"It was as yet very early in the morning when I left Göttingen, and the learned ——, beyond doubt, still lay in bed, dreaming as usual that he wandered in a fair garden, amid the beds of which grew innumerable white papers written over with citations.On these the sun shone cheerily, and he plucked up several here and there and laboriously planted them in new beds, while the sweetest songs of the nightingales rejoiced his old heart."
"One lady was evidently his wife—an altogether extensively constructed dame, gifted with a rubicund square mile of countenance, with dimples in her cheeks which looked like spittoons for cupids. A copious double chin appeared below, like an imperfect continuation of the face, while her high-piled bosom, which was defended by stiff points of lace and a many-cornered collar, as if by turrets and bastions, reminded one of a fortress. Still, it is by no means certain that this fortress would have resisted an ass laden with gold, any more than did that of which Philip of Macedon spoke."
"And, like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means. She has, after all, only a sun, trees, flowers, water, and love to work with. Of course, if the latter be lacking in the heart of the observer, the whole will, in all probability, present but a poor appearance; the sun is then only so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for firewood, the flowers are classified according to their stamens, and the water is wet."
It is all how one perceives it.
""Children," thought I, "are younger than we; they can remember when they were once trees or birds, and are consequently still able to understand them. We of larger growth are, alas, too old for that, and carry about in our heads too many sorrows and bad verses and too much legal lore."
"This little book was very badly printed, so that I greatly feared that the doctrines of faith made thereby but an unpleasant blotting-paper sort of impression upon the children's minds. I was also shocked at observing that the multiplication table—which surely seriously contradicts the Holy Trinity—was printed on the last page of the catechism, as it at once occurred to me that by this means the minds of the children might, even in their earliest years, be led to the most sinful skepticism."
"We Prussians are more intelligent, and, in our zeal for converting those heathen who are familiar with arithmetic, take good care not to print the multiplication table in the back of the catechism."
"Young Dollar, what a destiny awaits thee! What a cause wilt thou be of good and of evil! How thou wilt protect vice and patch up virtue! How thou wilt be beloved and accursed! How thou wilt aid in debauchery, pandering, lying, and murdering! How thou wilt restlessly roll along through clean and dirty hands for centuries, until finally, laden with tresspasses and weary with sin, thou wilt be gathered again unto thine own, in the bosom of an Abraham, who will melt thee down, purify thee, and form thee into a new and better being, perhaps an innocent little tea-spoon, with which my own great-great-grandson will mash his porridge."
I don't know how fitting this may be- but this reminds me of this song that I was introduced to in class.
"Other people may be wittier, more intelligent, and more agreeable, but none is so faithful as the real German race."
"Did I not know that fidelity is as old as the world, I would believe that a German heart had invented it."
"Tranquil even to stagnation as the life of these people may appear, it is, nevertheless, a real and vivid life. That ancient trembling crone who sits behind the stove opposite the great clothes-press may have been there for a quarter of a century, and all her thinking and feeling is, beyond a doubt, intimately blended with every corner of the stove and the carvings of the press. And clothes-press and stove live—for a human being hath breathed into them a portion of her soul."
"Clouds of evil flee before him, And those cobwebs of the brain Which forbade us love and pleasure, Scowling grimly on our pain."
"Thousand startling, wondrous flowers, Leaves of vast and fabled form, Strangely perfumed, wildly quivering, As if thrilled with passion's storm. In a crimson conflagration Roses o'er the tumult rise; Giant lilies, white as crystal, Shoot like columns to the skies. Great as suns, the stars above us Gaze adown with burning glow; Fill the lilies' cups gigantic With their lights' abundant flow."
"The sun poured down a cheerful light on the merry Burschen, in gaily colored garb, as they merrily pressed onward through the wood, disappearing here, coming to light again there, running across marshy places on trunks of trees, climbing over shelving steeps by grasping the projecting tree-roots; while they thrilled all the time in the merriest manner and received as joyous an answer from the twittering wood-birds, the invisibly plashing rivulets, and the resounding echo. When cheerful youth and beautiful nature meet, they mutually rejoice."
"We feel infinite happiness when the outer world blends with the world of our own soul, and green trees, thoughts, the songs of birds, gentle melancholy, the blue of heaven, memory, and the perfume of herbs, run together in sweet arabesques. Women best understand this feeling, and this may be the cause that such a sweet incredulous smile plays around their lips when we, with scholastic pride, boast of our logical deeds—how we have classified everything so nicely into subjective and objective; how our heads are provided, apothecary-like, with a thousand drawers, one of which contains reason, another understanding, the third wit, the fourth bad wit, and the fifth nothing at all—that is to say, the Idea."
"I also did well in mythology, and took a real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who, so jolly and naked, governed the world."
"There was here, too, many a hard nut to crack; and I can remember as plainly as though it happened but yesterday that I once got into a bad scrape through la religion. I was asked at least six times in succession, "Henry, what is French for 'the faith?'" And six times, with an ever increasing inclination to weep, I replied, "It is called le crédit." And after the seventh question the furious examinator, purple in the face, cried, "It is called la religion"—and there was a rain of blows and a thunder of laughter from all my schoolmates. Madame, since that day I never hear the word religion without having my back turn pale with terror, and my cheeks turn red with shame. And to tell the honest truth, le crédit has during my life stood me in the better stead than la religion. It occurs to me just at this instant that I still owe the landlord of The Lion in Bologna five dollars. And I pledge you my sacred word of honor that I would willingly owe him five dollars more if I could only be certain that I should never again hear that unlucky word, la religion, as long as I live."
"The Emperor is dead. On a waste island in the Indian Sea lies his lonely grave, and he for whom the world was too narrow lies silently under a little hillock, where five weeping willows shake out their green hair, and a gentle little brook, murmuring sorrowfully, ripples by. There is no inscription on his tomb; but Clio, with unerring style, has written thereon invisible words, which will resound, like ghostly tones, through the centuries."
"As for the Germans, they need neither freedom nor equality. They are a speculative race, ideologists, prophets, and sages, dreamers who live only in the past and in the future, and who have no present."
"Should Freedom ever vanish from the entire world—which God forbid!—a German dreamer would discover her again in his dreams."
Wonderful description of the English. Capitalism
"Every age is a sphinx, which casts itself into the abyss when man has guessed its riddle."
"Truly Rome, the Hercules among races, was so thoroughly devoured by Jewish poison that helm and harness fell from its withered limbs, and its imperial war-voice died away into the wailing cadences of monkish prayer and the soft trilling of castrated boys."
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I enjoyed this narrative so much. I actually enjoyed his narrative as much as I did his poems. He is so witty in describing cultural differences, and viewpoints. The way he described the Germans is absolutely genius! He says, "The German loves liberty as though she were his old grandmother." And as though that would be a negative thing, he further supports it, "Dear sir, do not scold the Germans! If they are dreamers, still many of them have conceived such beautiful dreams that I would hardly incline to change them for the waking realities of our neighbors. Since we all sleep and dream, we can perhaps dispense with freedom; for our tyrants also sleep, and only dream their tyranny. We awoke only once—when the Catholic Romans robbed us of our dream-freedom; then we acted and conquered, and laid us down again and dreamed. O sir! do not mock our dreamers, for now and then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom."
Heine expresses this devout love for his people in his narratives. The way he describes the German- in a sympathetic and tender way, clearly portrays the extent of his love for Germany. I mean, you get this really adorable description of this confused dreamer that in the end does stand up for what he believes in- no matter what happens. That is what makes the dreamer special- he may not be all "there" and yet when he is called up to protect his "ideals" he would fight until the death. What is more admirable than that?
Friday, July 15, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Molière
I can see why Molière is so appreciated. This play was extremely entertaining. In reading the introduction of this book "Great farces", one starts to wonder what makes a good farce. "For true farces must have serious purpose." Is it really just humor or is there something behind it all? This play automatically answers that question. Molière is hilarious but at the same time criticizes society so strategically. Who ever said good humor cannot be extremely intelligent, and even get to the point where it becomes serious? That is the beauty behind this play. Because at the same time as we laugh at these comical characters one realizes that there ARE people STILL like that. In every stage of society. People that try to become something they never were. One cannot simply mimic good breeding. Good breeding is learned. Take fashion for example. Since the middle ages, fashion is used as a way of representing status. When the higher class came up with a new "trend", suddenly everyone was trying to mimic it. Everyone, including, and especially, the lower classes. One can see the corset worn by the higher classes, where it stifled and deformed bodies, to the lower ones where it was a slight version of that but at the same time giving flexibility for working in the fields. Isn't that fascinating? They brought down something from the higher classes into the lower ones...evolving, or even devolving it, to fit their needs. No matter what stage, one can pick up on the motive. The motive being the hope of reaching something they can never have. They tried to mimic good breeding in their own way, always hoping that they could someday be the real thing.
That is more of an "apparent" hope. But what can one say of the mentality? Sure, one always wants to look nice, no matter how poor one is. This can be seen in the way everyone else was in on the joke. and in the end profited from it. one doesn't need to set these people straight because more fun will come out of it. showing that there is no limit it is all about the idea of something. for instance if i tell you that a tea-kettle is fashionable to be worn on the head and that everyone is doing it. well then that puts you in a very interesting position. you have two choices. one would be to do what normal people do and condemn me as an imbecile. And declare that even if people do wear it they are stupid for doing so. A simple person would not hesitate to laugh into my face. The other choice would be to take me seriously. And that inside of you would ever believe such a lie? Your insecurities will. The insecurity that you aren't good enough for society. As in, "Oh really? Oh well that sounds odd... (here is the point where it separates) no matter, if everyone is doing it, well they know better than I. I need to conform. Come to think of it, wearing a teakettle wouldn't be at all bad. It actually strikes me as extremely fashionable, even genius." The power of rationality!!
I love the energy and fast-pace of this piece- a true farce.
Goodness, so apparently someone went and put kettles in random pictures? I don't know why I had to go and google it... anyways! They look rather fashionable don't they! I find the rust especially appealing.
And of course, as this is the first time that I have ever read Molière, I have to talk about the movie. I have never really heard of Molière in my daily life. Well...that is not surprising, since I am living in an extremely uncultured society. But as it is, I am not drawn to plays as much as I am to prose, and even the french authors I have read- they are the most "common" classics. Therefore, I came to read this book with a sort of "idea" in mind, about who Molière really was. And this farce so rightfully stands up for that. In the movie, everything was so fast-paced, and yet extremely sophisticated. The way all the facial features were so dramatic, and everything seemed to be so light and unimportant. While true daily emotions and thoughts were being exchanged. Yes, I know this is extremely vague...but from what I remember... I know that I was left with such an energy. The character portrayed such life and humor. Just as this play does.
That is more of an "apparent" hope. But what can one say of the mentality? Sure, one always wants to look nice, no matter how poor one is. This can be seen in the way everyone else was in on the joke. and in the end profited from it. one doesn't need to set these people straight because more fun will come out of it. showing that there is no limit it is all about the idea of something. for instance if i tell you that a tea-kettle is fashionable to be worn on the head and that everyone is doing it. well then that puts you in a very interesting position. you have two choices. one would be to do what normal people do and condemn me as an imbecile. And declare that even if people do wear it they are stupid for doing so. A simple person would not hesitate to laugh into my face. The other choice would be to take me seriously. And that inside of you would ever believe such a lie? Your insecurities will. The insecurity that you aren't good enough for society. As in, "Oh really? Oh well that sounds odd... (here is the point where it separates) no matter, if everyone is doing it, well they know better than I. I need to conform. Come to think of it, wearing a teakettle wouldn't be at all bad. It actually strikes me as extremely fashionable, even genius." The power of rationality!!
I love the energy and fast-pace of this piece- a true farce.
Goodness, so apparently someone went and put kettles in random pictures? I don't know why I had to go and google it... anyways! They look rather fashionable don't they! I find the rust especially appealing.
And of course, as this is the first time that I have ever read Molière, I have to talk about the movie. I have never really heard of Molière in my daily life. Well...that is not surprising, since I am living in an extremely uncultured society. But as it is, I am not drawn to plays as much as I am to prose, and even the french authors I have read- they are the most "common" classics. Therefore, I came to read this book with a sort of "idea" in mind, about who Molière really was. And this farce so rightfully stands up for that. In the movie, everything was so fast-paced, and yet extremely sophisticated. The way all the facial features were so dramatic, and everything seemed to be so light and unimportant. While true daily emotions and thoughts were being exchanged. Yes, I know this is extremely vague...but from what I remember... I know that I was left with such an energy. The character portrayed such life and humor. Just as this play does.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Right You Are! (If You Think So) by Pirandello
"Laudisi. Never mind your husband, madam! Now, you have touched me, have you not? And you see me? And you are absolutely sure about me, are you not? Well now, madam, I beg of you; do not tell your husband, nor my sister, nor my niece, nor Signora Cini here, what you think of me; because, if you were to do that, they would all tell you that you are completely wrong. But, you see, you are really right; because I am really what you take me to be; though, my dear madam, that does not prevent me from also being really what your husband, my sister, my niece, and Signora Cini take me to be -- because they also are absolutely right!"
All realities are right
"Signora Sirelli. In other words you are a different person for each of us.
Laudisi. Of course I'm a different person! And you, madam, pretty as you are, aren't you a different person, too? Signora Sirelli [hastily]. No siree! I assure you, as far as I'm concerned, I'm always the same always, yesterday, today, and forever!
Laudisi. Ah, but so am I, from my point of view, believe me! And, I would say that you are all mistaken unless you see me as I see myself; but that would be an inexcusable presumption on my part -- as it would be on yours, my dear madam!"
