I think Molly Hite mentioned, or at least quoted people mentioning, that "The Waves" is one of, if not the, most ambitious work Woolf attempted. Or at least, that as the sense I got. If I was correct in getting that sense, then I would have to agree. She's really pulling out all the stops on this one. She's breaking all the rules, she's flipped structure and diction on its head, and the entire definition of "narrative" has been weighed, measured, and found wanting--at least in the conventional sense. It's just my opinion, but this has to be the most experimental work that I've read of hers, and considering that she never really shied away from the experimental, that's actually quite a feat.
For starters, Hite talks about Woolf's attempt to write this in the style of classic lyrical and epic poetry, and so far that really comes through: you can see it very clearly in the repetition of certain phrases and words (banker in Brisbane), said repetition, of course, stemming from the ancient lyrical conceit in order to help the poet easier memorize the thousands of lines he was reading. The language, too, of course, is an obvious one: everything is melodious and smeared with a thick layer of purple--fortunately, it never becomes unbearable in this novel, probably because the entire experience of reading it is so surreal that you're not really sure WHAT to think anymore. The purple prose works because Woolf hasn't confined this into the normal conventions--you, or at least I, was well aware that I was inhabiting an entire different universe than the fictional ones I was accustomed to. Everything is in speak, for starters, and there's no outside narrator to fill in the gaps--the novel relies entirely on the voices of the main characters to impart the story, to the extent that there is really a story...well, I take that back: I think the story is very present, it's just presented in a unique way.
Woolf's use of the present tense is another well-done experiment; it sort of puts the novel outside of time. The only reason we're able to parse out where the characters are in their lives are by the intermittent interjections on the path of the sun. This allows the characters to simultaneously tell and comment on the story without being bogged down with the restrictions of the universe's internal time. But, the prose is not so incomprehensible that we don't know what's going on, which is in itself a remarkable accomplishment. The whole thing seems to me a trip through the unfettered mind. It doesn't matter the individual educational level or sesquipedalian flair of the characters in real life, because "The Waves" looks through their minds outside of earthbound restraints. Its more the basic essence of the characters that is talking, rather than their actual brains, which also helps uplift the tense conceit and the fact that very little actually happens: most of what we learn about the character's lives has already taken place, and the characters are just ruminating on it, such as school, college, etc.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Some thoughts on "A Room of One's Own"
I wanted to go ahead and post once more on this, since we're moving on after Thursday; but his has become, quite simply, my favorite work that I've read by her, even above Orlando, which I had, up to that point, had claimed the Number 1 spot. But this is just so heartfelt, so passionate, so correct, even under her attempts to disguise it for the sake of reception and consideration, that you just can't help but get caught up in the pathos. There are several points that I want to get to here, on a variety of subjects, scattered throughout the chapters.
First, the idea expressed in the last paragraph of chapter 3, page .56: "All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him [Shakespeare] and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare." The context of this "main idea" quote is in the section regarding how people of genius mind most what was said of them, even though they shouldn't. I think Woolf is referring to many things in this quote/section, the first, most obvious of which is self-censorship. She's sort of taking a jab at herself in this manner--it's a bit of a despondent, dreary self-admission that despite the profundity, despite the pertinence, and despite the import of what she is saying, she ultimately cannot write it down (at this point, anyway) and hope to be taken seriously; she has to consider the current and future opinions held of her. She knows if she takes the gloves off here, then most people will disregard her, no matter what she says, in the future, especially in context of the controversiality of the subject matter. However, there's another layer to the quote, which is a motif of (and pardon the word choice, it's late and my I.Q. is plummeting by the second)--but I think the best word would be applicability--which in its iteration I am regarding was coined by JRR Tolkein. See, without Shakespeare having a clear goal in his mind of trying to get something accomplished with his writing--that is, a score to settle, a grievance, a hardship, etc...then his work contains a vaccum, exists, more a less, in a dimension unfettered by the grimy ropes of human concerns. We can't narrow the impact of Shakespeare's work, we can't dismiss it as a satire against this portion of society or a railing against that (as with Ben Jonson), we can't nail it down and make it meaningless. Rather, it can say anything and everything we want, and nothing we want. It cannot be disregarded, it cannot be ignored, it must always, always, be taken into consideration, because whatever we are arguing is of the universal, and Shakespeare, according to Woolf, is the true universal: applicable to any and everything because, due to both his craft and our lack of information about him, he has no apparent axe to grind. And that gives him a freedom rarely experienced by writers of any sort, much less female writers trying to advocate an impossible position.
