Happy birthday, Virginia Woolf! Listen to the only known surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, part of a BBC radio broadcast from 1937:http://bit.ly/1utro6A
聯合報╱鍾文音／文】
2014.01.27 03:24 am
倫敦大城市，蘊含吳爾芙的寫作靈光。
鍾文音／攝影
記住我們共同走過的歲月，記住愛，記住時光。 ──維吉尼亞吉‧吳爾芙 你自己曾寫過這樣的一句話，現在看來，像是在為你的生命終點作詮釋：「或許多少年之後才能夠感受得到當時的一個舉動是多麼的驚天動地。」 比如我自己在二十幾歲時，突然有天醒來，告訴自己要離開島嶼，要到遙遠的國度，要開始新的生活。那個國度也是一座巨大的島，一座巨大的船艙，擠滿青春與不想老去的人。 曼哈頓聳立的是高樓大廈切割成的峽谷，人如蟻螻是風光。 這於小個體是驚天動地之舉，是青春燃盡，才能體悟到的。 即使只是活一天都是非常非常危險的，一剎那的失心瘋，都會墜向深淵。 但你在精神癲危時刻仍不忘和時光一起逆行，並給予他人歡樂與愛。 時時刻刻，吳爾芙，你啟發了後來的許多寫作者。 你那具有夢想家氣質的側臉，迷濛出世卻又極為入世。對自我與小說美學實驗的探視，瞬間捕捉流逝的心靈。 小說時間與真實時間，意識流流過精神的荒土，灌溉成一座奇花異草似的濕地，小說是人類前進的莽原，在歧路中探索，匍匐，為精神莽原的探勘傷痕累累而在所不惜。 戰將如是，你也是，刀刀劈進精神荒地，小說的荊棘重重，尤其你的年代，對女作家尤其是天方夜譚。 你經歷了19世紀末與二戰期間，看著大英帝國。1941年3月28日，你走入隱士之屋附近的河流，你跳入勿思河（River Ouse）。 你太瘦了，因此撿了許多石頭放在口袋以增加重量，好讓身體不會因為太輕而浮上來。 一個會游泳者，如何在河裡拒絕求生的本能反應？你不再盡情感受這沒有答案的人生。 「壯闊的心靈，卻落入令人窒息的凡間。筆端和命運對奕，到頭來卻難免成為一個輸家。」但我以為你不是輸家，就生命某種程度而言你是，但就書寫而言，你不是。 烽火來臨，慕尼黑已然淪陷，你最愛的城市倫敦也勢將難逃德軍戰火的魔掌，你不想活在那樣的煙硝瀰漫的火光之中。 恐懼的想像往往是癲狂的養分，你害怕癲狂至自己都不認識自己，你知道會有那麼一天，因為過去的經驗告訴你，這一波比之前都強大。以前病發時，你不認得自己 寫的文字了，而你逐漸老去，深知這波強大激流襲擊，將連自己都失去。那自己將被徹底隔離，隔絕在自己的世界之外，你要自己出航，比這一天走得更快，寧可投 入河神懷抱，以更激烈的荒涼方式讓自己不被俘虜。 幻想可以寫作治病，以為寫作能忘卻前塵，相信文學是忽略生活最為愉悅的方式。你說只要能寫作就是快樂。實驗各種小說的可能，一種不像小說的小說，一種哲學 不被戲劇與情節化的小說。以寫作剖析自我與扣問人生的獨白小說，以小說來疏離自我人生，小說有各種可能，各種可能都是小說。 創作猶如一趟旅程，創作成為致力完成自己的舟渡，一個發現之鑰。 寫作猶如縱走黑暗邊境，悠長緩慢，好似永遠踩不到底，但忽焉竟在筆中成形了。小說能比個人真實活過的人生更加真實，但也可能更加虛妄。 作品被完成時是如此地神祕，在文學的邊界，在人生的邊界，明亮與黑暗交織命運的房間。寫作猶如探勘，一個鑿光者。偉大的小說家都有個地獄，入地獄卻開出天堂之花。 慌走在靈魂的岐路花園
繁複的低音暗自響徹整座如交響樂的海域，奇特的音波總是難以被聽見。 你曾經用「魚鰭」在寧靜遼闊的海洋上升起如蝶翅的象徵，帶著那樣亙古以來的孤獨寂寥，寂靜的殘敗，與死亡的搏鬥，神祕而哀愁。 你有如海域裡最獨特的鯨魚聲音，聽來如鬼魂，也像低音號鳴奏。 據說這神祕聲音來自一隻名為52赫茲的鯨魚，其歌聲太獨特了，獨特到只有牠自己才聽得見，獨一無二，因此找不到伴。 當然你一生都有朋友與夫為伴，但你心深處明白人最後都是孤獨的化身。52赫茲鯨魚是人的孤獨隱喻，每個人的終站都將化為52赫茲鯨魚，人生春色凋零，春色比肉身先一步涉入冥河。 你也有如是希臘的泰瑞希阿斯（Tiresias），一位流浪的盲人先知，具有著兩性的生活跨越經驗，雖失去性別，卻沒有更自由，盲人先知茫茫遊走繁華荒原。 有多少回了，你面對自己的精神生死交關，或者你目睹他人肉體的生死交關，太多回了。 年輕時當你面對折磨父親的病魔時，你曾經這麼想著：「死神能否加快點腳步呢？」那時你才二十二歲第二次面對至親和死神鏖戰，你目擊著死亡本身。 表面看起來冰冷，一旦遇到所愛，內裡卻是如熔岩的炙燙。 父親過世，你和家人搬遷到南威爾斯。 那是一座介於大海與沙原之間的寂寥荒地，你常在懸崖處眺望，沉思未來。 源於這段漫長的徒步生活，未來要書寫的材料也逐漸在你的腦海浮現。 你寫著日記，一直保有這個習慣。 