One cannot see us as we see ourselves
" You see, he is in love with my daughter . . . so much so that he wants her whole heart, her every thought, as it were, for himself; so much so that he insists that the affections which my daughter must have for me, her mother -- he finds that love quite natural of course, why not? Of course he does! -- should reach me through him -- that's it, through him -- don't you understand?
Agazzi. Oh, that is going pretty strong! No, I don't understand. In fact it seems to me a case of downright cruelty!
Signora Frola. Cruelty? No, no, please don't call it cruelty, Commendatore. It is something else, believe me! You see it's so hard for me to explain the matter. Nature, perhaps . . . but no, that's hardly the word. What shall I call it? Perhaps a sort of disease. It's a fullness of love, of a love shut off from the world. There, I guess that's it . . . a fullness . . . a completeness of devotion in which his wife must live without ever departing from it, and
into which no other person must ever be allowed to enter."
Everyone has their own rationality for their reality...until it becomes true to them
"Laudisi. Deny? Why . . . why . . . I'm not denying anything! In fact, I'm very careful not to be denying anything. You're the people who are looking up the records to be able to affirm or deny something. Personally, I don't give a rap for the documents for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind. And into their minds I can they say to me of themselves. Laudisi. Well, which one? You can't tell, can you? Neither can anybody else! And it is not because those documents you are looking for have been destroyed in an accident -- a fire, an earthquake -- what ou will; but because those people have concealed those documen in themselves, in their own souls. Can't you understand that? She has created tor him, or he for her, a world of fancy which has all the earmarks of reality itself. And in this fictitious reality they get along perfectly well, and in full accord with each other; and this world of fancy, this reality of theirs, no document can possibly destroy because the air they breathe is of that world. For them it is something they can see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and touch with their fingers. Oh, I grant you -- if you could get a death certificate or a marriage certificate or something of the kind, you might be able to satisfy that stupid curiosity of yours. Unfortunately, you can't get it. And the result is that you are in the extraordinary fix of having before you, on the one hand, a world of fancy, and on the other, a world of reality, and you, for the life of you, are not able to distinguish one from the other. But what are you for other people? What are you in their eyes? An image, my dear sir, just an image in the glass! They're all carrying just such a phantom around inside themselves, and here they are racking their brains about the phantoms in other people; and they think all that is quite another thing! Laudisi. Let me finish. -- It's the phantom of the second wife, if Signora Frola is right. It's the phantom of the daughter, if Signor Ponza is right. It remains to be seen if what is a phantom for him and her is actually a person for herself. At this point it seems to me there's some reason to doubt it."
"Signora Ponza [slowly, and with clear articulation]. Tell you what? The truth? Simply this: I am the daughter of Signora Frola . . . All [with a happy intake of breath]. Ah! Signora Ponza. . . . and the second wife of Signor Ponza . . . All [amazed and disenchanted, quietly]. . . . What? Signora Ponza [continuing]. . . . and, for myself, I am nobody!'
The Prefect. No, no, madam, for yourself you must be either one or the other!
Signora Ponza. No! I am she whom you believe me to be. [She looks at them all through her veil for a moment, then leaves. Silence.]
Laudisi. And there, my friends, you have the truth! [With a look of derisive defiance at them all.] Are you satisfied? [He bursts out laughing.]"
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Pirandello so entertainingly portrays such deep philosophical concepts. Basically in this play he stresses the reality that we perceive, and how it is all relative and subjective. The plot of the play is comic and at the same time quite true. The fact that both of the characters, the mother-in-law and the son-in-law, ended up as crazy is interesting. How can both fancies exist in one reality? That is my question. Because as Laudisi said, it is a product of their imaginations, and their imaginations both exist in this reality. In fact, their created worlds are codependent on each other's existence. For instance, if the old woman refused to play along with the son-in-law (perceiving him as crazy and amusing him) then the son-in-law would not have been able to also "amuse" the mother by pretending SHE is insane... That is a remarkable mutual understanding in a world outside of themselves- the world of fancy. They understand each other in another world, but fail to understand each other in this reality. The fascinating part of this play is that reality is trying to penetrate this created word of theirs. Reality being practically played by the "gossip" party. The gossip party wants to "prove" the other two's insanity by documents and testimonies. Throughout the whole play, Laudisi sympathizes with the supposed "crazy" characters, saying that it is all relative. He also warns them that the reality of it all won't be enough, because they will go so far as not to believe the facts to satisfy this concept they have created in their minds. Similarly, they have also created an illusion of the mother and son that needs to be satisfied. So for instance if they decided the son-in-law was crazy, then even if the facts were to the contrary, they will somehow rationalize themselves out and still believe in this imaginary idea. In the end, they are doing the same thing as the mother and son. Which brings us to the main idea, being: we all create our own realities, and use this reality to feed the other. So in the end, everything is true to us, because we perceive it as true. If the mother was perceived to be insane, then to us she really is. Which is why the wife/daughter says, that everything is true, that both of them are insane, because the party thought they both were. It is as you perceive it to be. Then, which one is the "real" reality?
" But what are you for other people? What are you in their eyes? An image, my dear sir, just an image in the glass! They're all carrying just such a phantom around inside themselves, and here they are racking their brains about the phantoms in other people; and they think all that is quite another thing" We are all carrying phantoms of our perceptions. They are all illusions, and concepts and nothing is as we think it is to be, because to another person this illusion does not exist. Then, is it worth existing for us and does that lessen its "reality" for ourselves? I think it is as real to us, as their perceptions are real to them. What wonderful flexibility and individualism!
--
THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV (Enrico Quarto) - Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Luigi Pirandello, Edward Storer and Arthur Livingston)
Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc.
All realities are right
"Signora Sirelli. In other words you are a different person for each of us.
Laudisi. Of course I'm a different person! And you, madam, pretty as you are, aren't you a different person, too? Signora Sirelli [hastily]. No siree! I assure you, as far as I'm concerned, I'm always the same always, yesterday, today, and forever!
Laudisi. Ah, but so am I, from my point of view, believe me! And, I would say that you are all mistaken unless you see me as I see myself; but that would be an inexcusable presumption on my part -- as it would be on yours, my dear madam!"
One cannot see us as we see ourselves
" You see, he is in love with my daughter . . . so much so that he wants her whole heart, her every thought, as it were, for himself; so much so that he insists that the affections which my daughter must have for me, her mother -- he finds that love quite natural of course, why not? Of course he does! -- should reach me through him -- that's it, through him -- don't you understand?
Agazzi. Oh, that is going pretty strong! No, I don't understand. In fact it seems to me a case of downright cruelty!
Signora Frola. Cruelty? No, no, please don't call it cruelty, Commendatore. It is something else, believe me! You see it's so hard for me to explain the matter. Nature, perhaps . . . but no, that's hardly the word. What shall I call it? Perhaps a sort of disease. It's a fullness of love, of a love shut off from the world. There, I guess that's it . . . a fullness . . . a completeness of devotion in which his wife must live without ever departing from it, and
into which no other person must ever be allowed to enter."
Everyone has their own rationality for their reality...until it becomes true to them
"Laudisi. Deny? Why . . . why . . . I'm not denying anything! In fact, I'm very careful not to be denying anything. You're the people who are looking up the records to be able to affirm or deny something. Personally, I don't give a rap for the documents for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind. And into their minds I can they say to me of themselves. Laudisi. Well, which one? You can't tell, can you? Neither can anybody else! And it is not because those documents you are looking for have been destroyed in an accident -- a fire, an earthquake -- what ou will; but because those people have concealed those documen in themselves, in their own souls. Can't you understand that? She has created tor him, or he for her, a world of fancy which has all the earmarks of reality itself. And in this fictitious reality they get along perfectly well, and in full accord with each other; and this world of fancy, this reality of theirs, no document can possibly destroy because the air they breathe is of that world. For them it is something they can see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and touch with their fingers. Oh, I grant you -- if you could get a death certificate or a marriage certificate or something of the kind, you might be able to satisfy that stupid curiosity of yours. Unfortunately, you can't get it. And the result is that you are in the extraordinary fix of having before you, on the one hand, a world of fancy, and on the other, a world of reality, and you, for the life of you, are not able to distinguish one from the other. But what are you for other people? What are you in their eyes? An image, my dear sir, just an image in the glass! They're all carrying just such a phantom around inside themselves, and here they are racking their brains about the phantoms in other people; and they think all that is quite another thing! Laudisi. Let me finish. -- It's the phantom of the second wife, if Signora Frola is right. It's the phantom of the daughter, if Signor Ponza is right. It remains to be seen if what is a phantom for him and her is actually a person for herself. At this point it seems to me there's some reason to doubt it."
"Signora Ponza [slowly, and with clear articulation]. Tell you what? The truth? Simply this: I am the daughter of Signora Frola . . . All [with a happy intake of breath]. Ah! Signora Ponza. . . . and the second wife of Signor Ponza . . . All [amazed and disenchanted, quietly]. . . . What? Signora Ponza [continuing]. . . . and, for myself, I am nobody!'
The Prefect. No, no, madam, for yourself you must be either one or the other!
Signora Ponza. No! I am she whom you believe me to be. [She looks at them all through her veil for a moment, then leaves. Silence.]
Laudisi. And there, my friends, you have the truth! [With a look of derisive defiance at them all.] Are you satisfied? [He bursts out laughing.]"
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Pirandello so entertainingly portrays such deep philosophical concepts. Basically in this play he stresses the reality that we perceive, and how it is all relative and subjective. The plot of the play is comic and at the same time quite true. The fact that both of the characters, the mother-in-law and the son-in-law, ended up as crazy is interesting. How can both fancies exist in one reality? That is my question. Because as Laudisi said, it is a product of their imaginations, and their imaginations both exist in this reality. In fact, their created worlds are codependent on each other's existence. For instance, if the old woman refused to play along with the son-in-law (perceiving him as crazy and amusing him) then the son-in-law would not have been able to also "amuse" the mother by pretending SHE is insane... That is a remarkable mutual understanding in a world outside of themselves- the world of fancy. They understand each other in another world, but fail to understand each other in this reality. The fascinating part of this play is that reality is trying to penetrate this created word of theirs. Reality being practically played by the "gossip" party. The gossip party wants to "prove" the other two's insanity by documents and testimonies. Throughout the whole play, Laudisi sympathizes with the supposed "crazy" characters, saying that it is all relative. He also warns them that the reality of it all won't be enough, because they will go so far as not to believe the facts to satisfy this concept they have created in their minds. Similarly, they have also created an illusion of the mother and son that needs to be satisfied. So for instance if they decided the son-in-law was crazy, then even if the facts were to the contrary, they will somehow rationalize themselves out and still believe in this imaginary idea. In the end, they are doing the same thing as the mother and son. Which brings us to the main idea, being: we all create our own realities, and use this reality to feed the other. So in the end, everything is true to us, because we perceive it as true. If the mother was perceived to be insane, then to us she really is. Which is why the wife/daughter says, that everything is true, that both of them are insane, because the party thought they both were. It is as you perceive it to be. Then, which one is the "real" reality?
" But what are you for other people? What are you in their eyes? An image, my dear sir, just an image in the glass! They're all carrying just such a phantom around inside themselves, and here they are racking their brains about the phantoms in other people; and they think all that is quite another thing" We are all carrying phantoms of our perceptions. They are all illusions, and concepts and nothing is as we think it is to be, because to another person this illusion does not exist. Then, is it worth existing for us and does that lessen its "reality" for ourselves? I think it is as real to us, as their perceptions are real to them. What wonderful flexibility and individualism!
--
THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV (Enrico Quarto) - Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Luigi Pirandello, Edward Storer and Arthur Livingston)
Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Henry IV by Pirandello
"The green garden, moonlit pool, lemons, lovers, and fish are all dissolved in the opal sky, across which, as the horns are joined by trumpets and supported by clarions there rise white arches firmly planted on marble pillars."
"LANDOLPH. Cheer up, my dear fellow! We don't any of us know who we are really. He's Harold; he's Ordulph; I'm Landolph! That's the way he calls us. We've got used to it. But who are we? Names of the period! Yours, too, is a name of the period: Berthold! Only one of us, poor Tito, had got a really decent part, as you can read in history: that of the Bishop of Bremen. He was just like a real bishop. Tito did it awfully well, poor chap!"
"We're worse than the real secret counsellors of Henry IV.; because certainly no one had given them a part to play--at any rate, they didn't feel they had a part to play. It was their life. They looked after their own interests at the expense of others, sold investitures and-- what not! We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk."
"Evidently, because that immediate lucidity that comes from acting, assuming a part, at once put him out of key with his own feelings, which seemed to him not exactly false, but like something he was obliged to valorize there and then as--what shall I say--as an act of intelligence, to make up for that sincere cordial warmth he felt lacking. So he improvised, exaggerated, let himself go, so as to distract and forget himself. He appeared inconstant, fatuous, and--yes--even ridiculous, sometimes."
"and he--look at him--(points to portrait)--ha! A smack on the head, and he never moves again: Henry IV. for ever!"
"Have you always been the same? My God! One day...how was it, how was it you were able to commit this or that action? (Fixes her so intently in the eyes as almost to make her blanch) : Yes, that particular action, that very one: we understand each other!"
"But we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it is, to some extent, for me?"
We create our own version of reality
"BELCREDI (laughing). Oh, as for the dress, doctor, it isn't a matter of twenty years! It's eight hundred! An abyss! Do you really want to shove him across it (pointing first to Frida and then to Marchioness) from there to here? But you'll have to pick him up in pieces with a basket! Just think now: for us it is a matter of twenty years, a couple of dresses, and a masquerade. But, if, as you say, doctor, time has stopped for and around him: if he lives there (pointing to Frida) with her, eight hundred years ago...I repeat: the giddiness of the jump will be such, that finding himself suddenly among us..."
