A Long Toil to Reach this Beginning

The Diary Volume 4, Monday 16 November, 1931

I have now got through to 1934 in the Diary so I have heaps to share with you all. So here goes...

"Oh yes, between 50 & 60 I think I shall write ouit some very singular books, if I live. I mean i think I am about to embody, at last, the exact shape my brain holds. What a long toil to reach this beginning - if The Waves is my first book in my own style!".

Of course I would argue that she always wrote in her own style, from The Voyage Out onwards. Literary critics are foul creatures who suck the life out of writers and cause so much self doubt. The sad things is that they can't write themselves. Here endeth the rave!!

I am really enjoying going back over these underlined portions myself as I was reading this part of the Diary in January.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Times Review of The Waves 1931

The Diary Volume 4, Thursday 8 October, 1931

"Really, this unintelligible book is being better 'received' than any of them. A note in The Times proper - the first time this has been allowed me. And it sells - how unexpected, how odd that people can read that difficult grinding stuff!".

This is, of course, referring to the publication of The Waves. An excerpt from The Times, 9 October 1931 says: 'Like some old Venetian craftsman in glass, Mrs Woolf spins the coloured threads, and with exquisite, intuitive sensibility fashions ethereal frailties of enduring quality'.

The Waves stands as my favourite Woolf book alongside Mrs Dalloway.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Woolf at Ease

The Diary Volume 4, Sat 19 September 1931

"But O - again - how happy I am: how calm, for the moment how sweet life is with L. here, in its regularity & order, & the garden & the room at night & music & my walks & writing easily & interestedly at Donne of a morning, & poems all about me. I've come to read poetry with intensity - bought Skelton at Tunbridge Wells".

It is nice when Virginia is happy. I noticed for the first time here her use (erratic) of the Oxford comma. She uses it twice in the excerpt above.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Virginia Woolf on Biography

The Diary Vol 4 Sunday 16 August 1931

"It is a good idea I think to write biographies; to make them use my powers of representation reality accuracy; & to use my novels simply to express the general. the poetic. Flush is serving this purpose."

I am enjoying Virginia's biography of Roger Fry at the moment.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Quiet and Control plus Eating Apples

The Diary Volume 4 Monday 10 August 1931

"No I will not let this day be a bad one, though it has every sign of so being...No, I say, I will not let this day be a bad one: but by what means? Quiet & control. Eating apples - sleeping this afternoon. Thats all. And now for Waves."

Well they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away!! I'm not sure that I could live life at the pace that Virginia did.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Virginia Woolf - the Weekly Black Hole

The Diary Volume 4 Sunday 3 May 1931

"But now, say I have a 3 months lap ahead of me: the 3 summer months. What shall I do? We are going to 'regulate' seeing people. There is to be a weekly black hole; a seething mass of people all eating tea together. We shall thus have more evenings free. In those evenings I intend to walk; to read, Elizabethans; to be mistress of my soul. Yes. And I intend to investigate Edinburgh & Stratford on Avon. Also to finish off The Waves in a dashing masterly manner. D H Lawrence has given me much to think about - about writing for writings sake."

Still the Woolf's are inundated with visitors. This must have been a hell to VW when she was unwell. It is clear from her diaries that Woolf was an avid reader. To write well one must read well. By the way does anyone know what the DH Lawrence article or book was the she is mentioning?

Drive traffic to your Blog

Virginia Woolf - A Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) reference

Diary Volume 4 Monday 27 April 1931

"Saw the high unroofed room in wh. Jeanne stood before the King. The very chimney place perhaps. Walls cut through by thin windows. Suddenly one looks down, down on roofs. How did the Middle Ages get through the evenings? A stone crypt in wh. J. lived: people carve their names everywhere. River silken serpentine beneath. Liked the stone roofless rooms; & the angular cut windows. Sat on the steps to hear 2 struck by the clock wh. has rung since the 13th century: which J. heard. Rusty toned. What did she think? Was she mad? a visionary coinciding with the right moment".

Woolf has a very vivid connection with person, place and time which is seen in all of her writings. The sense of being where Jeanne d'Arc was seeing and hearing the same things forges a palpable connection. This makes her writing very rich and interesting.

(Note: It was in the grand salle of the Chateau du Milieu at Chinon on 9 March 1429 that Jeanne d'Arc recognised Charles VII concealed among his courtiers.)

Drive traffic to your Blog