Another portion that got me thinking was on or about pg. 70--she's talking about women being, like, sequestered pretty much, in their houses, unable to experience the world at large. This appealed to me because of the notion of what a writer is, and how it's difficult for a writer to exist in isolation. A writer must be detached, but interred, completely caught up in the workings of society, and yet, somehow, simultaneously, separate, if the writer ever hopes to transcribe something that could be labeled as truth. It's interesting to think, then, how hard it was for women to become writers simply due to this fact: that they couldn't experience anything. Even the greats like Austen and the Brontes, as Woolf says, were unable to really expand their writerly visions beyond the bounds of the gardens and the kitchen table. Maybe Charlotte would have written War and Peace first if she'd been allowed to tour the battlegrounds of the hundred year's war. It makes it an interesting prospect: if Emily had been allowed to fully experience life and train on it her sharp, keen writerly eye, how different would Wuthering Heights have been? How different Jane Eyre? Or Pride and Prejudice? Would they have existed at all? Would there have been more novels by them, on a veritable host of subjects, themes, and characterizations?
A little related is page 73: "This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room." I couldn't help but remember Nick Greene, our old friend from Orlando (with his cameo here, of course), and his evaluations of what constitutes good lit and bad lit. What's REALLY crazy is that this idea has not entirely disappeared in literature today--it's been effaced quite a bit, and it's very hidden, but if you look hard enough, it's still there--just very subtle. One of my mother's favorite romance authors has a blog which has a quote I think pertains to this. There was a discussion of why romance is so vehemently marginalized as a genre in literature,and the author person said something like:
"If the guy stumbled in the door with a fifth of Jack, beats his wife to a pulp, then vomits his guts and and collapses among the puke, whiskey and broken glass shards, it's literature. But if a guy loves a woman, sleeps with her, brings her to climax and then holds her tightly afterwards, it's romance? WTF?" (WTF added by me). But you can still see the masculine/feminine dichotomy in this, unfortunately very real, trope: manly man subjugates woman, quaffs strong liquor, displays over-blown feats of power and strength, collapses because of the internal tortures ripping his soul. Wussy man shows respect to a woman and treats her as equal in bedroom--no person other than a woman would want wussy man. Must be romance.
Like I said, it's very subtle, very understated, but the opposition is, in fact, still a reality. And that really goes nuts when you talk about pathos...we had this...intense discussion in a class I won't name the other day about a book I won't name wherein the book was being criticized for being--beach-reading. Horrors. Why was the book beach reading? Because it was too much pathos, not enough logos, not enough reason and logic. It wasn't intellectual enough. It wasn't stuffy enough. It wasn't...dare I say it...masculine, enough. The problem here was not simply that the book was considered beach reading simply because it had a lot of emotion, but that it was considered beneath the intellectual auspices of the class because of it....now I'm going off a little here, so I think I need to elaborate, that in our society, classically, emotion=female, reason=male. Reason>emotion, thus establishing a facet of our beloved hierarchies. What made this so infuriating was the fact that, in the English major, which is supposed to be breaking down hierarchies, there is a male/female hierarchy that still exists that is so cut and dried and assumed that most people don't even realize it's there. And that is the marginaliztion of certain types of reading simply because they exhibit too much emotion. Most of the class bought into it, male, female, no matter (that in itself could compose a rather circumspective essay). The point, to bring it to a close, is that in our world the dichotomy Woolf mentions is still there, that Nick Greene is still very much alive, and that, perhaps most frightening of all, it's present in the very bastions where it is supposedly being broken down.