"Don't you see, idiot, how I treat them, how I play the fool with them, make them appear before me just as I wish? Miserable, frightened clowns that they are! And you (addressing the valets) are amazed that I tear off their ridiculous masks now, just as if it wasn't I who had made them mask themselves to satisfy this taste of mine for playing the madman!"
The joke is on them
"Words, words which anyone can interpret in his own manner! That's the way public opinion is formed! And it's a bad look out for a man who finds himself labelled one day with one of these words which everyone repeats; for example "madman," or "imbecile." Don't you think is rather hard for a man to keep quiet, when he knows that there is a fellow going about trying to persuade everybody that he is as he sees him, trying to fix him in other people's opinion as a "madman"--according to him? Now I am talking seriously!"
"Crush a man with the weight of a word--it's nothing --a fly! all our life is crushed by the weight of words: the weight of the dead."
"I speak, and order you live men about! Do you think it's a joke that the dead continue to live?"
"You will do nothing but repeat the old, old words, while you imagine you are living."
"It's convenient for everybody to insist that certain people are mad, so they can be shut up. Do you know why? Because it's impossible to hear them speak!"
"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman--with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk! construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather. Voluble! Voluble! Today like this and tomorrow--who knows? You say: "This cannot be"; but for them everything can be. You say: "This isn't true!" And why? Because it doesn't seem true to you, or you, or you...(indicates the three of them in succession)...and to a hundred thousand others! One must see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not supposed to be mad! What a magnificent spectacle they afford, when they reason! What flowers of logic they scatter!"
"Because it's a terrible thing if you don't hold on to that which seems true to you today--to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday."
This goes back to knowing which mask you are wearing, no matter how life has changed you. Because we are all puppets and therefore helpless. We need to cling to the only thing we have- the role of the moment.
"You ought to have known how to create a fantasy for yourselves, not to act it for me, or anyone coming to see me; but naturally, simply, day by day, before nobody, feeling yourselves alive in the history of the eleventh century, here at the court of your emperor, Henry IV!"
Personalize his fantasy. it was a chance for him to live out a fantasy. and yet the held on to reality
"You Ordulph (taking him by the arm), alive in the castle of Goslar, waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, and entering straightway into the dream, clothing yourself in the dream that would be no more a dream, because you would have lived it, felt it all alive in you. You would have drunk it in with the air you breathed; yet knowing all the time that it was a dream, so you could better enjoy the privilege afforded you of having to do nothing else but live this dream, this far off and yet actual dream!"
"All history that cannot change, understand? All fixed for ever! And you could have admired at your ease how every effect followed obediently its cause with perfect logic, how every event took place precisely and coherently in each minute particular! The pleasure, the pleasure of history, in fact, which is so great, was yours."
A consistent dream.
"I preferred to remain mad--since I found everything ready and at my disposal for this new exquisite fantasy. I would live it--this madness of mine--with the most lucid consciousness; and thus revenge myself on the brutality of a stone which had dinted my head."
"I am cured, gentlemen: because I can act the mad man to perfection, here; and I do it very quietly, I'm only sorry for you that have to live your madness so agitatedly, without knowing it or seeing it."
Without knowing one is in fact mad. It is "invisible" and his was "visible". That is the irony.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This play was extremely fascinating. The play between madness and reality is exceptional, and it ends up even tricking the audience- whether Henry IV is really mad or not.
The concept of this play was to expose our own masquerades. Does one have to necessarily be insane to live in a masquerade? Aren't our own lives merely a stage for our roles?
The way the play begins is also extremely clever, because the audience has no idea what they are seeing. Is it really during the time of Henry IV? At first that is what I thought- which meant that everything the valets were saying was a sort of metaphor of our own lives. As if we each were caught in our own time periods, and are programmed to play a certain role. "We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk." So many of us are just stuck, stuck in a certain role and only react when something has an effect on us...
There is so much truth in this supposed apparent madman! Everything he says pierces the deepest hidden parts of ourselves. He addresses our hypocrisy in front of others, and more importantly in front of ourselves. Especially being hypocritical towards ourselves. We actually do everything to sustain this role within ourselves for ourselves. The only difference for Henry IV is that he brought this life-long "invisible" masquerade that we play a part in, into the realm of the real. He first asks the lady- "Has it never happened to you, my Lady, to find a different self in yourself?' As if he asks, is it really you who are playing? It's really ironic, because she is in fact literally pretending to be this queen, but in real life she also creates her environment to fit this same role. She tries to keep the days when she had "reigned" and was beautiful still after she had lost them. He calls her out on it, "But I assure you that you too, Madam, are in masquerade, though it be in all seriousness; and I am not speaking of the venerable crown on your brows or the ducal mantle. I am speaking only of the memory you wish to fix in yourself of your fair complexion one day when it pleased you--or of your dark complexion, if you were dark: the fading image of your youth!" He clearly separates her from her "costume" even as a supposed madman. This had nothing to do with what she was playing- this was whom she really was or tried to act as in reality. Meaning, that whatever we try to appear as is not our only act, because we are also acting as ourselves. And so we have to ask- are we truly ourselves or is just another act? An act within an act. So the fact that he addresses this same question, and at the same time appearing "mad" is astounding. This of course is taken out of context, because he knew what was going on the whole time... or did he? I'll come back to that.
I also love the way this play addresses time. The first realm is our real time- our day to day existence. Then there is the past that is trying to be recreated in our present. For instance Henry IV tried to recreate the best time of his life (the masquerade) and the Lady tried to recreate her lost youth within her present. That is also why she refused to believe that Henry IV really did talk about her daughter instead of herself- because she in fact was jealous of her daughter's youth. This is when these "lost" times and the present actually parallel and in the end result in the same thing: a masquerade. "This dress (plucking his dress) which is for me the evident, involuntary caricature of that other continuous, everlasting masquerade, of which we are the involuntary puppets (indicates Belcredi), when, without knowing it, we mask ourselves with that which we appear to be...ah, that dress of theirs, this masquerade of theirs, of course, we must forgive it them, since they do not yet see it is identical with themselves..." This goes back to the "puppets on the wall" metaphor. We are actually those puppets in our own masquerade, our own time frame. We are constantly playing a role in our own lives. And the beauty of this is that it is involuntary!! We are somehow programmed to act out something. This actually relates to Pirandello's other play "Six Characters in Search of an Author"- because that in fact is also acting in our own play.
Yes we are just puppets in our own masquerade, and "fate" is the deciding factor of what role we are going to play. "The parts may be changed tomorrow. What would you do then? Would you laugh to see the Pope a prisoner? No! It would come to the same thing: I dressed as a penitent, today; he, as prisoner tomorrow! But woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or Pope !" We all need to realize that we are wearing masks in this masquerade called our lives, and we need to realize that it is not constant. Like Henry IV said, it can be changed in a blink of an eye...we can all just as quickly become our opposites.
It is interesting because the ones that were the most "stable" in this play were the ones that actually "knew" about the masquerade, which were the valets. They knew what they had to do, what parts to play. Everyone else was lying to themselves and trying to be something they are not. Which brings us to the final question- was Henry IV really mad? Did he know the whole time that he was sane?
I actually think he was sane in some parts of it, and through the end the "role" he was trying to play caught up with him and actually took over. Because he himself said, that he found another self within himself. Maybe this other "self" was the role he was acting, and took over his "real" self.
Let's take a look at the ending. Henry IV stabs Belcredi. Why? Why particularly him? Because from the beginning he picked up that Belcredi was Donna Matilda's lover. In the real masquerade, back when it happened for the first time, Donna and Henry IV were lovers. This shows that the "real" self, the one that feels and reacts to the present, was still inside of himself. The "real" self used the role of Henry IV as the "madman" to get rid of the one that hurt him the most. Basically saying, time has passed, Donna has moved on, and this masquerade of yours is all a lie-because you in fact have not stopped time. That is why Frida for him did resemble this eternal masquerade he was trying to forever recreate, because she was the image of her mother in her youth. Now it becomes clear- when he says one needs to know what mask they are wearing- if you're going to do it, make sure you do it right. This all comes back to:
"I mean, those desires where the will is kept within the limits of the possible. Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves."
--
THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV (Enrico Quarto) - Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Luigi Pirandello, Edward Storer and Arthur Livingston)
Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc.
"LANDOLPH. Cheer up, my dear fellow! We don't any of us know who we are really. He's Harold; he's Ordulph; I'm Landolph! That's the way he calls us. We've got used to it. But who are we? Names of the period! Yours, too, is a name of the period: Berthold! Only one of us, poor Tito, had got a really decent part, as you can read in history: that of the Bishop of Bremen. He was just like a real bishop. Tito did it awfully well, poor chap!"
"We're worse than the real secret counsellors of Henry IV.; because certainly no one had given them a part to play--at any rate, they didn't feel they had a part to play. It was their life. They looked after their own interests at the expense of others, sold investitures and-- what not! We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk."
"Evidently, because that immediate lucidity that comes from acting, assuming a part, at once put him out of key with his own feelings, which seemed to him not exactly false, but like something he was obliged to valorize there and then as--what shall I say--as an act of intelligence, to make up for that sincere cordial warmth he felt lacking. So he improvised, exaggerated, let himself go, so as to distract and forget himself. He appeared inconstant, fatuous, and--yes--even ridiculous, sometimes."
"and he--look at him--(points to portrait)--ha! A smack on the head, and he never moves again: Henry IV. for ever!"
"Have you always been the same? My God! One day...how was it, how was it you were able to commit this or that action? (Fixes her so intently in the eyes as almost to make her blanch) : Yes, that particular action, that very one: we understand each other!"
"But we all of us cling tight to our conceptions of ourselves, just as he who is growing old dyes his hair. What does it matter that this dyed hair of mine isn't a reality for you, if it is, to some extent, for me?"
We create our own version of reality
"BELCREDI (laughing). Oh, as for the dress, doctor, it isn't a matter of twenty years! It's eight hundred! An abyss! Do you really want to shove him across it (pointing first to Frida and then to Marchioness) from there to here? But you'll have to pick him up in pieces with a basket! Just think now: for us it is a matter of twenty years, a couple of dresses, and a masquerade. But, if, as you say, doctor, time has stopped for and around him: if he lives there (pointing to Frida) with her, eight hundred years ago...I repeat: the giddiness of the jump will be such, that finding himself suddenly among us..."
"Don't you see, idiot, how I treat them, how I play the fool with them, make them appear before me just as I wish? Miserable, frightened clowns that they are! And you (addressing the valets) are amazed that I tear off their ridiculous masks now, just as if it wasn't I who had made them mask themselves to satisfy this taste of mine for playing the madman!"
The joke is on them
"Words, words which anyone can interpret in his own manner! That's the way public opinion is formed! And it's a bad look out for a man who finds himself labelled one day with one of these words which everyone repeats; for example "madman," or "imbecile." Don't you think is rather hard for a man to keep quiet, when he knows that there is a fellow going about trying to persuade everybody that he is as he sees him, trying to fix him in other people's opinion as a "madman"--according to him? Now I am talking seriously!"
"Crush a man with the weight of a word--it's nothing --a fly! all our life is crushed by the weight of words: the weight of the dead."
"I speak, and order you live men about! Do you think it's a joke that the dead continue to live?"
"You will do nothing but repeat the old, old words, while you imagine you are living."
"It's convenient for everybody to insist that certain people are mad, so they can be shut up. Do you know why? Because it's impossible to hear them speak!"
"Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman--with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk! construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather. Voluble! Voluble! Today like this and tomorrow--who knows? You say: "This cannot be"; but for them everything can be. You say: "This isn't true!" And why? Because it doesn't seem true to you, or you, or you...(indicates the three of them in succession)...and to a hundred thousand others! One must see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not supposed to be mad! What a magnificent spectacle they afford, when they reason! What flowers of logic they scatter!"
"Because it's a terrible thing if you don't hold on to that which seems true to you today--to that which will seem true to you tomorrow, even if it is the opposite of that which seemed true to you yesterday."
This goes back to knowing which mask you are wearing, no matter how life has changed you. Because we are all puppets and therefore helpless. We need to cling to the only thing we have- the role of the moment.
"You ought to have known how to create a fantasy for yourselves, not to act it for me, or anyone coming to see me; but naturally, simply, day by day, before nobody, feeling yourselves alive in the history of the eleventh century, here at the court of your emperor, Henry IV!"
Personalize his fantasy. it was a chance for him to live out a fantasy. and yet the held on to reality
"You Ordulph (taking him by the arm), alive in the castle of Goslar, waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, and entering straightway into the dream, clothing yourself in the dream that would be no more a dream, because you would have lived it, felt it all alive in you. You would have drunk it in with the air you breathed; yet knowing all the time that it was a dream, so you could better enjoy the privilege afforded you of having to do nothing else but live this dream, this far off and yet actual dream!"
"All history that cannot change, understand? All fixed for ever! And you could have admired at your ease how every effect followed obediently its cause with perfect logic, how every event took place precisely and coherently in each minute particular! The pleasure, the pleasure of history, in fact, which is so great, was yours."
A consistent dream.
"I preferred to remain mad--since I found everything ready and at my disposal for this new exquisite fantasy. I would live it--this madness of mine--with the most lucid consciousness; and thus revenge myself on the brutality of a stone which had dinted my head."
"I am cured, gentlemen: because I can act the mad man to perfection, here; and I do it very quietly, I'm only sorry for you that have to live your madness so agitatedly, without knowing it or seeing it."
Without knowing one is in fact mad. It is "invisible" and his was "visible". That is the irony.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This play was extremely fascinating. The play between madness and reality is exceptional, and it ends up even tricking the audience- whether Henry IV is really mad or not.
The concept of this play was to expose our own masquerades. Does one have to necessarily be insane to live in a masquerade? Aren't our own lives merely a stage for our roles?