在你和姊姊還沒參加布倫斯伯里（Bloomsbury）團體之前，你們去了義大利旅行。 在旅行裡，你觀看人的興致大過於看教堂，這也是寫小說者的奇異之眼。 在歐洲旅行時，到了巴黎，你和姊姊遇到克里夫‧貝爾，他帶你們還去參觀了雕塑家羅丹的畫室。 然而回到英國後，你卻瘋了一整個夏天。 你陷在複雜的生命低潮，現實逐漸成了遙遠不可捉摸的狀態。 瘋狂的夏天，每個人都在等待你的康復。瘋狂的生命風景永遠值得描述。這段無法書寫的時間，卻成為你往後不斷創作的生命基底，創傷若能轉化，就能成為生命的豐收。 失眠頭痛暈眩心悸……厭食，討厭人……你試圖自殺，所幸1904年五月到八月，三個月裡的關鍵性時間，你獲得了護士與專門神經科及家人的妥善照顧。 家人把你送到約克郡學院，因為那家學院的校長是你的表親，一來你可以療養，二來和其表親的妻子也就是校長夫人一起共度學校生活。在這段療養期間，你漸漸好 轉，除了參加這些夫人們的茶會和教會活動外，在許多你不喜歡的學院場合時，你則到學校鄰近的高原荒地裡漫遊。在岩石間遊走，感受風的刺骨，荒煙蔓草的風 土，品味閃過的靈光詩語。 同時學院的氛圍也讓你不斷地自我粹練與琢磨書寫的技藝，為當一名職業作家的入門作進階的練習，為日後你的文學實驗創立新的敘事聲音。 私密的札記跳躍為社會的觀察者，書評的鑑賞者。 對於創作胚胎，你就像母親守候著未出生的嬰兒般，將現世風光轉化為奇魅書寫，你高昂的心性催發你的創造力，不斷鍛鍊與超越自我的窠臼。 這段時間是繁花盛開的金色年華，尤其從瘋狂的黑暗之谷步出後，你更明白生命不可浪擲。 陰暗與燦亮的兩端，你都歷歷行經，感知這世界的幽微。 你甚至去倫敦為高齡窮人所設的莫利學院參與教學課程，熱情地教著寫作與文學等，甚至為學生寫課程大綱，但在教學上你的熱忱卻被學生們打敗，你發現你賣力地教導著寫作與文學課程，但學生關心的卻和你不同。 你賣力地講著文藝復興，學生卻只關心旅館有沒有跳蚤（這讓我想到我自己，賣力地講著旅途的文學遭逢，學生卻問我旅途有無豔遇？）。 於是後來你轉向文學沙龍的周四聚會，沙龍是藝術聚會，不同創作媒材的藝術家以藝術議題為討論的聚會，即後來聞名英國的布倫斯貝利團體，將女性主義、社會主義和和平主義發揮影響力的一個重要文學藝術集社。 你關心的女性是和你同一階層的女性，期盼有能力的女性竭盡自己的成就來發揮社會影響力。 你的愛 是我唯一能確認的 生之悲苦，從生提煉死魂，你凝視死，早在十三歲時，就進而參與了死亡事件簿。你從神智清明到癲瘋狀態的見證者雷納德描述過那駭人模樣，你先是厭食，接著拒 絕進食，抑鬱環繞不去，被罪惡感與絕望情緒淹沒，接著轉為興奮無明且又有如一頭失控野獸的狀態。你會對來照料你的護士行為粗暴，動粗相向，因為她們都在腦 海裡形成幻影，身旁人變成惡魔。接著你會一直說話，從能夠被理解的字詞，逐漸進入分裂斷裂的無意識與不連貫字詞。 癲瘋者從地獄歸來的報信之語。 瘋狂之後，就像迷霧散去，你逐漸清醒，不僅記得泰半的經歷，且能進入理性的秩序思考。在你五十多年的生命裡，接二連三的瘋癲都沒有擊潰你，即使你曾經航進死神的懷抱，但所幸死神都把你隔離在外。 你走過第一次世界大戰，但沒能走過二戰。1941年，你度不過去了。如果過去的瘋癲是大風大浪，那麼這回即將襲擊你神智的將是海嘯，你知道你躲不過去，而你不想連累雷納德，你感到這一生虧欠太多了。 於是你寫好遺書，將之放在入門處。 你寫給雷納德：「假使有任何人能夠救我，那一定是你，即使我已然分崩離析，但你的愛仍是我唯一能確認的，我不再繼續毀壞你的時光了。我以為我們共聚的時光，就是兩個人所能達到最快樂的時光。」 小說曾寫過的話，成了自己預寫的墓誌銘：「置身於祢的懷抱，我依然不為所動，不受祢的宰制，死神！」 逝者善舞，舞出人間的絕美字海，憂鬱的藍海。我在你的故居前，低迴再三，想要獲點繆思靈光，期盼潛進這片海洋但卻不被吞噬。但有這種可能嗎？還是我不過是 個媚俗者，只想迷幻而不想癲狂，只想要取得好的部分，卻忘了好壞是一體的。我不知道，在你的故居，我只看見逝者善舞，一種從荒原舞踏出的繁美，那就是以精 神奮戰所寫下的作品，如你。
【2014/01/27 聯合報】
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![@[113977738612372:274:Leonard Woolf] was born on this day in 1880. In Sowing (1960), the first volume of his autobiography, Woolf describes his first glimpse of eighteen-year-old Virginia Stephen, accompanied by her sister, Vanessa:
