So I got a Kindle, and therefore I can transfer all of the things I have highlighted right on my computer- without writing them down. This means a lot more quotes! ^_^"A fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather empty space of the drawing-room, all silver where the candles were grouped on the tea-table, and ruddy again in the firelight."
Nature does not stop existing once we enter into a different realm that seeks to exclude it- but becomes a different form. Such as the fog, it transferred forms and colors.
"...fell into a pleasant dreamy state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of their own lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment was put to shame."
When one dwells on the past, the present seems to ordinary and unexciting. And yet- the future brings so much promise. I loved how Katherine was so young and beautiful and still pondered over these great men. As if she forgot her own youth, to dwell on the past."...but Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned with side-whiskers."
Absolutely the first incident I have ever seen an author have a young person in bloom compare a living man to a dead ideal. She already had an ideal, and Ralph was expected to fit it. While Ralph on the other hand- created Katherine in his mind, based on her essence. Katherine created an ideal that is irrelevant to what Ralph could ever be.
It is astounding how much abundance of imagination our mind can come up with when we are set upon embellishing someone with romantic thoughts. We create things that aren't really there.
"...she said, rather distantly, as if feeling her way among the phantoms of an unknown world."
"...occupied with her own thoughts. It was a habit that spoke of loneliness and a mind thinking for itself."
That struck me tremendously. For when one is in his own thoughts- he is not only independent in thought, but also lonely. That was the interesting part about Katherine: she was always in her mind, and yet, she suffered from loneliness, because she could not share her world with anyone.
"It passed through his mind that if he missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again, demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision."
The "demon" waiting at home. Goodness knows, I have had this happen to me so many times- when you know that you have failed in our proposed plan. The "logical" part of you does not care about your insecurities: it wants results.
"To walk with Katharine in the flesh would either feed that phantom with fresh food, which, as all who nourish dreams are aware, is a process that becomes necessary from time to time, or refine it to such a degree of thinness that it was scarcely serviceable any longer; and that, too, is sometimes a welcome change to a dreamer."
At this point- Ralph only views Katherine as a source of inspiration for his fantasies- "fresh food". He uses reality for his unreal version of Katherine, distorting the real to fit his desires.
"Being a frequent visitor to that world, she could find her way there unhesitatingly. If she had tried to analyze her impressions, she would have said that there dwelt the realities of the appearances which figure in our world; so direct, powerful, and unimpeded were her sensations there, compared with those called forth in actual life. There dwelt the things one might have felt, had there been cause; the perfect happiness of which here we taste the fragment; the beauty seen here in flying glimpses only. No doubt much of the furniture of this world was drawn directly from the past, and even from the England of the Elizabethan age. However the embellishment of this imaginary world might change, two qualities were constant in it. It was a place where feelings were liberated from the constraint which the real world puts upon them; and the process of awakenment was always marked by resignation and a kind of stoical acceptance of facts."
"And in five minutes she had filled the shell of the old dream with the flesh of life; looked with fire out of phantom eyes."
"How far she saw Denham, and how far she confused him with some hero of fiction, it would be hard to say. Literature had taken possession even of her memories."
But at the same time- he is doing the exact same thing, only Katherine is more dejected from Ralph. I love the fact that she cannot distinguish between what she read and reality- this shows how much she depends on her thought, and how much they take up her life- even her memories."If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?"
Part of our reality is for our feelings to be reciprocated back to us.
"The old romance which had warmed his days for him, the thoughts of Katharine which had painted every hour, were now made to appear foolish and enfeebled."
Were those hours wasted?
"All things had turned to ghosts; the whole mass of the world was insubstantial vapor, surrounding the solitary spark in his mind, whose burning point he could remember, for it burnt no more."
"...he had somehow divested the proceedings of all reality."
"...she found her mind uncomfortably full of different trains of thought. She started one and then another. They seemed even to take their color from the street she happened to be in."
Feelings and environment motif. Which I so enjoyed.
"I've lived almost entirely among delusions, and now I'm at the awkward stage of finding it out. I want another delusion to go on with."
"He lost his sense of all that surrounded him; all substantial things—the hour of the day, what we have done and are about to do, the presence of other people."
Romanticism to realism.
"The people in the street seemed to him only a dissolving and combining pattern of black particles; which, for the moment, represented very well the involuntary procession of feelings and thoughts which formed and dissolved in rapid succession in his own mind."
Nature is independent from everything else.
"Ah, but her romance wasn't THAT romance. It was a desire, an echo, a sound; she could drape it in color, see it in form, hear it in music, but not in words; no, never in words."
"...but how terrible sometimes the pause between the voice of one's dreams and the voice that comes from the object of one's dreams!"
Motif nature affecting feelings.
"The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love."
"The far-away look entirely lacked self-consciousness"
For some reason I thought this was incredibly beautiful- showing how far removed she was from reality.
"He could recall himself, of course, by a word or a movement—but why? She was happier thus. She needed nothing that he could give her. And for him, too, perhaps, it was best to keep aloof, only to know that she existed, to preserve what he already had—perfect, remote, and unbroken."