The way the play begins is also extremely clever, because the audience has no idea what they are seeing. Is it really during the time of Henry IV? At first that is what I thought- which meant that everything the valets were saying was a sort of metaphor of our own lives. As if we each were caught in our own time periods, and are programmed to play a certain role. "We stop here in this magnificent court --for what?--Just doing nothing. We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for some one to come and move us or make us talk." So many of us are just stuck, stuck in a certain role and only react when something has an effect on us...
There is so much truth in this supposed apparent madman! Everything he says pierces the deepest hidden parts of ourselves. He addresses our hypocrisy in front of others, and more importantly in front of ourselves. Especially being hypocritical towards ourselves. We actually do everything to sustain this role within ourselves for ourselves. The only difference for Henry IV is that he brought this life-long "invisible" masquerade that we play a part in, into the realm of the real. He first asks the lady- "Has it never happened to you, my Lady, to find a different self in yourself?' As if he asks, is it really you who are playing? It's really ironic, because she is in fact literally pretending to be this queen, but in real life she also creates her environment to fit this same role. She tries to keep the days when she had "reigned" and was beautiful still after she had lost them. He calls her out on it, "But I assure you that you too, Madam, are in masquerade, though it be in all seriousness; and I am not speaking of the venerable crown on your brows or the ducal mantle. I am speaking only of the memory you wish to fix in yourself of your fair complexion one day when it pleased you--or of your dark complexion, if you were dark: the fading image of your youth!" He clearly separates her from her "costume" even as a supposed madman. This had nothing to do with what she was playing- this was whom she really was or tried to act as in reality. Meaning, that whatever we try to appear as is not our only act, because we are also acting as ourselves. And so we have to ask- are we truly ourselves or is just another act? An act within an act. So the fact that he addresses this same question, and at the same time appearing "mad" is astounding. This of course is taken out of context, because he knew what was going on the whole time... or did he? I'll come back to that.
I also love the way this play addresses time. The first realm is our real time- our day to day existence. Then there is the past that is trying to be recreated in our present. For instance Henry IV tried to recreate the best time of his life (the masquerade) and the Lady tried to recreate her lost youth within her present. That is also why she refused to believe that Henry IV really did talk about her daughter instead of herself- because she in fact was jealous of her daughter's youth. This is when these "lost" times and the present actually parallel and in the end result in the same thing: a masquerade. "This dress (plucking his dress) which is for me the evident, involuntary caricature of that other continuous, everlasting masquerade, of which we are the involuntary puppets (indicates Belcredi), when, without knowing it, we mask ourselves with that which we appear to be...ah, that dress of theirs, this masquerade of theirs, of course, we must forgive it them, since they do not yet see it is identical with themselves..." This goes back to the "puppets on the wall" metaphor. We are actually those puppets in our own masquerade, our own time frame. We are constantly playing a role in our own lives. And the beauty of this is that it is involuntary!! We are somehow programmed to act out something. This actually relates to Pirandello's other play "Six Characters in Search of an Author"- because that in fact is also acting in our own play.
Yes we are just puppets in our own masquerade, and "fate" is the deciding factor of what role we are going to play. "The parts may be changed tomorrow. What would you do then? Would you laugh to see the Pope a prisoner? No! It would come to the same thing: I dressed as a penitent, today; he, as prisoner tomorrow! But woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or Pope !" We all need to realize that we are wearing masks in this masquerade called our lives, and we need to realize that it is not constant. Like Henry IV said, it can be changed in a blink of an eye...we can all just as quickly become our opposites.
It is interesting because the ones that were the most "stable" in this play were the ones that actually "knew" about the masquerade, which were the valets. They knew what they had to do, what parts to play. Everyone else was lying to themselves and trying to be something they are not. Which brings us to the final question- was Henry IV really mad? Did he know the whole time that he was sane?
I actually think he was sane in some parts of it, and through the end the "role" he was trying to play caught up with him and actually took over. Because he himself said, that he found another self within himself. Maybe this other "self" was the role he was acting, and took over his "real" self.
Let's take a look at the ending. Henry IV stabs Belcredi. Why? Why particularly him? Because from the beginning he picked up that Belcredi was Donna Matilda's lover. In the real masquerade, back when it happened for the first time, Donna and Henry IV were lovers. This shows that the "real" self, the one that feels and reacts to the present, was still inside of himself. The "real" self used the role of Henry IV as the "madman" to get rid of the one that hurt him the most. Basically saying, time has passed, Donna has moved on, and this masquerade of yours is all a lie-because you in fact have not stopped time. That is why Frida for him did resemble this eternal masquerade he was trying to forever recreate, because she was the image of her mother in her youth. Now it becomes clear- when he says one needs to know what mask they are wearing- if you're going to do it, make sure you do it right. This all comes back to:
"I mean, those desires where the will is kept within the limits of the possible. Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves."
--
THREE PLAY: Six Characters in Search of an Author - Henry IV (Enrico Quarto) - Right You Are! (If You Think So) (Luigi Pirandello, Edward Storer and Arthur Livingston)
Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
"Exactly, perfectly, to living beings more alive than those who breathe and wear clothes: beings less real perhaps, but truer! I agree with you entirely."
"Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play."
"I marvel at your incredulity, gentlemen. Are you not accustomed to see the characters created by an author spring to life in yourselves and face each other? Just because there is no "book" [Pointing to the PROMPTER'S box.] which contains us, you refuse to believe"
"In the sense, that is, that the author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art."
"The Manager. That is quite all right. But what do you want here, all of you? The Father. We want to live. The Manager [ironically]. For Eternity? The Father. No, sir, only for a moment . . . in you."
the transfer to reality through ones imagination
"The Manager. And where is the "book"? The Father. It is in us! [The ACTORS laugh.] The drama is in us, and we are the drama. We are impatient to play it. Our inner passion drives us on to this."
the characters are inventing the stories
"But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do."
"Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart. One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to re-establish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses."
"Woman -- for example, look at her case! She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you. You seize her. No sooner does she feel herself in your grasp than she closes her eyes. It is the sign of her mission, the sign by which she says to man: "Blind yourself, for I am blind.""
"For the drama lies all in this -- in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn't true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed."
"We act that rôle for which we have been cast, that rôle which we are given in life. And in my own case, passion itself, as usually happens, becomes a trifle theatrical when it is exalted."
we all play a role
"The Father. Then why not turn author now? Everybody does it. You don't want any special qualities. Your task is made much easier by the fact that we are all here alive before you . . . The Manager. It won't do. The Father. What? When you see us live our drama . . .
The Manager. Yes, that's all right. But you want someone to write it. The Father. No, no. Someone to take it down, possibly, while we play it, scene by scene! It will be enough to sketch it out at first, and then try it over."
they write the story. how an artist writes out his vision from something that already existed.
"What a joke it'll be for the others! But for you, alas! not quite such a joke: you who are real, baby dear, and really play by a real fountain that is big and green and beautiful, with ever so many bamboos around it that are reflected in the water, and a whole lot of little ducks swimming about . . ."
she isn't playing but existing
"The Father. Exactly! It will be difficult to act me as I really am. The effect will be rather -- apart from the make-up -- according as to how he supposes I am, as he senses me -- if he does sense me -- and not as I inside of myself feel myself to be. It seems to me then that account should be taken of this by everyone whose duty it may become to criticize us ."
characters explain themselves as characters
"The Father [irritated]. The illusion! For Heaven's sake, don't say illusion. Please don't use that word, which is particularly painful for us.. The Manager [astounded]. And why, if you please? The Father. It's painful, cruel, really cruel; and you ought to understand that. The Manager. But why? What ought we to say then? The illusion, I tell you, sir, which we've got to create for the audience . . . The Leading Man. With our acting. The Manager. The illusion of a reality. The Father. I understand; but you, perhaps, do not understand us. Forgive me! You see . . . here for you and your actors, the thing is only -- and rightly so . . . a kind of game ..."
that the actors reality is really fictional
"The Father [with dignity, but not offended]. A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always "somebody." But a man -- I'm not speaking of you now -- may very well be "nobody.""
"Illusions of reality represented in this fatuous comedy of life that never ends, nor can ever end! Because if tomorrow it were to end . . . then why, all would be finished."
so they're always living in the essence of the moment. what would that be like?
do they resent the author?
is the son thereto provide contrast? which one is better between the two?
"The Son. Yes, but haven't you yet perceived that it isn't possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?"
without the son everything would have gone perfectly. they could have acted out their drama without him. why is he there?
"The Son [almost crying from rage]. What does it mean, this madness you've got? [They separate.] Have you no decency, that you insist on showing everyone our shame? I won't do it! I won't! And I stand for the will of our author in this. He didn't want to put us on the stage, after all!"
hes the truest manifestation of the author
'The Manager [pushing the ACTORS aside while THEY lift up the BOY and carry him off.] Is he really wounded? Some Actors. He's dead! dead! Other Actors. No, no, it's only make believe, it's only pretence! The Father [with a terrible cry]. Pretence? Reality, sir, reality! The Manager. Pretence? Reality? To hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I 've lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to read this for class, and usually when that happens, I end up hating the book. I couldn't help being intriguied by this one...so much so, that I ended up thinking about it throughout the day... What is reality, what is fiction?
This story is genius in its cleverness. For the first time, that I have read at least, it seperates the character completely from the author. Yes, I loved it when Gogol and Turgenev would say "shh don't disturb our hero", but this goes beyond that. It physically embodies the characters, and stresses the fact that they're alive. Throughout the whole play the characters insist that they are more alive than the actors. The Father is the most entertaining and philosophical characters out of all of them- he says something that is extremely astounding- that a character continues living in the imagination. "
And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because -- live germs as they were -- they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live for ever!" The word "matrix" is so symbolic because it signifies another real world, another universe. They just have to "find" one. He goes on to say, "When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has to will them the way they will themselves -- for there's trouble if he doesn't. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.." Imagine how flexible! Oh, the almost infinite number of different realms we humans tap into! And yet, it is also limited, for our imaginations are limited. The only difference being, characters can be "immortal" in as many limited minds as there are people.
And so, in the end, the characters are still limited: not only are they limited by their essence, but by their continuation as well. Their essence being, that they can only act the way they were created to act. They can't ever act in an unpredictable manner- something apart from themselves. They will always be only themselves. It is very interesting that they know themselves so well they start to explain their own actions. They know themselves so extensively that there is nothing else for them to discover.
The most interesting part about this story was the contrast between reality and fiction. The ending was just an echo of the whole story. The fact that these fictional beings wanted to be part of reality, and to try to teach the actors how to be "fictional" shows the constant play between these two realms. Which one is more real? Why is reality necessarily more real than the fiction, if everything is relative? And no, I'm not going to get into the whole "everything is what you want it to be" (crap). The Father says it clearly, "But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you -- as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that -- I won't say these boards -- but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today -- all this present reality of yours -- is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?" Our past is an illusion of our perceptions. Then, what part of us is really real? What part of our being has really happened? And is it truly real? These fictional beings make us question our own reality, and whether it is just as real as their lives. "Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist. For each one of us has his own reality to be respected before God, even when it is harmful to one's very self." We create our own reality, and therefore, in a way we are our own Authors, of our own fiction. We are actually the characters in our own fictional world. Hm, that's quite a revelation.
--
Published by Coyote Canyon Press (June 5, 2009)
"Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play."
"I marvel at your incredulity, gentlemen. Are you not accustomed to see the characters created by an author spring to life in yourselves and face each other? Just because there is no "book" [Pointing to the PROMPTER'S box.] which contains us, you refuse to believe"
"In the sense, that is, that the author who created us alive no longer wished, or was no longer able, materially to put us into a work of art."
"The Manager. That is quite all right. But what do you want here, all of you? The Father. We want to live. The Manager [ironically]. For Eternity? The Father. No, sir, only for a moment . . . in you."
the transfer to reality through ones imagination
"The Manager. And where is the "book"? The Father. It is in us! [The ACTORS laugh.] The drama is in us, and we are the drama. We are impatient to play it. Our inner passion drives us on to this."
the characters are inventing the stories
"But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do."
"Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart. One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to re-establish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses."
"Woman -- for example, look at her case! She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you. You seize her. No sooner does she feel herself in your grasp than she closes her eyes. It is the sign of her mission, the sign by which she says to man: "Blind yourself, for I am blind.""
"For the drama lies all in this -- in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn't true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed."
"We act that rôle for which we have been cast, that rôle which we are given in life. And in my own case, passion itself, as usually happens, becomes a trifle theatrical when it is exalted."
we all play a role
"The Father. Then why not turn author now? Everybody does it. You don't want any special qualities. Your task is made much easier by the fact that we are all here alive before you . . . The Manager. It won't do. The Father. What? When you see us live our drama . . .
The Manager. Yes, that's all right. But you want someone to write it. The Father. No, no. Someone to take it down, possibly, while we play it, scene by scene! It will be enough to sketch it out at first, and then try it over."
they write the story. how an artist writes out his vision from something that already existed.
"What a joke it'll be for the others! But for you, alas! not quite such a joke: you who are real, baby dear, and really play by a real fountain that is big and green and beautiful, with ever so many bamboos around it that are reflected in the water, and a whole lot of little ducks swimming about . . ."
she isn't playing but existing
"The Father. Exactly! It will be difficult to act me as I really am. The effect will be rather -- apart from the make-up -- according as to how he supposes I am, as he senses me -- if he does sense me -- and not as I inside of myself feel myself to be. It seems to me then that account should be taken of this by everyone whose duty it may become to criticize us ."
characters explain themselves as characters
"The Father [irritated]. The illusion! For Heaven's sake, don't say illusion. Please don't use that word, which is particularly painful for us.. The Manager [astounded]. And why, if you please? The Father. It's painful, cruel, really cruel; and you ought to understand that. The Manager. But why? What ought we to say then? The illusion, I tell you, sir, which we've got to create for the audience . . . The Leading Man. With our acting. The Manager. The illusion of a reality. The Father. I understand; but you, perhaps, do not understand us. Forgive me! You see . . . here for you and your actors, the thing is only -- and rightly so . . . a kind of game ..."
that the actors reality is really fictional
"The Father [with dignity, but not offended]. A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always "somebody." But a man -- I'm not speaking of you now -- may very well be "nobody.""