"I first saw them one summer afternoon in Thoby's rooms; in white dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands. Their beauty literally took one's breath away.... They were at that time, at least upon the surface, the most Victorian of Victorian young ladies, and today what that meant it is almost impossible to believe or even remember.... Virginia and Vanessa were also very silent and to any superficial observer they might have seemed demure ... [but] the observant observer would have noticed at the back of the two Miss Stephens' eyes a look which would have warned him to be cautious, a look which belied the demureness, a look of great intelligence, hypercritical, sarcastic, satirical." Source: http://ow.ly/r9mnF](https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/s403x403/1466194_567650603307294_1039156459_n.jpg)
Leonard Woolf
was born on this day in 1880. In Sowing (1960), the first volume of his
autobiography, Woolf describes his first glimpse of eighteen-year-old
Virginia Stephen, accompanied by her
sister, Vanessa:
"I first saw them one summer afternoon in Thoby's rooms; in white
dresses and large hats, with parasols in their hands. Their beauty
literally took one's breath away.... They were at that time, at least
upon the surface, the most Victorian of Victorian young ladies, and
today what that meant it is almost impossible to believe or even
remember.... Virginia and Vanessa were also very silent and to any
superficial observer they might have seemed demure ... [but] the
observant observer would have noticed at the back of the two Miss
Stephens' eyes a look which would have warned him to be cautious, a look
which belied the demureness, a look of great intelligence,
hypercritical, sarcastic, satirical." Source: http://ow.ly/r9mnF
英國名人: 可以在病房開party…..Leonard Sidney Woolf (1880 – 1969) was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf. 此人一生也很精彩:五本回憶錄: Sowing (19600, Growing (1961), Beginning Again (1964), Downhill all the Way (1967), The journey not the arrival matters: an autobiography of the years 1939–1969. London: Hogarth Press.