I earmarked pg. 80 because it's hilarious. There's really not much to say about it: it speaks for itself: "I turned the page and read...I am sorry to break off so abruptly. Are there no men present? Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over the the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these--'Chloe liked Olivia...." Do not start. Do not brush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."
lulz.
pg. 97 offers Woolf's idea of the perfect writer's mind, which I thought was interesting. I don't necessarily buy into the whole male/female mind thing, but I do understand what she is saying. And male/female notwithstanding, it doesn't do any writer good to deny a portion of himself, whether male/female or not. Writing is about truth, in its essence, which does not happen under a guise of self-denial. You have to be balanced within yourself, understand yourself, because otherwise how could you even attempt to comprehend the myriad facts of the human soul? So the idea of an androgynous mind is appealing here, not the least of which because such a mind would, as mentioned above, have more of a panoramic view than a mind cut in two and focused on one half.
Finally, to sum up this dissertation, I would like to focus on the last couple of pages. We discussed Woolf's anger last class, and how she had to tone it down for reasons elucidated above. But, my lord, it seeps through one these last two pages...less rage, though, more scolding. I do like how she ends with a "peroration" which, instead of being directed at how bad the men have been, chides the women on how negligent they have been. She's not buying their excuses. She's not coddling their whining. She's not accepting their protestations. And, what I like most of all, she's not oblivious to the reality of the situation. Far too often we see people be hypocrites and intentionally not see what has been done in order to harp on what's not been done. But here, Woolf puts the onus on the women. Sure, the system's still hard. Sure it's unfair. Sure, it's difficult. But there are colleges, there are means, there are doors--the reason they haven't gotten bigger, according to Woolf, is less that men are holding them shut than that women are being to lazy and derelict to go through them. They'd rather whine instead. I like how Woolf ends on a rallying cry, that the fight is their responsibility, and only they can wake Shakespeare's sister.
First, the idea expressed in the last paragraph of chapter 3, page .56: "All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him [Shakespeare] and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare." The context of this "main idea" quote is in the section regarding how people of genius mind most what was said of them, even though they shouldn't. I think Woolf is referring to many things in this quote/section, the first, most obvious of which is self-censorship. She's sort of taking a jab at herself in this manner--it's a bit of a despondent, dreary self-admission that despite the profundity, despite the pertinence, and despite the import of what she is saying, she ultimately cannot write it down (at this point, anyway) and hope to be taken seriously; she has to consider the current and future opinions held of her. She knows if she takes the gloves off here, then most people will disregard her, no matter what she says, in the future, especially in context of the controversiality of the subject matter. However, there's another layer to the quote, which is a motif of (and pardon the word choice, it's late and my I.Q. is plummeting by the second)--but I think the best word would be applicability--which in its iteration I am regarding was coined by JRR Tolkein. See, without Shakespeare having a clear goal in his mind of trying to get something accomplished with his writing--that is, a score to settle, a grievance, a hardship, etc...then his work contains a vaccum, exists, more a less, in a dimension unfettered by the grimy ropes of human concerns. We can't narrow the impact of Shakespeare's work, we can't dismiss it as a satire against this portion of society or a railing against that (as with Ben Jonson), we can't nail it down and make it meaningless. Rather, it can say anything and everything we want, and nothing we want. It cannot be disregarded, it cannot be ignored, it must always, always, be taken into consideration, because whatever we are arguing is of the universal, and Shakespeare, according to Woolf, is the true universal: applicable to any and everything because, due to both his craft and our lack of information about him, he has no apparent axe to grind. And that gives him a freedom rarely experienced by writers of any sort, much less female writers trying to advocate an impossible position.
Another portion that got me thinking was on or about pg. 70--she's talking about women being, like, sequestered pretty much, in their houses, unable to experience the world at large. This appealed to me because of the notion of what a writer is, and how it's difficult for a writer to exist in isolation. A writer must be detached, but interred, completely caught up in the workings of society, and yet, somehow, simultaneously, separate, if the writer ever hopes to transcribe something that could be labeled as truth. It's interesting to think, then, how hard it was for women to become writers simply due to this fact: that they couldn't experience anything. Even the greats like Austen and the Brontes, as Woolf says, were unable to really expand their writerly visions beyond the bounds of the gardens and the kitchen table. Maybe Charlotte would have written War and Peace first if she'd been allowed to tour the battlegrounds of the hundred year's war. It makes it an interesting prospect: if Emily had been allowed to fully experience life and train on it her sharp, keen writerly eye, how different would Wuthering Heights have been? How different Jane Eyre? Or Pride and Prejudice? Would they have existed at all? Would there have been more novels by them, on a veritable host of subjects, themes, and characterizations?