"Illusions of reality represented in this fatuous comedy of life that never ends, nor can ever end! Because if tomorrow it were to end . . . then why, all would be finished."
so they're always living in the essence of the moment. what would that be like?
do they resent the author?
is the son thereto provide contrast? which one is better between the two?
"The Son. Yes, but haven't you yet perceived that it isn't possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?"
without the son everything would have gone perfectly. they could have acted out their drama without him. why is he there?
"The Son [almost crying from rage]. What does it mean, this madness you've got? [They separate.] Have you no decency, that you insist on showing everyone our shame? I won't do it! I won't! And I stand for the will of our author in this. He didn't want to put us on the stage, after all!"
hes the truest manifestation of the author
'The Manager [pushing the ACTORS aside while THEY lift up the BOY and carry him off.] Is he really wounded? Some Actors. He's dead! dead! Other Actors. No, no, it's only make believe, it's only pretence! The Father [with a terrible cry]. Pretence? Reality, sir, reality! The Manager. Pretence? Reality? To hell with it all! Never in my life has such a thing happened to me. I 've lost a whole day over these people, a whole day!'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to read this for class, and usually when that happens, I end up hating the book. I couldn't help being intriguied by this one...so much so, that I ended up thinking about it throughout the day... What is reality, what is fiction?
This story is genius in its cleverness. For the first time, that I have read at least, it seperates the character completely from the author. Yes, I loved it when Gogol and Turgenev would say "shh don't disturb our hero", but this goes beyond that. It physically embodies the characters, and stresses the fact that they're alive. Throughout the whole play the characters insist that they are more alive than the actors. The Father is the most entertaining and philosophical characters out of all of them- he says something that is extremely astounding- that a character continues living in the imagination. "
And this was a real crime, sir; because he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die. The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live for ever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because -- live germs as they were -- they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live for ever!" The word "matrix" is so symbolic because it signifies another real world, another universe. They just have to "find" one. He goes on to say, "When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him; and he has to will them the way they will themselves -- for there's trouble if he doesn't. When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.." Imagine how flexible! Oh, the almost infinite number of different realms we humans tap into! And yet, it is also limited, for our imaginations are limited. The only difference being, characters can be "immortal" in as many limited minds as there are people.
And so, in the end, the characters are still limited: not only are they limited by their essence, but by their continuation as well. Their essence being, that they can only act the way they were created to act. They can't ever act in an unpredictable manner- something apart from themselves. They will always be only themselves. It is very interesting that they know themselves so well they start to explain their own actions. They know themselves so extensively that there is nothing else for them to discover.
The most interesting part about this story was the contrast between reality and fiction. The ending was just an echo of the whole story. The fact that these fictional beings wanted to be part of reality, and to try to teach the actors how to be "fictional" shows the constant play between these two realms. Which one is more real? Why is reality necessarily more real than the fiction, if everything is relative? And no, I'm not going to get into the whole "everything is what you want it to be" (crap). The Father says it clearly, "But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you -- as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that -- I won't say these boards -- but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today -- all this present reality of yours -- is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?" Our past is an illusion of our perceptions. Then, what part of us is really real? What part of our being has really happened? And is it truly real? These fictional beings make us question our own reality, and whether it is just as real as their lives. "Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist. For each one of us has his own reality to be respected before God, even when it is harmful to one's very self." We create our own reality, and therefore, in a way we are our own Authors, of our own fiction. We are actually the characters in our own fictional world. Hm, that's quite a revelation.
--
Published by Coyote Canyon Press (June 5, 2009)
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
An Unwritten Novel by Virginia Woolf
----> Link to the story
Since I read this on my Kindle, I had no idea in what context the story took place (because the novel doesn't come with the handy-dandy "teaser" on the back cover). At first, I imagined it to be some sort of ramble about a character in a book, as the narrator was creating stories in her mind. That was rather inspirational I must admit, although it was completely wrong. And so, I googled it and the All Knowing One linked me to Pol Culture:
"The narrator is a passenger on a commuter train. At first, she is absorbed in her newspaper, but she finds herself distracted by the faces of the other passengers."
Well then! And so, I reread the story- and it seemed to make more sense! Even though, honestly, I still don't understand all of it. I got lost in some parts of it.
" [...] so many crimes aren't your crime; your crime was cheap; only the retribution solemn; for now the church door opens, the hard wooden pew receives her; on the brown tiles she kneels; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn (here she's at it) prays."
"I was heading her over the waterfall, straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream sheep, she turns t'other way and runs between my fingers."
"Have I read you right? But the human face--the human face at the top of the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more."
She expands on the term "to read a person" by actually comparing it to a sheet of print.
"Hang still, then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie Marsh--I, too, on my flower--the hawk over the down--alone, or what were the worth of life?"
She refers to her concept of Minnie Marsh- she wants to dwell on it, or what is life worth?
"There I've hidden them all this time in the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of aspidistra."
"How the mud goes round in the mind--what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still,"
"But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?--the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world--a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors."
"There's the vista and the vision--there's the distance--the blue blot at the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin hot"
This gave me the impression that whatever we see, we see as a "vista" and a "vision" outside of ourselves. As if we were looking out of a window, detached from ourselves. Of course, this probably isn't what Virginia meant.
Supported by the title, the concept of the book is almost a memorial-a "prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again"-for the things that never were: hinting at the unlimited world of "what-ifs" and possibilities. I feel like she writes this to literally bring this vague world into reality, just by the simple of act of writing it. Usually such wonderings and questions about strangers on the street are nothing more than fleeting thoughts, that are usually barely noticed. One thinks these thoughts in the moment, and soon are lost to the whirlwind of the continuation of life. You think these thoughts, and oh, there's your stop, leaving the connection you had formed in your mind forever there, and forget about it. As new worries, new thoughts envelop you. But no, Virginia commemorates these fleeting thoughts by recording them and turning it into a real story; engraving it on a sheet of paper, if you will.
I remember thinking about such things while on a train, wondering about other people's lives- but that seems to be so far in the past, so much has happened since. My life has moved on from that single thought (naturally: one doesn't want to be stuck on a train forever, spending one's time wondering about other people) and left it behind in the past. But it seems like Virginia refuses to move on, by writing this story directly confronting this vague sense of wondering.
The narrator immerses herself so much in her speculation that she even forgets whether it was she created this reality, or if it is really real. "There she is, tight to her blossom; opening her hand-bag, from which she takes a hollow shell--an egg--who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it was you who said it on the way home, you remember, when the old gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrella--or sneezing was it?" As if she's talking to the woman saying, "Oh no, no remember? This is really what happened." She seems to actually convince the person she is silently communicating with, as well as herself, that what she created is real. Why does she need to do this? Why does she need her imaginings to be real? Maybe she is looking for some connection with these characters, but at the same time wanting to be detached from them- find comfort in these silent communications. She becomes attached to them in some very intimate, and yet impersonal manner. And I think she prefers that. She prefers to muse about them, instead of asking them outright "What is your story?". She loves them in her own way, thinking of their feelings and desperations, and yet, they are still a concept to her. These characters are merely just sources of inspiration. Therefore, they themselves don't matter- only the stories they generate. "I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man." Anywhere, just to get a source of inspiration. It is merely a "foothold" for her imagination. Once James leaves the train, the narrator says, "James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever." He might as well be dead, as far as she is concerned. Because he was alive to her as long as he stood in the same train as her. So as they left, the narrator felt empty because she lost her only connection to them as concepts, "Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone." She realizes that it really wasn't real, and that she made it all up. And yet, at the end she still loves them for their vaguness, because to her, they exist in her mind as Minnie and Moggridge. "Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow...If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me--adorable world!" She adores them for what they mean to her. That's something- that's more than most.
--
From "The Works of Virginia Woolf: 12 Novels and Short Stories in One Volume"
Published by Halcyon Classics
Since I read this on my Kindle, I had no idea in what context the story took place (because the novel doesn't come with the handy-dandy "teaser" on the back cover). At first, I imagined it to be some sort of ramble about a character in a book, as the narrator was creating stories in her mind. That was rather inspirational I must admit, although it was completely wrong. And so, I googled it and the All Knowing One linked me to Pol Culture:
"The narrator is a passenger on a commuter train. At first, she is absorbed in her newspaper, but she finds herself distracted by the faces of the other passengers."
Well then! And so, I reread the story- and it seemed to make more sense! Even though, honestly, I still don't understand all of it. I got lost in some parts of it.
" [...] so many crimes aren't your crime; your crime was cheap; only the retribution solemn; for now the church door opens, the hard wooden pew receives her; on the brown tiles she kneels; every day, winter, summer, dusk, dawn (here she's at it) prays."
"I was heading her over the waterfall, straight for madness, when, like a flock of dream sheep, she turns t'other way and runs between my fingers."
"Have I read you right? But the human face--the human face at the top of the fullest sheet of print holds more, withholds more."
She expands on the term "to read a person" by actually comparing it to a sheet of print.
"Hang still, then, quiver, life, soul, spirit, whatever you are of Minnie Marsh--I, too, on my flower--the hawk over the down--alone, or what were the worth of life?"
She refers to her concept of Minnie Marsh- she wants to dwell on it, or what is life worth?
"There I've hidden them all this time in the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of aspidistra."
"How the mud goes round in the mind--what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and again through the eyes one sees clear and still,"
"But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?--the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world--a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors."
"There's the vista and the vision--there's the distance--the blue blot at the end of the avenue, while, after all, the tea is rich, the muffin hot"
This gave me the impression that whatever we see, we see as a "vista" and a "vision" outside of ourselves. As if we were looking out of a window, detached from ourselves. Of course, this probably isn't what Virginia meant.
Supported by the title, the concept of the book is almost a memorial-a "prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the people one never meets again"-for the things that never were: hinting at the unlimited world of "what-ifs" and possibilities. I feel like she writes this to literally bring this vague world into reality, just by the simple of act of writing it. Usually such wonderings and questions about strangers on the street are nothing more than fleeting thoughts, that are usually barely noticed. One thinks these thoughts in the moment, and soon are lost to the whirlwind of the continuation of life. You think these thoughts, and oh, there's your stop, leaving the connection you had formed in your mind forever there, and forget about it. As new worries, new thoughts envelop you. But no, Virginia commemorates these fleeting thoughts by recording them and turning it into a real story; engraving it on a sheet of paper, if you will.
I remember thinking about such things while on a train, wondering about other people's lives- but that seems to be so far in the past, so much has happened since. My life has moved on from that single thought (naturally: one doesn't want to be stuck on a train forever, spending one's time wondering about other people) and left it behind in the past. But it seems like Virginia refuses to move on, by writing this story directly confronting this vague sense of wondering.
The narrator immerses herself so much in her speculation that she even forgets whether it was she created this reality, or if it is really real. "There she is, tight to her blossom; opening her hand-bag, from which she takes a hollow shell--an egg--who was saying that eggs were cheaper? You or I? Oh, it was you who said it on the way home, you remember, when the old gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrella--or sneezing was it?" As if she's talking to the woman saying, "Oh no, no remember? This is really what happened." She seems to actually convince the person she is silently communicating with, as well as herself, that what she created is real. Why does she need to do this? Why does she need her imaginings to be real? Maybe she is looking for some connection with these characters, but at the same time wanting to be detached from them- find comfort in these silent communications. She becomes attached to them in some very intimate, and yet impersonal manner. And I think she prefers that. She prefers to muse about them, instead of asking them outright "What is your story?". She loves them in her own way, thinking of their feelings and desperations, and yet, they are still a concept to her. These characters are merely just sources of inspiration. Therefore, they themselves don't matter- only the stories they generate. "I come irresistibly to lodge myself somewhere on the firm flesh, in the robust spine, wherever I can penetrate or find foothold on the person, in the soul, of Moggridge the man." Anywhere, just to get a source of inspiration. It is merely a "foothold" for her imagination. Once James leaves the train, the narrator says, "James Moggridge is dead now, gone for ever." He might as well be dead, as far as she is concerned. Because he was alive to her as long as he stood in the same train as her. So as they left, the narrator felt empty because she lost her only connection to them as concepts, "Well, my world's done for! What do I stand on? What do I know? That's not Minnie. There never was Moggridge. Who am I? Life's bare as bone." She realizes that it really wasn't real, and that she made it all up. And yet, at the end she still loves them for their vaguness, because to her, they exist in her mind as Minnie and Moggridge. "Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow...If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me--adorable world!" She adores them for what they mean to her. That's something- that's more than most.
--
From "The Works of Virginia Woolf: 12 Novels and Short Stories in One Volume"
Published by Halcyon Classics
Friday, March 11, 2011
The Marquise by George Sand
As an aside, I was currently attempting to read Bukowski- then I decided I wanted to read something worthwhile...
"[...] this man in whom the body seemed wasted and shattered by the soul, and a single one of whose glances contained all the life I failed to find in real life, exercised over me a really magnetic power."
He was who she wanted to be.
"I must tell you that instead of struggling against this passion I yielded to it with eagerness, with delight. It was so pure! Why should I have blushed for it? It gave me new life; it initiated me into all the feelings I had wished to experience; it almost made me a woman."
"Long wings of lace fell from our arms, and our ribbons, purses, and jewels were variegated with the most brilliant colors. Balancing ourselves in our little high-heeled shoes, we seemed to fear to touch the earth and walked with the disdainful circumspection of a little bird on the edge of a brook."