Precious Moments
October 20, 2015 | by Sadie Stein
It’s no great shock that Leonard Woolf was recorded on film, not when you think about it—after all, the writer, publisher, and widower of Virginia lived into 1969.
And yet! And yet! It seems somehow magical that here he should be, modern and in color, talking about Maynard Keynes for all the world as if he is not a living bridge to a storied past, most of which went as unfilmed—as though Bloomsbury had not belonged to modernity at all, let alone invented it.
There’s less than a minute of footage of Leonard in the video above, and he’s not saying anything particularly revolutionary; just praising his friend Keynes’s famously lively mind. Perhaps because Virginia Woolf was never filmed, Leonard’s sheer normalcy lands with a lot of force. (I say “Leonard” and “Virginia” as if I know them, as if they are public property.) It’s hard not to think of his own words: “Whenever one really knows the facts, one finds that what is accepted by contemporaries or posterity as the truth about them is so distorted or out of focus that it is not worth worrying about.”
And yet.
Sadie Stein is contributing editor of The Paris Review, and the Daily’s correspondent.
Christopher Ondaatje (Michael Ondaatje's older brother), is the author of Woolf in Ceylon (2005), an account of Leonard Woolf’s eleven years working on the island in the British Civil Service, the job which he gave up to marry Virginia Stephen.
"Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man."
--Leonard Woolf
--Leonard Woolf
書海的煩惱。近一周，稍忙，不過書如時光般，不饒人，所以累積的「待翻書」，又已數十本。有照片或插圖的書，我會先翻讀，它們多半很有意思，不過它們多半不像王鼎鈞回憶錄《關山奪路‧略圖》般清楚。
譬如說，Oxford
World Classics 叢書的Virginia
Woolf 的兩篇散文/文論: A Room of One’s Own 以及Three Guineas (這本作者花十年思考和研讀的結晶，此版本有幾張全是男人的精美裝飾圖：某將軍；某使者報信隊；某大學教授行列；某法官；某主教。…….
《自己的房子》張秀亞譯，台北:純文學，1973 -----這本後來有張秀亞的定譯本
2011年台大外文系的某篇博士論文是"德勒之論吳爾夫VW的諸房間" (憑我的記憶 待確定)
VW的 "一間自己的房間"裏 有許多關於"真實"的論述
譬如說某段的末頭: " (真實)就是 往昔的歲月與我們的愛憎所留下的東西"
The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf
The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf - Google 圖書結果
Susan Sellers - 2010 - Literary Criticism - 304 頁
A revised and fully updated edition, featuring five new chapters reflecting recent scholarship on
The Principal Works of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.principal.htm
A37, A39 COLLECTED ESSAYS: VOLUMES 1-4 1966-1967
(ed. by Leonard Woolf) A reprinting and re-ordering of the essays in A8, A18, A27, A29, A30, and A34.
A generalisation of th
Virginia Woolf
The Common Reader
The Russian Point of View
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/is kind will, of course, even if it has some degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other questions arise. It is seen that an “attitude” is not simple; it is highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what means they can be free from “this intolerable bondage”.
“‘How? How?’ he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and splendid life would begin.” That is the end. A postman drives a student to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, “It’s against the regulations to take any one with the post”. And he walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. “With whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn nights?” Again, that story ends.
But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing, we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic — lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed — as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his meaning.
We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov’s own words give us a lead in the right direction. “. . . such a conversation as this between us”, he says, “would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether we are right or not.” Our literature of social satire and psychological finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously — but where does it arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer’s zeal is not his — that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is primarily interested not in the soul’s relation with other souls, but with the soul’s relation to health — with the soul’s relation to goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in his stories.
Once the eye is used to these shades, half the “conclusions” of fiction fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind them — gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded so he has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense of freedom.
In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word “soul” again and again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; “. . . you are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven’t real soul, my dear boy . . . there’s no strength in it”. Indeed, it is the soul that is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky; it is liable to violent diseases and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read The Brothers Karamazov or The Possessed a second time. The “soul” is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins, and crowds of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from the press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up — the names of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis de Grieux — but what unimportant matters these are compared with the soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent sobbing, what more natural?— it hardly calls for remark. The pace at which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none of that precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love.
