If you know me, or you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that I am absolutely enamored with Woolf: her work, her life, and her death. Her Mrs. Dalloway changed the way I read and think about literature and the world around me.
“One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.”
“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
"She felt somehow very like him--the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble."
Her beautifully tragic suicide note both attracted me and broke my heart.
"I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greets possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody know it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V." ~ March 28, 1941 to Leonard Woolf
This week, I commemorated Woolf by walking through her beloved London to find 29 Fitzroy Square (one of her London residences).
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| Fitzroy Square |
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| 29 Fitzroy Square: home of Virginia Woolf from 1907 to 1911 (also George Bernard Shaw)  |
I took great pleasure in being able to walk where she might have walked. To try and imagine the London that she knew and loved. Coming in contact with the writer I so greatly admire. London, bringing us together.
Looking forward to reading more of her works and visiting Monk's House in Sussex. Looking forward to studying Mrs. Dalloway and London Scenes for my Modernist London course this quarter. And in the great city itself.
Thank you, Virginia. Rest in peace.
Beautiful post, and blog. Thank you.
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