A little related is page 73: "This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room." I couldn't help but remember Nick Greene, our old friend from Orlando (with his cameo here, of course), and his evaluations of what constitutes good lit and bad lit. What's REALLY crazy is that this idea has not entirely disappeared in literature today--it's been effaced quite a bit, and it's very hidden, but if you look hard enough, it's still there--just very subtle. One of my mother's favorite romance authors has a blog which has a quote I think pertains to this. There was a discussion of why romance is so vehemently marginalized as a genre in literature,and the author person said something like:
"If the guy stumbled in the door with a fifth of Jack, beats his wife to a pulp, then vomits his guts and and collapses among the puke, whiskey and broken glass shards, it's literature. But if a guy loves a woman, sleeps with her, brings her to climax and then holds her tightly afterwards, it's romance? WTF?" (WTF added by me). But you can still see the masculine/feminine dichotomy in this, unfortunately very real, trope: manly man subjugates woman, quaffs strong liquor, displays over-blown feats of power and strength, collapses because of the internal tortures ripping his soul. Wussy man shows respect to a woman and treats her as equal in bedroom--no person other than a woman would want wussy man. Must be romance.
Like I said, it's very subtle, very understated, but the opposition is, in fact, still a reality. And that really goes nuts when you talk about pathos...we had this...intense discussion in a class I won't name the other day about a book I won't name wherein the book was being criticized for being--beach-reading. Horrors. Why was the book beach reading? Because it was too much pathos, not enough logos, not enough reason and logic. It wasn't intellectual enough. It wasn't stuffy enough. It wasn't...dare I say it...masculine, enough. The problem here was not simply that the book was considered beach reading simply because it had a lot of emotion, but that it was considered beneath the intellectual auspices of the class because of it....now I'm going off a little here, so I think I need to elaborate, that in our society, classically, emotion=female, reason=male. Reason>emotion, thus establishing a facet of our beloved hierarchies. What made this so infuriating was the fact that, in the English major, which is supposed to be breaking down hierarchies, there is a male/female hierarchy that still exists that is so cut and dried and assumed that most people don't even realize it's there. And that is the marginaliztion of certain types of reading simply because they exhibit too much emotion. Most of the class bought into it, male, female, no matter (that in itself could compose a rather circumspective essay). The point, to bring it to a close, is that in our world the dichotomy Woolf mentions is still there, that Nick Greene is still very much alive, and that, perhaps most frightening of all, it's present in the very bastions where it is supposedly being broken down.
I earmarked pg. 80 because it's hilarious. There's really not much to say about it: it speaks for itself: "I turned the page and read...I am sorry to break off so abruptly. Are there no men present? Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over the the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these--'Chloe liked Olivia...." Do not start. Do not brush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."
lulz.
pg. 97 offers Woolf's idea of the perfect writer's mind, which I thought was interesting. I don't necessarily buy into the whole male/female mind thing, but I do understand what she is saying. And male/female notwithstanding, it doesn't do any writer good to deny a portion of himself, whether male/female or not. Writing is about truth, in its essence, which does not happen under a guise of self-denial. You have to be balanced within yourself, understand yourself, because otherwise how could you even attempt to comprehend the myriad facts of the human soul? So the idea of an androgynous mind is appealing here, not the least of which because such a mind would, as mentioned above, have more of a panoramic view than a mind cut in two and focused on one half.
Finally, to sum up this dissertation, I would like to focus on the last couple of pages. We discussed Woolf's anger last class, and how she had to tone it down for reasons elucidated above. But, my lord, it seeps through one these last two pages...less rage, though, more scolding. I do like how she ends with a "peroration" which, instead of being directed at how bad the men have been, chides the women on how negligent they have been. She's not buying their excuses. She's not coddling their whining. She's not accepting their protestations. And, what I like most of all, she's not oblivious to the reality of the situation. Far too often we see people be hypocrites and intentionally not see what has been done in order to harp on what's not been done. But here, Woolf puts the onus on the women. Sure, the system's still hard. Sure it's unfair. Sure, it's difficult. But there are colleges, there are means, there are doors--the reason they haven't gotten bigger, according to Woolf, is less that men are holding them shut than that women are being to lazy and derelict to go through them. They'd rather whine instead. I like how Woolf ends on a rallying cry, that the fight is their responsibility, and only they can wake Shakespeare's sister.