伍爾芙隨筆全集（共四冊）譯者: 石雲龍 / 劉炳善 / 李寄 / 黃梅作者: [英] 弗吉尼亞·伍爾芙ISBN: 9787500427452頁數: 2070定價: 98.00元出版社: 中國社會科學出版社裝幀: 平裝出版年: 2001-4簡介 · · · · · ·《伍爾芙隨筆全集》收錄了弗吉尼亞·伍爾芙的幾乎全部散文隨筆，按英文原本，分為以下集子：《普通讀者》（一、二）、《瞬間集》、《飛蛾之死》、《船長臨終時》、《花崗岩與彩虹》、《現代作家》、《三枚舊金幣》、《自己的一間屋》、《書和畫像》。作者簡介 · · · · · ·弗吉尼亞·伍爾芙，英國小說家、評論家、散文家。其父萊斯利·斯蒂芬爵士是英國著名學者和作家，藏書宏富，且與同代大家哈代、亨利·詹姆斯等過從甚密，伍爾芙從中獲益匪淺，卓成大家。伍爾芙的創作以小說為主，此外當屬散文。她曾為《泰晤士文學副刊》、《耶魯評論》等英美報特約撰稿，發表的隨筆、書評、人物特寫、遊記百餘萬字。相較來說，散文似乎更適合於她的思想、秉性、風格，寫來優雅高貴而又汪洋恣肆，因而有“傳統散文大師、新散文首創者”之稱，被譽為“英國散文大家中的最後一人”。目錄 · · · · · ·卷1 普能讀者（一部）普能讀者（二部）卷2 自己的一間屋瞬間集船長臨終時卷3 三枚舊金幣飛蛾之死現代作家卷4 花崗岩與彩虹書和畫像《伍爾芙隨筆全集(套裝全4冊)》按英文原本，分為以下集子：《普通讀者》（一、二）、《瞬間集》、《飛蛾之死》、《船長臨終時》 、《花崗岩與彩虹》、《現代作家》、《三枚舊金幣》、《自己的一間屋》、《書和畫像》。++++++++++
• A62 THE ESSAYS: VOLUME 1 [1986]
(ed. by Andrew McNeillie) 1904-1912.
• A63 THE ESSAYS: VOLUME 2 [1987]
(ed. by Andrew McNeillie) 1912-1918.
• A65 THE ESSAYS: VOLUME 3 [1988]
(ed. by Andrew McNeillie) 1919-1924.
•• A74 THE ESSAYS: VOLUME 4 [1994]
(ed. by Andrew McNeillie) 1925-1928.
• THE ESSAYS: VOLUME 5 [2009]
(ed. by Stuart N. Clarke) 1929-1932.
******
Orlando: A Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Orlando: A Biography | |
|---|---|
 1st edition cover | |
| Author | Virginia Woolf |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hogarth Press |
| Publication date | 11 October 1928 |
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Plot
Orlando tells the story of a young man named Orlando, born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. He is briefly a lover to the decrepit queen, but after her death has a brief, intense love affair with Sasha, a princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. This episode, of love and excitement against the background of the Great Frost, is one of the best known, and is said to represent Vita Sackville-West's affair with Violet Trefusis.Following Sasha's return to Russia, the desolate, lonely Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree, a poem started and abandoned in his youth. This period of contemplating love and life leads him to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home, which he proceeds to furnish lavishly and then plays host to the populace. Ennui sets in and a persistent suitor's harassment leads to Orlando's appointment by King Charles II as British ambassador to Constantinople. Orlando performs his duties well, until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots. He falls asleep for a lengthy period, resisting all efforts to rouse him. Upon awakening he finds that he has metamorphosed into a woman—the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. For this reason, the now Lady Orlando covertly escapes Constantinople in the company of a Gypsy clan, adopting their way of life until its essential conflict with her upbringing leads her to head home. Only on the ship back to England, with her constraining female clothes and an incident in which a flash of her ankle nearly results in a sailor's falling to his death, does she realise the magnitude of becoming a woman; yet she concludes the overall advantages, declaring 'Praise God I'm a woman!'
