voyage
On hearing last week that a digitized version of Virginia Woolf’s personal copy of her first novel The Voyage Out is now freely available, I read around the many reports including at the BBC (a Radio 4 news report had been my first source), and linked to a timely article by Mark Byron from the University of Sydney (where the original resides) in The Conversation. This article I have now republished here.
Here now is the link to the University of Sydney library – with a well formatted web version of Woolf’s book; also available for download as pdf. The accompanying description alerts one to Woolf’s revisions in Chapter 16 (pp.249-267 [web-tool/pdf 262-284] with typed paste-ins on pages 254 and 256) and Chapter 25 (pp.398-432 [411-445] with a number of deletions) in preparation for the book’s US publication in 1920.
A glance to her diary is informative in this regard. Virginia Woolf writes on 28th November 1919, that two parties are interested in both The Voyage Out and Night and Day and their publication appears likely, and a footnote confirms that to be the case – with George H. Doran of New York becoming Woolf’s first American publisher [see The Diary of Virginia Woolf Volume 1]. Then, the on 4th February 1920 she writes:
The morning from 12 to 1 I spend reading the Voyage Out. I’ve not read it since July 1913. And if you ask me what I think I must reply that I don’t know – such a harlequinade as it it is – such an assortment of patches – here simple & severe – here frivolous & shallow – here like God’s truth – here strong & free flowing as I could wish. What to make of it, Heaven knows. The failures are ghastly enough to make my cheeks burn – & then a turn of the sentence, a direct look ahead of me, makes them burn in a different way. On the whole i like the womans mind considerably. How gallantly she takes her fences – & my word, what a gift for pen & ink! I can do little to amend; & must go down to posterity the author of cheap witticisms, smart satires & even, I find, vulgarisms – crudities rather – that will never cease to rankle in the grave. Yet I see how people prefer it to N. & D. – I don’t say admire it more, but find it a more gallant & inspiriting spectacle.
The Diary of Virginia Woolf Volume Two (1920-1924)
Woolf’s tone in the private space of her diary suggests, irrespective of the blush, some pride in her younger self. Remember, as “Melymbrosia”, her book first started taking form as early as 1907, and remember, too, as Virginia surely would have, her severe mental illness during many of those preceding years. That Virginia must be respected.
At the Internet Archive is a copy of the Doran first edition, and it appears to me those corrections suggested by Woolf’s annotations in this newly ‘found’ treasure were adopted only in part – the paragraphs she suggests in Chapter 16 were indeed included (quite how, and what if anything was omitted only a more thorough look on my part will reveal) but those in Chapter 25 that she (?) suggested be deleted seem to remain in full in the US publication. This latter is particularly interesting; I could imagine Woolf mulling over whether Rachel’s feverish state may be interpreted as something close to her own mental agonies over the years. Leaving aside the veracity of my hypothesis and Woolf’s intentions, I have always found Rachel’s torment through those days and nights extraordinarily vivid. It must have been lived. Virginia lived through it. Rachel did not.
Virginia’s book has made quite a ‘voyage’ of its own. Presumably beginning in a room of her own (though the writing and editing of her first novel predates her actually having a room of her own – that did not come her way until 1919) in London and/or Sussex, onwards to her literary estate and its executors, somehow turning up in a bookshop in Lewes from whence it was sold in 1976 – were they mad, or was this simply a failure to predict the market potential? – to an Antipodean university, whereupon it was promptly (?) lost into the cavernous depths of the science section – were THEY mad? An ABC report explains the chain of events up until the book’s reemergence in 2021. To which we can only say: god bless literate, curious and alert Metadata Service Officers!
Eighty years is no time
Legendary moments in a legendary life, as curated by The Guardian: “Symphony for the devil: Mick Jagger’s 80 greatest moments, on his 80th birthday”
Just one of them below: The Rolling Stones appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show during their first US tour in 1964.
In the mortal world it may be that Mick Jagger celebrates his 80th birthday today, but such a contrived time reckoning belongs to the mundanity of earthly matters. In our imagination – and perhaps in his reality – Jagger resides on a plane more akin to the godly – a life lived with all the excesses and ecstasies of a Dionysus cult.
And, by the way, along the way, we have been gifted some great music and some great moments to call our own. Happy Birthday, Mick, and keep on rolling!
Virginia Woolf’s copy of her first novel was found in a University of Sydney library…
What do her newly digitised notes reveal?