Friday, October 15, 2010
A Room of One's Own
This was great. Really, Woolf is awesome when she affects this more conversational tone...not that she's not awesome otherwise, but there's something less--mental, I'd say, and more soulful in A Room of One's Own than other works we've read by her. In many of the others, she's concerned with matters of the mind, but in this, I think, whether she meant it or not, she's concerned with matters of the heart, and the tone really strikes that chord.
So there's a lot to go over in just these chapters. My attention was first drawn to the story of her ersatz character not being admitted to the library. I thought this was a particularly salient moment, because I think we, nowadays, tend to misunderstand just how deep the depths of this patriarchal abyss reached. The funny thing was, it was nothing obvious. It wasn't like there were splatter-pages of spousal abuse plastered everywhere. It was in the little things, things that we don't even consider today as being of any importance whatsoever. She's not admitted to the library, not because she's not a member, not because she doesn't go to the college, but specifically because she is a woman. Wow.
And I love the talk she has about money, or the politics of money, using Mrs. Seton as a bit of a launching point. But one of my favorite quotes thusfar is when she's harping sardonically on romance: "When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed?" What drew me to this quote was its similarity to a passage from Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms (I think I acutally might have mentioned this before), where he talks about how the "old words" from before the war were eradicated by it; that quote, and this one, is just more and more affirmation of how WWI really changed everything. It's hard to put society, empire, civilization on a Victorian pedestal after such wanton destruction and the harsh realities of blood and gore and mankind have been laid before you. Likewise, I enjoyed the way she described "men's anger" at women, which is not anger at all, but a sort of inferiority complex hidden in reams of superiority. That men won't tolerate women thinking because of some childish need to be superior is simultaneously pathetic and sad--and it was interesting to see the metaphor of the mirror (men use women to make themselves twice their size)--used here in its original form (I think we mentioned in in class about To the Lighthouse.). This quote, in particular: "For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks, his fitness for life is diminished." (36) How lame of men to need to oppress women to inculcate their self-worth.
So yeah, awesome first two chapters, can't wait to read the rest.
So there's a lot to go over in just these chapters. My attention was first drawn to the story of her ersatz character not being admitted to the library. I thought this was a particularly salient moment, because I think we, nowadays, tend to misunderstand just how deep the depths of this patriarchal abyss reached. The funny thing was, it was nothing obvious. It wasn't like there were splatter-pages of spousal abuse plastered everywhere. It was in the little things, things that we don't even consider today as being of any importance whatsoever. She's not admitted to the library, not because she's not a member, not because she doesn't go to the college, but specifically because she is a woman. Wow.
And I love the talk she has about money, or the politics of money, using Mrs. Seton as a bit of a launching point. But one of my favorite quotes thusfar is when she's harping sardonically on romance: "When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed?" What drew me to this quote was its similarity to a passage from Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms (I think I acutally might have mentioned this before), where he talks about how the "old words" from before the war were eradicated by it; that quote, and this one, is just more and more affirmation of how WWI really changed everything. It's hard to put society, empire, civilization on a Victorian pedestal after such wanton destruction and the harsh realities of blood and gore and mankind have been laid before you. Likewise, I enjoyed the way she described "men's anger" at women, which is not anger at all, but a sort of inferiority complex hidden in reams of superiority. That men won't tolerate women thinking because of some childish need to be superior is simultaneously pathetic and sad--and it was interesting to see the metaphor of the mirror (men use women to make themselves twice their size)--used here in its original form (I think we mentioned in in class about To the Lighthouse.). This quote, in particular: "For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks, his fitness for life is diminished." (36) How lame of men to need to oppress women to inculcate their self-worth.