"But from the moment that I loved I began to enjoy my beauty for its own sake."
"When, by the light of the smoky lamp, I looked at Lelio, I thought I had been mistaken and had followed another man. He was at least thirty-five, sallow, withered, and worn out. He was badly dressed, he looked vulgar, spoke in a hoarse, broken voice, shook hands with the meanest wretches, drank brandy, and swore horribly. It was not until I had heard his name repeated several times that I felt sure that this was the divinity of the theater, interpreter of the great Corneille. I could recognize none of those charms which had so fascinated me, not even his glance, so bright, so ardent, and so sad. His eyes were dull, dead, almost stupid; his strongly accentuated pronunciation seemed ignoble when he called to the waiter, or talked of gambling and taverns."
How beautifully she emphasizes his divinity and plunges the reader into a sense of vulgarity and disappointment. It would have been better if she had never known who he really was in reality.
"I thought myself thoroughly cured of my love, and I tried to rejoice at it, but in vain. I was filled with a mortal regret, the weariness of life again entered my heart, the world had not a pleasure which could charm me."
"Lelio was sublime, and I had never been more in love with him. My recent adventure seemed but a dream. I could not believe that Lelio was other than he seemed upon the stage. In spite of myself, I yielded to the terrible agitations into which he had the power of throwing me."
How powerful our impressions are! Especially when they have the least trace of reality!
"My Lelio was a fictitious being who had no existence outside the theater. The illusions of the stage, the glare of the footlights, were a part of the being whom I loved. Without them he was nothing to me, and faded like a story before the brightness of day. I had no desire to see him off the boards; and should have been in despair had I met him. It would have been like" contemplating the ashes of a great man.
"Oh, my madness was arrant, but it was sweet! Leave me my illusions, madam; what are they to you?"
He has his own illusions of her.
"I no longer understood how it had been possible for me to consent to exchange my heroic and romantic tenderness for the revulsion of feeling which awaited me, and the sense of shame which would henceforth poison all my recollections."
"Above all, I mourned for Lelio, whom in seeing I should forever lose, in whose love I had found five years of happiness, and for whom in a few hours I should feel nothing but indifference."
She knew for sure she would be disappointed.
"Alas! did he deceive himself! Was he playing a part?"
Was he encouraging her in her illusions? Was he trying to make her illusions a reality? If he did then what did his individuality matter?
'“Listen, Lelio,” said I. “Here we separate forever, but let us carry from this place a whole future of blissful thoughts and adored memories."'
"I asked him if he would not find happiness in thinking of me, if the ecstasy of our meeting would not lend its charm to all the days of his life, if his past and future sorrows would not be softened each time he recalled it."
"After a few steps, when I was about to lose him forever, I turned back and looked at him once more. Despair had crushed him."
This is almost Biblical. Don't look back! Imagine, instead of having her impression of him on her mind for her entire life, she had the picture of his true self: a disappointment. Wow, what a critical detail. Maybe, she would have been different if she hadn't looked back. Maybe she would have gone away with the false hope that the embodiment of the ideal might be possible. Instead, she walked away with a sense of the crudeness of reality. Not pretty.
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First of all, let me praise George Sand for her response to the "classic" dandy. Since nearly all of the books written in the true Romantic Period were written by men, they constantly emphasize the classic "poet". The guy who falls in love with the most beautiful actress and raves over her beauty. He usually either ends up with her and gets disappointed later, or gets disappointed right away and then kills himself, or something of the sort. Yes, yes. We all know that men are impulsive and treasure beauty (at first, anyway) over anything else. And here comes George Sand. She turns the table and switches the roles. This time, yes it is possible, a woman fell in love with an actor. Why not? I mean that is more likely to happen. Not only were men more free; they could either go to the theater or to the local brothel, but they could have their fill of femninity. Not so for the women. This is why the imagination was such a comfort for them, because they could invision their lives and passions in their minds. That is where it was most safe. I'm sure plenty of women fell in love with the actors, and nursed a passionate love in the privacy of their own minds. I mean, it is extremely convenient.
Anyway, I absolutely loved Sand's emphasis on the importance of the Marquise's illusions. They were far better than real life. On stage, Lelio appeared, "The word charm should have been invented for him; it belonged to all his words, to all his glances, to all his motions." He became her ideal, and that is what she worshipped. She herself admitted, "It was a passion purely intellectual, purely ideal. It was not he I loved, but those heroes of ancient times whose sincerity, whose fidelity, whose tenderness he knew how to portray; with him and by him I was carried back to an epoch of forgotten virtues." She loved what she saw, she loved the impression the concepts he tried to portray made on her mind, her imagination. I think that is the most important thing about illusions: the person itself ceases to exist, what feelings and concepts the person excites in the other is what really exist. Well, those impressions exist for the person who experiences them only. And that is the beauty of this concept, because it only matters how we see things in this world. And no, I don't mean to give a painfully boring lecture about how one can change the world and so on. I am a pessimist after all. No, but I mean just the fact that we each view the world in literally different shades of red, of blue, of yellow... says something about our conception of our own world. She consciously knew that Lelio was a product of her imagination, and wished it to remain that way. She begged him, after the strangely realistic meeting, to remain in her fantasies like she saw him in the present. To not continue life and drone it with the day-to-day existence. She wanted him to live in that moment.
Because she knew how painful reality was- how he could be something (as she so grotesqueley found out) completely different. Coincidentally, I have come to find out the same thing: that our impressions are so safe. Lelio could be anything one wants him to be, as long as one doesn't know who he truly is in real life. I prefer not talking to a person I would like to get to know, for who knows, maybe they aren't who I want them to be. Of course, there is a danger in that too, because one is left with a world full of manufactured impressions that don't resemble real life. I think that may be classified as "crazy".
And so, I was wondering throughout the story- what if Lelio did become her ideal? What if he truly did embody everything she imagined in reality. I mean, realistically he was everything she wanted him to be. If that was possible, would she still have been happy? Or is it that the imagination provides an impossible advantage: having the unlimited capacity of molding and changing one's ideal. If she had wanted him to be this hero, this charmer, now- he could. If she had wanted him to be someone else- he could. Do our ideals stay fixed? Or do they change according to our mental development? So, personally, I think even if that would be possible, she would have wanted him to be something else. Once she achieved her ideal, the realism of it all would repulse her.
---
Kindle Edition
"[...] this man in whom the body seemed wasted and shattered by the soul, and a single one of whose glances contained all the life I failed to find in real life, exercised over me a really magnetic power."
He was who she wanted to be.
"I must tell you that instead of struggling against this passion I yielded to it with eagerness, with delight. It was so pure! Why should I have blushed for it? It gave me new life; it initiated me into all the feelings I had wished to experience; it almost made me a woman."
"Long wings of lace fell from our arms, and our ribbons, purses, and jewels were variegated with the most brilliant colors. Balancing ourselves in our little high-heeled shoes, we seemed to fear to touch the earth and walked with the disdainful circumspection of a little bird on the edge of a brook."
"But from the moment that I loved I began to enjoy my beauty for its own sake."
"When, by the light of the smoky lamp, I looked at Lelio, I thought I had been mistaken and had followed another man. He was at least thirty-five, sallow, withered, and worn out. He was badly dressed, he looked vulgar, spoke in a hoarse, broken voice, shook hands with the meanest wretches, drank brandy, and swore horribly. It was not until I had heard his name repeated several times that I felt sure that this was the divinity of the theater, interpreter of the great Corneille. I could recognize none of those charms which had so fascinated me, not even his glance, so bright, so ardent, and so sad. His eyes were dull, dead, almost stupid; his strongly accentuated pronunciation seemed ignoble when he called to the waiter, or talked of gambling and taverns."
How beautifully she emphasizes his divinity and plunges the reader into a sense of vulgarity and disappointment. It would have been better if she had never known who he really was in reality.
"I thought myself thoroughly cured of my love, and I tried to rejoice at it, but in vain. I was filled with a mortal regret, the weariness of life again entered my heart, the world had not a pleasure which could charm me."
"Lelio was sublime, and I had never been more in love with him. My recent adventure seemed but a dream. I could not believe that Lelio was other than he seemed upon the stage. In spite of myself, I yielded to the terrible agitations into which he had the power of throwing me."
How powerful our impressions are! Especially when they have the least trace of reality!
"My Lelio was a fictitious being who had no existence outside the theater. The illusions of the stage, the glare of the footlights, were a part of the being whom I loved. Without them he was nothing to me, and faded like a story before the brightness of day. I had no desire to see him off the boards; and should have been in despair had I met him. It would have been like" contemplating the ashes of a great man.
"Oh, my madness was arrant, but it was sweet! Leave me my illusions, madam; what are they to you?"
He has his own illusions of her.
"I no longer understood how it had been possible for me to consent to exchange my heroic and romantic tenderness for the revulsion of feeling which awaited me, and the sense of shame which would henceforth poison all my recollections."
"Above all, I mourned for Lelio, whom in seeing I should forever lose, in whose love I had found five years of happiness, and for whom in a few hours I should feel nothing but indifference."
She knew for sure she would be disappointed.
"Alas! did he deceive himself! Was he playing a part?"
Was he encouraging her in her illusions? Was he trying to make her illusions a reality? If he did then what did his individuality matter?
'“Listen, Lelio,” said I. “Here we separate forever, but let us carry from this place a whole future of blissful thoughts and adored memories."'
"I asked him if he would not find happiness in thinking of me, if the ecstasy of our meeting would not lend its charm to all the days of his life, if his past and future sorrows would not be softened each time he recalled it."
"After a few steps, when I was about to lose him forever, I turned back and looked at him once more. Despair had crushed him."
This is almost Biblical. Don't look back! Imagine, instead of having her impression of him on her mind for her entire life, she had the picture of his true self: a disappointment. Wow, what a critical detail. Maybe, she would have been different if she hadn't looked back. Maybe she would have gone away with the false hope that the embodiment of the ideal might be possible. Instead, she walked away with a sense of the crudeness of reality. Not pretty.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, let me praise George Sand for her response to the "classic" dandy. Since nearly all of the books written in the true Romantic Period were written by men, they constantly emphasize the classic "poet". The guy who falls in love with the most beautiful actress and raves over her beauty. He usually either ends up with her and gets disappointed later, or gets disappointed right away and then kills himself, or something of the sort. Yes, yes. We all know that men are impulsive and treasure beauty (at first, anyway) over anything else. And here comes George Sand. She turns the table and switches the roles. This time, yes it is possible, a woman fell in love with an actor. Why not? I mean that is more likely to happen. Not only were men more free; they could either go to the theater or to the local brothel, but they could have their fill of femninity. Not so for the women. This is why the imagination was such a comfort for them, because they could invision their lives and passions in their minds. That is where it was most safe. I'm sure plenty of women fell in love with the actors, and nursed a passionate love in the privacy of their own minds. I mean, it is extremely convenient.
Anyway, I absolutely loved Sand's emphasis on the importance of the Marquise's illusions. They were far better than real life. On stage, Lelio appeared, "The word charm should have been invented for him; it belonged to all his words, to all his glances, to all his motions." He became her ideal, and that is what she worshipped. She herself admitted, "It was a passion purely intellectual, purely ideal. It was not he I loved, but those heroes of ancient times whose sincerity, whose fidelity, whose tenderness he knew how to portray; with him and by him I was carried back to an epoch of forgotten virtues." She loved what she saw, she loved the impression the concepts he tried to portray made on her mind, her imagination. I think that is the most important thing about illusions: the person itself ceases to exist, what feelings and concepts the person excites in the other is what really exist. Well, those impressions exist for the person who experiences them only. And that is the beauty of this concept, because it only matters how we see things in this world. And no, I don't mean to give a painfully boring lecture about how one can change the world and so on. I am a pessimist after all. No, but I mean just the fact that we each view the world in literally different shades of red, of blue, of yellow... says something about our conception of our own world. She consciously knew that Lelio was a product of her imagination, and wished it to remain that way. She begged him, after the strangely realistic meeting, to remain in her fantasies like she saw him in the present. To not continue life and drone it with the day-to-day existence. She wanted him to live in that moment.
Because she knew how painful reality was- how he could be something (as she so grotesqueley found out) completely different. Coincidentally, I have come to find out the same thing: that our impressions are so safe. Lelio could be anything one wants him to be, as long as one doesn't know who he truly is in real life. I prefer not talking to a person I would like to get to know, for who knows, maybe they aren't who I want them to be. Of course, there is a danger in that too, because one is left with a world full of manufactured impressions that don't resemble real life. I think that may be classified as "crazy".
And so, I was wondering throughout the story- what if Lelio did become her ideal? What if he truly did embody everything she imagined in reality. I mean, realistically he was everything she wanted him to be. If that was possible, would she still have been happy? Or is it that the imagination provides an impossible advantage: having the unlimited capacity of molding and changing one's ideal. If she had wanted him to be this hero, this charmer, now- he could. If she had wanted him to be someone else- he could. Do our ideals stay fixed? Or do they change according to our mental development? So, personally, I think even if that would be possible, she would have wanted him to be something else. Once she achieved her ideal, the realism of it all would repulse her.