A Sydney librarian recently discovered a misfiled lost gem in the stacks: Virginia Woolf’s own copy of her first novel, with handwritten notes for revision. An expert explores what they tell us.
— Read on theconversation.com/virginia-woolfs-copy-of-her-first-novel-was-found-in-a-university-of-sydney-library-what-do-her-newly-digitised-notes-reveal-210135
What a find! Herewith only a place holder – I will return with more to say.
One poet many voices
In English alone there are about 100 translations of Homer’s Iliad; to which we may add Emily Wilson’s new translation (to be published in September presumably). Her excellent comparative essay in The New York Times shows the range of interpretive possibilities of Homer’s epic poem through the ages – from the original to George Chapman in 1611 through to the contemporary culminating with that of her own (a sneak preview if you will!), in various metrical forms and not, rhyming and not – and exemplified in the memorable scene when Hector bids farewell to Andromache and his baby son (book 6. 482-497).
Wilson shares her translation of this passage. Again, as she did with Ulysses, she uses the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare and Milton, and her vocabulary choices and turn of phrase in this small sample already recall to me very much that work. And reminds me how very much I have been looking forward to her Iliad.
It’s raining in California
In this recent post, I referenced Joan Didion’s telling of an episode in which she was unable to get out of her head Ezra Pound’s famous, ‘not quite’ haiku, imagist poem:
In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough. - Ezra Pound, Poetry magazine (1913)
And Didion then pondering what her momentary obsession with these lines could have possibly meant, and me wondering, of course, along with her – but not immediately reflecting back to first principles and thinking about what exactly it was Pound was thinking about in the first place anyway! Very bright girl that she was, I dare say Didion would have had an interpretation – in the sense of Pound in Paris circa. 1913 – at hand, but, however clever, it would not necessarily have been one that would account for her sudden fixation on Pound’s words in her present. In fact, I understand her musing on the ‘petals’ being representative of ‘the aimlessness of the bourgeoisie’ to be her own diagnosis of that fixation in that moment. To that end, I belatedly note that she goes on to say:
[in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969…] A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community.
Didion, Joan. The White Album: Essays (pp. 41-42). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.
It surely can not be a coincidence that Didion describes the tension she perceives in society (that later in the essay she then believes to break) as ‘vortical’, nor that it was to Ezra Pound’s poetic experimentations (and artistic flights of fancy) during a particular period that Joan Didion was drawn in her search of an adequate means to describe the California ‘state of mind’ in those years. Her choice may not be so surprising, and very much in accord with Pound’s thinking at the time: that it is possible to make art (and write poetry) composed from an essence, a ‘vortex’; built upon, layer upon layer, enabling the representation of many facets, many people – of a state in the union or observed at a Paris metro station, for instance. The following essay appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1914 :
Pound not only explains the circumstances and place from which “In a Station of the Metro” arose – his walking around about the La Concorde metro station in Paris – and the intellectual imperative – how he could encapsulate all the fleeting moments (all those ‘beautiful faces’) adequately, but also how later he was able to resolve his creative struggle.
[…]The “one image poem” is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another. I found it useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. I wrote a thirty-line poem, and destroyed it because it was what we call work “of second intensity.” Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence:–
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough.”I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of thought.5 In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.
This particular sort of consciousness has not been identified with impressionist art. I think it is worthy of attention.
“Vorticism” by Ezra Pound in the Fortnightly Review
Extending the Vorticism definition as applied to the visual arts, where the emphasis is on the layers of mechanical and structural framework that obscure stillness at its center, Pound was imagining a poetry that got to that still core – a stripping away of the layers to expose the essence. And, in the process, redefining his position on Imagism. Pound relates all this in a very convoluted way, with flashes of the avant-garde and mathematics which I couldn’t swear that I absolutely kapiert.
Supplementing the above, I make note of Pound’s essays “Vortex” and “A Few Don’ts” (Imagism) at the Poetry Foundation – whether either make the ideas any clearer is debatable, but … and, here is a copy of the legendary 1914 BLAST with the original Vorticist manifesto – which will absolutely NOT. But as historical documentation fascinating just the same.
Both movements and their manifestos were short lived (a feud being one reason behind their demise – Pound vs. Amy Lowell) but even after more than a century it remains worthwhile to consider the ways in which practitioners of different art forms synthesized and co-operated in an effort to create an art, a language, to adequately explain the dynamic acceleration of change in society.
continue reading …