I always think Virginia Woolf's birthday, and thoughts of remembering it in some way on here, is quite a tough call in the middle of January when, up this side of the Equator, plenty of us are starting to feel that any of the anticipatory thrills attached to winter are starting to pall.
I hardly want to add to the mix with a maudlin post on Virginia, and they do seem to end up that way, except hopefully for this one.
I start off the winter with such enthusiasm for jumpers, woolly leggings, fires, afternoons curled up reading in front of them and the like, but by the third week in January I'm feeling the need to uncurl and get out in the garden. We've had biblical rainfall and Dartmoor is afloat and not for walking on right now. No snow as yet (still plenty of time) just a lot of stormy windy rainy floody-muddy stuff, but no matter because at least I have had a wonderful reading January, more of which to come gradually.
For some strange reason Virginia Woolf’s birthday always stays in my mind too, today January 25th, I sense it approaching, along with George Eliot’s on November 22nd. Maybe it’s because I know of friends and family who share the birthdays, I’m never quite sure, but I am grateful to have had reason to revisit Virginia Woolf this last week or so.
Someone eulogised about To the Lighthouse to a group of us recently. An impassioned defence of a book that she would choose above all others if only one could be chosen, and with particular reference to the chapter Time Passes. It was a while since I had read it but I was so entranced that as soon as I arrived home later that evening I headed for the Virginia Shelf, found the book and read the passage, and I have read it several times over and again since.
I think we had agreed in the discussion that some books read differently at different times in life and To the Lighthouse would be one of those I would add to my list of Ever-Changing. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read it, or listened to it, having struggled with it for years before finally slowing down and understanding it (thanks in no small part to the advice from some of you on here) In fact I probably waxed very un-lyrical about it on here in the early days until I saw the light (sorry).
Our conversations about Winston Churchill and the film Darkest Hour (and thank you for those too, and for some fascinating e mails from some of you with personal anecdotes) sent me to Virginia Woolf’s diaries and letters, which, in the absence of my dad as a primary source had to be the next best thing. I was rewarded with plenty of references to the Prime Minister and the situation. Even more interesting was to turn back a few years and read Virginia Woolf’s accounts of the Abdication of Edward VIII...it’s easy to forget the divisions and opinions (and Virginia Woolf mentions the shame and embarrassment of a monarchy in turmoil) that this had created in the country just a few years earlier. Anything threatening the stability of the country later in the decade was perhaps capable of rocking it to the core, maybe that makes it a little easier to understand those who wished to sue for peace at any price, I’m not sure. Virginia and Leonard are certainly under no illusions about the threats and dangers they will face and which will ultimately add to Virginia’s sad demise.
I’m no expert but if you haven’t read To the Lighthouse and have a copy, I think Time Passes reads just as well as a stand alone chapter. The holiday home so vibrant with life and laughter and happenings in the first chapter is now deserted, its emptiness and echoes arguably becoming an elegy to what has been lost. And bearing in mind both the loss of her parents and that book was published in 1927, after WW1, those losses take on huge poignancy...
’So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms...
and this, yes very much this...
'Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly. with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen, they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness...'
'With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep...'
And ultimately, thank goodness, this...
'Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it more deeply to rest.... through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring...gently the waves would break...tenderly the light fell...'
As I read it this time around Time Passing is a chapter filled with hope and optimism, and for just a minute... there I was back on Bushey Beach in Oamaru looking for the footprints of the yellow-eyed penguins...
Who'd have thought it.
If you have about three weeks to spare and nothing in mind, then the entire saga of my encounters with Virginia Woolf over the last twelve years or so are all collected here. I've surprised myself with it all, I'd quite forgotten the ongoing endeavours.
I really hope your January is behaving itself too, please do leave a comment advising us of its progress.
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