---
Kindle Edition
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Talented Mr. Ripley- Fix the Unfixable
"Don't you just take the past, and put it in a room in the basement, and lock the door and never go in there? That's what I do. "
"Don't you just take the past and put it in a room in a basement and lock the door and never go in there? That's what I do, And then you meet someone special and all you want to do is to toss them the key and say; open up, step inside, but you can't, because it's dark, There's demons and if anybody saw how ugly it is. I keep wanted to do that, fling the door open just let light in and clean everything out. "
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As I was watching this movie, all of a sudden I was reminded by the Picture of Dorian Gray. After Ripley's second murder, it struck me- he's digging his own grave. One could sense the desperation by his actions. He didn't care who he killed next, as long as it fixed the problem. This need to "fix things" through murder reminded me of the things that Dorian did to also get out of the situation. Of course this action was extremely irrational, because people cannot just disappear. I mean, they soon will be missed. And yet, this wasn't thought about by both characters in the moment of panic. Their impulse was to kill, and if that person was eliminated, then the problem would go away. I think for both of them, after the first murder, it was something they just felt they had to do. Murder was the solution.
And just like Dorian, I think Tom is going to end up killing himself after the last scene. There is no possible way he can consciously survive after all that he had done. Dorian couldn't take it because he visually saw what he had become... although both characters started out as very naive. I think Dorian remained naive until the end, even after all the murders. Tom on the other hand seemed to suppress his guilt and succeed in doing so. His personality, or character as one may say, would be harder to break because his soul wasn't so pure. This lack of purity stems from his dejection from reality. He doesn't seem to see things as their happening, but only jumps from one action to the other. He doesn't reflect about his actions at all, because he knows that would be the death of him. Dorian not only reflected on what he had become, but he saw it in front of his eyes, and therefore could not avoid it any longer. But if something is pushed down so hard into the unconscious, it is so easy to live with the growing guilt, until one day the unconscious breaks loose into your entire world. One cannot escape their unconscious forever...it will find a way to make itself known. But once Tom reflects on what he has done, then he will have to kill himself, because after that realization, one cannot physically carry on this life. Guilt does not let one live. Which is why it either leads to suicide or complete denial. Of course that is on the cynical side. Now, if one has murdered and gives into the guilt, and finds a way to make amends not only with the world but with oneself, then one can escape. To accept the guilt and the fault is freedom... something Dorian and Tom did not realize.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
La mare au diable (Devil's Pool) by George Sand
"The man who draws in noble joy from the poetic feeling is a true poet, though he has never written a verse all his life."
"I could help to make Nature fruitful, and sing of her gifts, without ceasing to see with my eyes or understand with my brain harmonious colors and sounds, delicate shades and graceful outlines; in short, the mysterious beauty of all things. And above all, if my heart continued to beat in concert with the divine sentiment that presided over the immortal sublimity of creation."
"I see the seal of the Lord upon their noble brows, for they were born to inherit the earth far more truly than those who have bought and paid for it. The proof that they feel this is that they cannot be exiled with impunity, that they love the soil they have watered with their tears, and that the true peasant dies of homesickness under the arms of a soldier far from his native field."
"Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one. Thus disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life. A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed one another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an abiding name?"
"And he went away musing as men do whose thoughts are too few to divide into hostile factions, not scraping up fine arguments for rebellion and selfishness but suffering from a dull grief, submissive to ills from which there is no escape."
How simple. No explanations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought this was an adorable story by George Sand. The simplicity of the peasant was so marvelously portrayed. Sand describes the hard life of the peasant, and how he is too practical to be conscious of the beauty around him. "He lacks the consciousness of his sentiment." And yet, if the peasant did recognize the beauty in every leaf, every grain of dirt...would he still be a peasant? I think the peasant does much more than recognize beauty, he lives it. Poets spend all of their time trying to capture beauty, but they are always observers of something that is beyond them. Simple people don't philosophize about it, but just live along with it. There's something so dignifying about this, it is very admirable.
I was slightly disappointed with the character of Marie. I don't know, I always looked up to George Sand, for her strong female characters that aren't all perfect and noble, such as in Lelia. Marie seemed to be just the typical, noble, strong woman that has a correct answer for everything. Those type of characters are annoying, because they don't show any weakness. Weakness is beautiful because it is human. The character was too perfect for my taste. She suddenly became maternal and bold. For instance, I thought her conduct with German was too bold, giving him advice (a grown man) and pretty much ordering him around. And here Germain became like a little boy himself, asking this little girl for advice when she clearly had no experience of family life. His tone was rather annoying too, because he seemed to treat her extremely delicately, like a 5 year old girl, as if he was afraid she would fly into a little girl tantrum. I don't know, this caution was rather odd.
And at the end, when he asked her to marry him, honestly it was just sickening. First of all, he still used the term "little girl", clearly not recognizing her womanhood and the fact that she would be his partner in this marriage. He was talking for her, filling in the words as if she wasn't capable of any thought. "Poor little girl, you have a kind heart, I know;" I was curious whether he even viewed her as a woman in the end. Will she always be a little girl to him?
What I did like about this story was that the narrator, whomever that may be, "recorded" the story of a man that will never be famous. The narrator even says, "He will never know or care, but I shall take pleasure in my talk." How marvelous that is, because German himself doesn't matter, but the story he has to tell- his story will live on. I actually do understand the peasant. Since I am Romanian, I have always heard about the hard life a peasant leads, and yet my what a beautiful world they've created about them. Well, aside from all the drinking, they have such simple and yet tasty foods, dances, and goodness! The peasant language- it is like nothing else! The humor, the stories, the phrases, the richness! And even in Russian literature, one sees the suffering and yet the day to day triumph of the peasant. And so yes, I agree, these stories are worth telling, because actually, if one strips society, one ends up with the most simplistic way of life: which is the peasant's.
Of course I have criticized this book way too much, and it honestly was a very adorable story.
--
Translated by Jane Minot Sedgwick and Ellery Sedgwick 1901
"I could help to make Nature fruitful, and sing of her gifts, without ceasing to see with my eyes or understand with my brain harmonious colors and sounds, delicate shades and graceful outlines; in short, the mysterious beauty of all things. And above all, if my heart continued to beat in concert with the divine sentiment that presided over the immortal sublimity of creation."
"I see the seal of the Lord upon their noble brows, for they were born to inherit the earth far more truly than those who have bought and paid for it. The proof that they feel this is that they cannot be exiled with impunity, that they love the soil they have watered with their tears, and that the true peasant dies of homesickness under the arms of a soldier far from his native field."
"Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one. Thus disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life. A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed one another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an abiding name?"
"And he went away musing as men do whose thoughts are too few to divide into hostile factions, not scraping up fine arguments for rebellion and selfishness but suffering from a dull grief, submissive to ills from which there is no escape."
How simple. No explanations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought this was an adorable story by George Sand. The simplicity of the peasant was so marvelously portrayed. Sand describes the hard life of the peasant, and how he is too practical to be conscious of the beauty around him. "He lacks the consciousness of his sentiment." And yet, if the peasant did recognize the beauty in every leaf, every grain of dirt...would he still be a peasant? I think the peasant does much more than recognize beauty, he lives it. Poets spend all of their time trying to capture beauty, but they are always observers of something that is beyond them. Simple people don't philosophize about it, but just live along with it. There's something so dignifying about this, it is very admirable.
I was slightly disappointed with the character of Marie. I don't know, I always looked up to George Sand, for her strong female characters that aren't all perfect and noble, such as in Lelia. Marie seemed to be just the typical, noble, strong woman that has a correct answer for everything. Those type of characters are annoying, because they don't show any weakness. Weakness is beautiful because it is human. The character was too perfect for my taste. She suddenly became maternal and bold. For instance, I thought her conduct with German was too bold, giving him advice (a grown man) and pretty much ordering him around. And here Germain became like a little boy himself, asking this little girl for advice when she clearly had no experience of family life. His tone was rather annoying too, because he seemed to treat her extremely delicately, like a 5 year old girl, as if he was afraid she would fly into a little girl tantrum. I don't know, this caution was rather odd.
And at the end, when he asked her to marry him, honestly it was just sickening. First of all, he still used the term "little girl", clearly not recognizing her womanhood and the fact that she would be his partner in this marriage. He was talking for her, filling in the words as if she wasn't capable of any thought. "Poor little girl, you have a kind heart, I know;" I was curious whether he even viewed her as a woman in the end. Will she always be a little girl to him?
What I did like about this story was that the narrator, whomever that may be, "recorded" the story of a man that will never be famous. The narrator even says, "He will never know or care, but I shall take pleasure in my talk." How marvelous that is, because German himself doesn't matter, but the story he has to tell- his story will live on. I actually do understand the peasant. Since I am Romanian, I have always heard about the hard life a peasant leads, and yet my what a beautiful world they've created about them. Well, aside from all the drinking, they have such simple and yet tasty foods, dances, and goodness! The peasant language- it is like nothing else! The humor, the stories, the phrases, the richness! And even in Russian literature, one sees the suffering and yet the day to day triumph of the peasant. And so yes, I agree, these stories are worth telling, because actually, if one strips society, one ends up with the most simplistic way of life: which is the peasant's.
Of course I have criticized this book way too much, and it honestly was a very adorable story.
--
Translated by Jane Minot Sedgwick and Ellery Sedgwick 1901
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Secret Journal 1836-1837 by Pushkin
A note for the reader of this post:
Dear reader, be warned that this diary of Pushkin doesn't resemble the least sense of vulgarity in his books, but instead overflows with it. If you were to read his diary, you would understand. I tried not to include many quote with "naughty" terms in them, but sometimes it couldn't be helped. Anyways, I think it's fair to mention because such words are a sort of taboo in today's society. Well, onward.
--
"I look at my hand as it writes these lines and try to visualize it dead, as a piece of my skeleton, buried in the ground. Although this fate is undeniable, I am unable to imagine it. The trustworthiness of death is the only indisputable truth, and despite that it is the most difficult to comprehend, whereas we can easily and thoughtlessly accept and believe many different lies."
"Her mother is a real bitch, mad at everybody because no one besides the stablemen at Polotnyani Zavod wanted to screw her. She would not have minded laying under me, I think, but of course I did not care."
This was my first shock... and more are to follow. I think it depicts a slight immaturity on Pushkin's part...
"She oppressed her daughters in many ways and kept them as if they were in a convent. I watched N.’s sisters and thought of turning that convent into my harem."
"Our honeymoon flew by in sweet education: I was learning the tongue her body speaks and N. learned to respond not only to my tongue. My persistence and her diligence brought her more and more often to rapturous screams, which sounded like music to me."
I wanted to quote this one to show how he's still witty when he's describing something that is extremely immodest (especially during that time). He writes this extremely well, and such witticism is to flow through the entire journal. You see, he is Pushkin through and through, no matter what he's writing about.
"The difference between a wife and a lover is that with a wife you go to bed without lust. This is why marriage is sacred, because lust is gradually excluded from it and the relationship becomes just friendly, even indifferent or often hostile. It is then that the naked body is not considered a sin, because it no longer tempts."
"Death is the most reliable way to stay faithful to your sweetheart."
"I understand the reason for Romeo and Juliet's suicide. They acted intuitively, without understanding, but with the same purpose - to stay faithful to their lovers even after death, which is impossible for any young, beautiful living body."
"I told myself over and over again that a poet cannot live without quivering and is not intended for the world of marriage." "And a wife's name should be inviolate."
How extremely ironic. He doesn't have a problem with cheating on her, but once another man uses N.'s name vulgarly, he cannot stand it. This shows how much he loved his wife, and viewing her as an ideal figure.
"The human being is a creation of God, and human society is the creation of the Devil." "The nuptial bed is the cradle of passion, which turns into its grave." "My library is my harem."
"In India, they kill the wife and bury her with her dead husband. It is easy to imagine how a wife nurses her sick husband and cherishes him. Fear of her own death is an excellent incetive to love and devotion.
He's actually serious. I love his cleverness in this, even though it is extremely crude.
"The stronger the desire a man has, the less capable he is of distinguishing the word "woman" from the word "cunt." The only thing that opens his eyes to the existence in a woman of something besides cunt is satisfied desire. That is why the smart woman first of all gives herself to a man - to free his imagination from her cunt so that, sated with cunt, he becomes capable of appreciating her mind, talent, kindness and all the fineness she possesses."
"I long ago looked for the pistols at Kurakin's, and I drop in there from time to time to glance at my death. I look into the blackness of the muzzle where my fate hides and asks, 'When?' The pistols lying in the case reminds me of two sixes mutliplied. The number mimics my 36 years in 1836 and 6 from N. who is 24 (2+4). It is the Devil's figure, and I am scared of it." "I do not doubt the purpose of my life when the Muse or Venus visits me. But their visits are short, and once they leave me, my emotional sufferings envelop me and I cannot find the answer to an even simpler question: how to live. My life becomes too complex and all the threads of my deeds tie in knots and I cannot untangle them. But I cannot live with them, so I must cut them."
The poet.
"I cannot be faithful to my wife, but I value most of all faithfulness in others men's wives and demand it inflexibly from my own. I even drew her an example in Tatyana."
This forever changed my perception of Eugene Onegin. Now I will forever think about Pushkin's personal life when I read his works.
" I watch her trembling when she sees d'Antes, and I admire the strength of her character in choosing duty and rejecting passion. But with his impetuosity, she will not be able to hold back forever, so I must help her. How bitter it is fro me to write about it." "I am drawn to jump into the abyss not by a desire to die but by the total oblivion of it."
In some ways, throughout his life, he was searching for this oblivion.
"When a body falls into a real abyss, it is pulverized, but the soul revives. Does it? Because of this doubt, I fear death, or else I would jump over and over. "When you plunge into the abyss, you live counted moments, during which nothing can affect your submission to God. You fly within his power, completely free of their laws. These are moments when you are face to face with God. You are alive and nothing can stop the approaching Truth."
This process he compares to sex, even though he says he's afraid of death. So I guess he is afraid of the ultimate Truth. But, what is the Truth?? Is it death?
"I see myself dying, looking at books, trees, miserable that I will never see all that again."