Orlando becomes caught up in the life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, holding court with the great poets (notably Alexander Pope), winning a lawsuit and marrying a sea captain. In 1928, she publishes The Oak Tree centuries after starting it, winning a prize.
[edit] Conceptual history
Apart from being, at the beginning of the book, a knightly young man, ready for adventure, Woolf's character takes little from the legendary hero Orlando of the Italian Renaissance, spoken by Ludovico Ariosto in the Orlando Furioso.Orlando can be read as a roman à clef: the characters Orlando and Princess Sasha in the novel refer to Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis respectively. The photographs printed in the illustrated editions of the text are all of the real Vita Sackville-West. Her husband, Harold Nicolson, appears in the novel as Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine. "The Oak Tree", the poem written by Orlando in the novel, refers to the poem "The Land", for which Vita had won the Hawthornden Prize in 1926. Moreover, the minor character Nick Greene, who later reappears as Sir Nicholas Greene, spouts opinions which had been uttered in real life by Logan Pearsall Smith.[1]
For historical details Woolf draws extensively from Knole and the Sackvilles, a book written (and reworked in several versions) by Sackville-West, describing the historic backgrounds of her ancestral home, Knole House in Kent. Other historical details derive from John Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie. (Orlando, personified as one of Vita's ancestors — the 6th Earl of Dorset — discusses artistic topics with his contemporaries as described in that book.) Orlando is also an attractive version of a history book on the Sackvilles' noble descendants, their estates, their culture, etc; Woolf was middle-class and fascinated by the aristocracy, as embodied in Vita. (Vita also wrote about these subjects, but Woolf thought Vita had a "pen of brass").
The conventions of fiction and fantasy (e.g., fictional names and a main character who lives through many centuries) allowed Woolf to write a well-documented biography of a person living in her own age, without opening herself to criticism about controversial topics such as lesbian love. While Orlando was published in the same year as The Well of Loneliness, a novel banned in the UK for its lesbian theme, it escaped censorship because the main character appears as a man when he loves Princess Sasha.
Vita's mother, Lady Sackville, was not pleased at the writing of the novel, because she believed the story was too plain in its meaning, and she would call Woolf the "virgin wolf" henceforth. Violet Trefusis's reply would be a more conventional roman à clef (Broderie Anglaise), which loses much of its interest if the reader does not know the background, whereas Orlando remains a captivating novel, even if the reader does not know the identity of the person in the photographs in the book.
Orlando: A Biography was described as an elaborate love letter from Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West (by the latter's son Nigel Nicolson); nonetheless, Woolf intended her novel as the first in a new trend, breaking the boundaries between what are traditionally seen as the fiction and non-fiction genres in literature (so the novel is not only about trans-gender, but also trans-genre, so to speak). This was not to be, however, as the book is invariably called a "novel" (while Woolf called it a "biography"), and is shelved in the "fiction" section of libraries and bookshops. Only in the last decades of the 20th century would authors again try this "tricky" cross-over genre (which differs from "romanticised" or "popularised" non-fiction, and does not necessarily have to take a roman à clef form) , e.g., Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (ISBN 0-330-28976-4).
[edit] Influence and recognition
The work has been the subject of numerous scholarly writings, including detailed treatment in multiple works on Virginia Woolf.[2] An "annotated" edition has been published to facilitate critical reading of the text.The novel's title has also come to stand for women's writing generally in some senses, as one of the most famous works by a woman author very directly treating gender.[3] For example, a project on the history of women's writing in the British Isles was named after the book.[4]
[edit] Notes
- ^ M. H. Whitworth, ‘Logan Pearsall Smith and Orlando,’ Review of English Studies, 55 (2004), 598-604.
- ^ See, e.g., Alice van Buren, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
- ^ For example: Jacqueline Harpman, "Orlanda", Paris, Grasset, 1997.
- ^ Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, available at http://orlando.cambridge.org/ .
[edit] External links
 | Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Orlando |
- Project Gutenberg Australia hosts a free eBook of Orlando; note that copyright may apply in countries other than Australia - Zip file, Text file
Virginia Woolf Icon
Culture Studies
Gender and Sexuality
Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature | General Criticism and Critical Theory
Women's Studies
Gender and Sexuality
Literature and Literary Criticism: British and Irish Literature | General Criticism and Critical Theory
Women's Studies
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