He encouraged her other world.
"An occasional man with a beard is interesting; he's detached; he lets me go my way, and we know we shall never meet again. Therefore, we are perfectly sincere—a thing not possible with one's friends."
Control what goes on in reality to sustain the unreal.
"He seemed to see that beneath the quiet surface of her manner, which was almost pathetically at hand and within reach for all the trivial demands of daily life, there was a spirit which she reserved or repressed for some reason either of loneliness or—could it be possible—of love."
It was in her loneliness that Katharine was unreserved.
"When you're gone I shall look out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I believe."
"Was he not looking at something she had never shown to anybody? Was it not something so profound that the notion of his seeing it almost shocked her?"
"It was true that he had been happier out in the street, thinking of her, than now that he was in the same room with her."
"Because if you're in love with a vision, I believe that that's what I'm in love with."
He suffered from the same exact thing.
"we see each other only now and then—"
"Like lights in a storm—"
"In the midst of a hurricane,"
They indifferently examine their current situation, as if they weren't living it.
"...his strongest wish in the world was to be with her immediately, since every second he was away from her he imagined her slipping farther and farther from him into one of those states of mind in which he was unrepresented. He wished to dominate her, to possess her."
It was essential for him to dominate her mind, because that is the only way he could make himself known to her mind.
"The sounds were inarticulate; no one could have understood the meaning save themselves. As if the forces of the world were all at work to tear them asunder they sat, clasping hands, near enough to be taken even by the malicious eye of Time himself for a united couple, an indivisible unit."
"The moment of exposure had been exquisitely painful—the light shed startlingly vivid. She had now to get used to the fact that some one shared her loneliness. The bewilderment was half shame and half the prelude to profound rejoicing."
"I was thinking of you—yes, I swear it. Always of you, but you take such strange shapes in my mind. You've destroyed my loneliness.
"But he persuaded her into a broken statement, beautiful to him, charged with extreme excitement as she spoke of the dark red fire, and the smoke twined round it, making him feel that he had stepped over the threshold into the faintly lit vastness of another mind, stirring with shapes, so large, so dim, unveiling themselves only in flashes, and moving away again into the darkness, engulfed by it."
This was their ultimate connection, they could enter each others minds.
They lapsed gently into silence, traveling the dark paths of thought side by side towards something discerned in the distance which gradually possessed them both.
How they came to find themselves walking down a street with many lamps, corners radiant with light, and a steady succession of motor-omnibuses plying both ways along it, they could neither of them tell;
They lost themselves together.
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I really enjoyed reading this story- something I haven't been able to do for awhile. Again, I am usually very judgmental when I attempt to read a female author, which of course is very sexist of me. But just like George Sand, Virginia Woolf pleasantly surprised me. She presents very delicate concepts- with a feminine touch. I guess sometimes, a woman's view can be very different from a man's- creating a very interesting perspective. What I enjoyed most from this story was the progression between Katherine and Ralph's so-called love. At first, they started out as very uncertain of their "attraction". As Ralph developed an idealistic version of Katherine (which had little to do with her in reality), Katherine tried to pull away from him mentally. The more dejected she became, and the more he obsessed over this sacred Katherine, their relations seemed to go downhill. And yet- somehow their minds "reconciled". She unconsciously wanted his presence, as he brought his idealistic image to a more down-to-earth version of Katherine. What struck me the most was that Ralph realized her "hidden self" and brought it out of her, even if she did not want it. Hereby, he crushed her loneliness, and so she was indebted to him emotionally. They each slightly needed the others presence, until they realized that, perhaps, they were in "love".
I also enjoyed the marvelous descriptions between the environment and the character. The most striking scene, as I even see it now, was Ralph's most disappointing moment, by the lake with the fog... Creates such a depressing scene, and yet mysterious at the same time. One can feel his loneliness and despair.
What made Katherine transition from her imagined "hero" to have Ralph incorporated in her daydreams? I think it was because he guessed her inner self, a self that she had refused to share with anyone else. Yes, that may sound extremely cliche but she "had the appearance of some one disarmed of all defenses and Ralph likened her to a wild bird just settling with wings trembling to fold themselves within reach of his hand". He had "caught" her, by her own will. In a sense, she had to be dominated, for she was so dominating in her own world. And so, he broke through her loneliness. That is something that automatically leads to trust and friendship. Then, she pretty much gave herself up to him (mentally), and that was the final step for her to fully trust and love him.
The scene where they walked out onto the street by Mary's house was absolutely stupendous. Woolf portrays such a dejection from reality, such delirium, that they do not even notice anything save their own worlds. I think this is essential for the meaning of the book, because the reader can see how much of each other they needed, to share a realm that in reality does not exist. This realm makes everything pale in comparison.
They both lived on delusions, and so, fused both of their worlds together. They had an extreme understanding between each other, without even using much of their words.
Such mental connections rarely exist.
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The picture reminds me of my favorite scene in this book. I imagined him looking up at the glaring street lamp, and then seeing the rushing, cold water.
Pub by Kindle Version of Night and Day?
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