His tragic end, and yet a great exit:
"Pushkin was fatally wounded in the stomach by Dantes, who shot first. Pushkin gathered his last strength and shot at Dantes. The bullet ricocheted off a metal button on Dantes' uniform, which saved his life. Rumor said that the Tsar sent his men to stop the duel but that they were sent to the wrong place on purpose. After Pushkin's death, Dantes was demoted to the rank of private and expelled from Russia. He left for France with his wife, where they lived the rest of their lives. Pushkin's widow was mourning for Pushkin for two years and remarried in 1844".
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First off, I think it is my duty to mention that this was the most vulgar book I've ever read. And yes I do realize that I only need to pick up any young adult novel to get a taste of vulgarity- but still, this isn't any average author, this is the great master: Pushkin himself. And it is incredibly ironic, because I don't think the rest of the world truly knows what he was like. For instance, my Grandma (she was forced to read all Russian literature due to the communists) praised Pushkin for his Christian principles, and his love for his wife. But in his defense, it isn't just vulgarity... because under that vulgarity lies a deep meaning, his attempt to search for Truth. The man was truly messed up- to put it into modern terms. He was struggling with an unsatisfiable passion and yet trying to preserve his love for his wife. Because, yes, he did love her in his own way. And actually, I think he slept around so much, because of her. Because she was so perfect.
I will modeslty try to breach upon a very "sketchy" (what the kids of today apparently use) subject: mainly his obsession with the female sex organ. He uses a horribly attrocious term, but maybe it seems so because of this this wonderful conservative American society preserving our naive little ears from such a raw term. Personally, I cannot bring myself to use it. Anyways, I find it extremely interesting that he mentally separates the vagina from the female body: he doesn't view it as being part of the whole, the woman. He constantly capitalizes the word, emphasizing this point. He says he worships it. You see, he doesn't worship the woman itself, but only the organ that gives him pleasure. The woman might as well not have been attached to it, as he put it. When in reality, the organ is part OF the woman. Pushkin sees this the other way around. I think this affects his view upon women, since he just sees them as "possessors" of the vagina, so this makes it easier for him to move from one to the other. He's dehumanizing women, by making their sex organ their identity.
Even after reading this, I still maintain that Pushkin is an extremely complex writer. Even in this diary he cleverly describes everything, and his wit can be clearly seen. It makes it entertaining. Throughout his "escapades" Pushkin is still trying to cope with marriage and his pure love for his wife, and the fact that she doesn't love him. Maybe that is why he was trying to protect her faithfulness, because in his eyes, she was still an ideal, still the love of his life.
This wasn't published because of the censorship in Russia. It makes me think whether all the Russian authors thought like this, (not exactly like Pushkin) but indulge in this vulgarity. Because their works are absolutely stupendous and very very modest. I think that is why I was so shocked when I read his diary, because I was expecting something along the lines of Eugene Onegin, something pure and innocent. But at heart, I think he really was, even at his most grotesque points in his life. He has this marvelous childish heart that can be clearly seen in anything he writes.
I will end, and agreeing with, Mikhail Armalinsky (the one who published this journal) remark about this "explosive" journal:
"Pushkin's literary reputation is so strong that his personal reputation could not shake it, but on the contrary promises us a remarkable study of human nature, which, because of its immutability, makes us all one with the past as well as the future."
--
Published by M.I.P Company (http://www.mipco.com/english/push.html)
Friday, February 11, 2011
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
"So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying ‘that is all’ more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking."
"[...]was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day."
Transferring feelings into the environment.
"I was more unhappy than I’ve ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight."
Incorporating her into the scene of his feelings.
"It is half-past eleven, she says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into the recesses of the heart and buries itself in ring after ring of sound, like something alive which wants to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, with a tremor of delight, at rest."
"And why had he been so profoundly happy when the clock was striking? Then, as the sound of St. Margaret’s languished, he thought, She has been ill, and the sound expressed languor and suffering. It was her heart, he remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final stroke tolled for death that surprised in the midst of life, Clarissa falling where she stood, in her drawing-room. No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I am not old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall, as if there rolled down to him, vigorous, unending, his future."
She's dead inside. humorous.
"And it was smashed to atoms — his fun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, this escapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better part of life, he thought — making oneself up; making her up; creating an exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd it was, and quite true; all this one could never share — it smashed to atoms."
A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal.
"[...] and she no longer saw, when she implored him (as she did now quite clearly) ‘look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently,’ she no longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face, but only a looming shape, a shadow shape, to which, with the bird-like freshness of the very aged, she still twittered ‘give me your hand and let me press it gently’ (Peter Walsh couldn’t help giving the poor creature a coin as he stepped into his taxi), ‘and if some one should see, what matter they?’ she demanded; and her fist clutched at her side, and she smiled, pocketing her shilling, and all peering inquisitive eyes seemed blotted out, and the passing generations — the pavement was crowded with bustling middle-class people — vanished, like leaves, to be trodden under, to be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternal spring — ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo."
Everything fades into the earth.
"One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that."
crude
"But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world."
What she liked was simply life.
‘That’s what I do it for,’ she said, speaking aloud, to life.
Sense of romantic optimism.
"But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quite continuously a sense of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift."
She loved to bring people together.
"You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain — the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost."
"Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life."
"It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was idiotic."
"Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another."
"Somehow it was her disaster — her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. She had schemed; she had pilfered."
Why does she take it to heart so?
"She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed alone."
"She felt somehow very like him — the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was pretty much forced to read this book due to the film The Hours. I wanted to understand the movie, and I've come to realize that one doesn't really understand the movie until one reads Mrs. Dalloway. Throughout the whole book I was imagining the characters portrayed in the movie, and how each one fits in Virginia Woolf's story.
But really, one needs to read the book. This beautiful charm of Virginia is really not portrayed in the movie. She is so witty and humorous in the writing, even if she writes about very dramatic things like suicide- she adds a certain graceful lightness to it. It's wonderful to read. Actually, this novel of her showed me her true voice the most. Sarcasm coupled with empathy is actually very refreshing. She seems to really understand every single one of her characters. Even Mrs. Dalloway. I mean, she understands that Richard wasn't her love, and that she spent her life regretting her mistake, and yet at the same time to look with hope towards the future. This character is extremely interesting because she is not superficial, although she may seem so. Even Peter thinks that in some ways she is superficial. But no, I think she is much more complex than what people see. I think that she naively, although proven wrong again and again, believes in the goodness of human nature. That is why she gives parties, to enjoy this marvelous interaction between people she knows. She wants everyone else to share in her riches, and thinks that everyone can benefit. She just wants to share her wealth. I love the way she was watching the old woman in the middle of the party. This doesn't show that she's unhappy, not necessarily- but she enjoys the small things in life, the simple things. She doesn't forget about the simple things. And I think that is essential to her character, because it makes her such a deep person. She understands suffering, like the suicide's suffering, but also understands that life is exciting and fresh- and she desperately wants to enjoy that.
Although, why does she take her parties so seriously? That is my question. Why does she focus on them so much? Maybe she is putting such a stress on herself, and the whole superficiallity of the world is trying to take over her. Because even though one has good intentions, that doesn't mean that the superficiallity of others won't affect her. And maybe she sees this. Peter is a marvelous contrast to her. Because he resembles what she really is at heart. She IS this deep thinker that just really wants to enjoy life. Interestingly enough, she wants to use this joy of life in a social setting- which is really hard to do, since society usually standardizes everything, and kills anything that is original and fresh.
I think that Mrs. Dalloway wants to return to the person she really is, the young girl that spent that day with Peter:
"She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields -where could it have been? — on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London, too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb."
She spent her whole life longing for that moment of freedom, and yet trying to put up with society's constrains. We see this marvelous contrast between what she was, wild and free, and what she is now, trying to make the best of the cage she was trapped in.
Most of all, I loved the way Virginia flowed from one story to another- I thought that was absolutely superb, and so enjoyable to read. She connected every character to each other, which is so true- this human universality. Her exploration of time, and the way it gently rocked back and forth, past and present, is outstanding.
Although, I didn't pick up on the lesbiaonic (apparently not a word) allusion. So sorry to have missed that, but I usually don't pick up on subtle things like that. Maybe because it's more modern than what I'm used to.
Published by Everyman's Library (Knopff Book)
"[...]was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day."
Transferring feelings into the environment.
"I was more unhappy than I’ve ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight."
Incorporating her into the scene of his feelings.
"It is half-past eleven, she says, and the sound of St. Margaret’s glides into the recesses of the heart and buries itself in ring after ring of sound, like something alive which wants to confide itself, to disperse itself, to be, with a tremor of delight, at rest."
"And why had he been so profoundly happy when the clock was striking? Then, as the sound of St. Margaret’s languished, he thought, She has been ill, and the sound expressed languor and suffering. It was her heart, he remembered; and the sudden loudness of the final stroke tolled for death that surprised in the midst of life, Clarissa falling where she stood, in her drawing-room. No! No! he cried. She is not dead! I am not old, he cried, and marched up Whitehall, as if there rolled down to him, vigorous, unending, his future."
She's dead inside. humorous.
"And it was smashed to atoms — his fun, for it was half made up, as he knew very well; invented, this escapade with the girl; made up, as one makes up the better part of life, he thought — making oneself up; making her up; creating an exquisite amusement, and something more. But odd it was, and quite true; all this one could never share — it smashed to atoms."
A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, now that one had acquired the power, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning; which both were so much more solid than they used to be, so much less personal.
"[...] and she no longer saw, when she implored him (as she did now quite clearly) ‘look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently,’ she no longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face, but only a looming shape, a shadow shape, to which, with the bird-like freshness of the very aged, she still twittered ‘give me your hand and let me press it gently’ (Peter Walsh couldn’t help giving the poor creature a coin as he stepped into his taxi), ‘and if some one should see, what matter they?’ she demanded; and her fist clutched at her side, and she smiled, pocketing her shilling, and all peering inquisitive eyes seemed blotted out, and the passing generations — the pavement was crowded with bustling middle-class people — vanished, like leaves, to be trodden under, to be soaked and steeped and made mould of by that eternal spring — ee um fah um so foo swee too eem oo."
Everything fades into the earth.
"One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that."
crude
"But even Holmes himself could not touch this last relic straying on the edge of the world, this outcast, who gazed back at the inhabited regions, who lay, like a drowned sailor, on the shore of the world."
What she liked was simply life.
‘That’s what I do it for,’ she said, speaking aloud, to life.
Sense of romantic optimism.
"But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgements, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer. Here was So-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater; and somebody else, say, in Mayfair. And she felt quite continuously a sense of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift."
She loved to bring people together.
"You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain — the actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and understanding, after years of lying lost."
"Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life."
"It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and standing in a corner. He made her see herself; exaggerate. It was idiotic."
"Every time she gave a party she had this feeling of being something not herself, and that every one was unreal in one way; much more real in another."
"Somehow it was her disaster — her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress. She had schemed; she had pilfered."
Why does she take it to heart so?
"She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed alone."
"She felt somehow very like him — the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was pretty much forced to read this book due to the film The Hours. I wanted to understand the movie, and I've come to realize that one doesn't really understand the movie until one reads Mrs. Dalloway. Throughout the whole book I was imagining the characters portrayed in the movie, and how each one fits in Virginia Woolf's story.
But really, one needs to read the book. This beautiful charm of Virginia is really not portrayed in the movie. She is so witty and humorous in the writing, even if she writes about very dramatic things like suicide- she adds a certain graceful lightness to it. It's wonderful to read. Actually, this novel of her showed me her true voice the most. Sarcasm coupled with empathy is actually very refreshing. She seems to really understand every single one of her characters. Even Mrs. Dalloway. I mean, she understands that Richard wasn't her love, and that she spent her life regretting her mistake, and yet at the same time to look with hope towards the future. This character is extremely interesting because she is not superficial, although she may seem so. Even Peter thinks that in some ways she is superficial. But no, I think she is much more complex than what people see. I think that she naively, although proven wrong again and again, believes in the goodness of human nature. That is why she gives parties, to enjoy this marvelous interaction between people she knows. She wants everyone else to share in her riches, and thinks that everyone can benefit. She just wants to share her wealth. I love the way she was watching the old woman in the middle of the party. This doesn't show that she's unhappy, not necessarily- but she enjoys the small things in life, the simple things. She doesn't forget about the simple things. And I think that is essential to her character, because it makes her such a deep person. She understands suffering, like the suicide's suffering, but also understands that life is exciting and fresh- and she desperately wants to enjoy that.
Although, why does she take her parties so seriously? That is my question. Why does she focus on them so much? Maybe she is putting such a stress on herself, and the whole superficiallity of the world is trying to take over her. Because even though one has good intentions, that doesn't mean that the superficiallity of others won't affect her. And maybe she sees this. Peter is a marvelous contrast to her. Because he resembles what she really is at heart. She IS this deep thinker that just really wants to enjoy life. Interestingly enough, she wants to use this joy of life in a social setting- which is really hard to do, since society usually standardizes everything, and kills anything that is original and fresh.
I think that Mrs. Dalloway wants to return to the person she really is, the young girl that spent that day with Peter:
"She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields -where could it have been? — on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London, too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb."
She spent her whole life longing for that moment of freedom, and yet trying to put up with society's constrains. We see this marvelous contrast between what she was, wild and free, and what she is now, trying to make the best of the cage she was trapped in.
Most of all, I loved the way Virginia flowed from one story to another- I thought that was absolutely superb, and so enjoyable to read. She connected every character to each other, which is so true- this human universality. Her exploration of time, and the way it gently rocked back and forth, past and present, is outstanding.
Although, I didn't pick up on the lesbiaonic (apparently not a word) allusion. So sorry to have missed that, but I usually don't pick up on subtle things like that. Maybe because it's more modern than what I'm used to.
Published by Everyman's Library (Knopff Book)
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