So yeah, awesome first two chapters, can't wait to read the rest.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Hey...it's criticism time! (Article 8)
Now I read that article to read this article: It's called "A Splice of Reel Life: Virginia Woolf and the Cinema," by Leslie Haskins, and believe it or not, there's surprisingly little about movies in the thing. The main thesis of the essay is Woolf's struggle with emotion and sentimentality, with the former being rather disdained by the manly-men patriarchal society of which she was embroiled--Haskins references Woolf's reading aloud of her memoir about her sexual abuse in front of her Bloomsbury coterie and the...uh...less than encouraging reactions from the (progressive?) male members....whaaaaaat?
But Woolf is not one of those manly men, and neither was it prudent for her to detach her self from emotion--or even safe: "Woolf recognized the failure to feel, that immense distance from emotion, as madness." (pg...2, I think? I got this off teh internetz). Likewise, "Because Woolf experienced 'not feeling' as inseparable from death and insanity, she challenged those aesthetics which appeared to deny or distance emotion." (pg. 2) Thus, Woolf had to find ways to be "taken seriously," as it were--that is, convey the emotions necessary in her revolutionary type of psychological writing without being to overt about it, lest no one pay her any attention. And this, finally, is where the cinema comes in. Haskins references a number of things Woolf, if not learned from the cinema, then at least saw increased potential for in her own writing, a la "[The] suggestion of visual aesthetics in which the movement of abstract shapes conveyed emotional power." Like this, Woolf "developed innovative parallel strategies with words," including "links between motion and emotion and rhythm and relation."
Haskins then goes on to focus specifically on "Time Passes," and how these techniques partially garnered from cinema make their way into that particular piece of literature; for example the "elegiac quality of time." Or of "a camera like recording narrative, the narrative 'eye' which is not an 'I' records dispassionately the scene for the viewer to complete with subjective emotion." It's pretty interesting to think of "Time Passes" this way, actually. The more you think about it, the more "Time Passes" does partially seem like something out of a montage of a movie, showing the gradual decay of a symbolic object.
Another portion of cinema that Woolf actually foresees is the use of editing as an important element of cinema... I doubt this was intentional, but as Haskins puts it: "the jarring juxtaposition of this sylistic coup [the bracketed segments in 'Time Passes'] anticipated Russian film theory's influential analysis of editing as the essential element of cinema."
Overall, it's a pretty interesting article, especially when it comes down to Woolf's fight to inject credible emotion into her works without being marginalized.
But Woolf is not one of those manly men, and neither was it prudent for her to detach her self from emotion--or even safe: "Woolf recognized the failure to feel, that immense distance from emotion, as madness." (pg...2, I think? I got this off teh internetz). Likewise, "Because Woolf experienced 'not feeling' as inseparable from death and insanity, she challenged those aesthetics which appeared to deny or distance emotion." (pg. 2) Thus, Woolf had to find ways to be "taken seriously," as it were--that is, convey the emotions necessary in her revolutionary type of psychological writing without being to overt about it, lest no one pay her any attention. And this, finally, is where the cinema comes in. Haskins references a number of things Woolf, if not learned from the cinema, then at least saw increased potential for in her own writing, a la "[The] suggestion of visual aesthetics in which the movement of abstract shapes conveyed emotional power." Like this, Woolf "developed innovative parallel strategies with words," including "links between motion and emotion and rhythm and relation."
Haskins then goes on to focus specifically on "Time Passes," and how these techniques partially garnered from cinema make their way into that particular piece of literature; for example the "elegiac quality of time." Or of "a camera like recording narrative, the narrative 'eye' which is not an 'I' records dispassionately the scene for the viewer to complete with subjective emotion." It's pretty interesting to think of "Time Passes" this way, actually. The more you think about it, the more "Time Passes" does partially seem like something out of a montage of a movie, showing the gradual decay of a symbolic object.
Another portion of cinema that Woolf actually foresees is the use of editing as an important element of cinema... I doubt this was intentional, but as Haskins puts it: "the jarring juxtaposition of this sylistic coup [the bracketed segments in 'Time Passes'] anticipated Russian film theory's influential analysis of editing as the essential element of cinema."
Overall, it's a pretty interesting article, especially when it comes down to Woolf's fight to inject credible emotion into her works without being marginalized.
Woolf's "The Cinema"
All right, it's midnight, I'm hopped up on espresso from which I am sure to crash at any moment, and my thoughts are fluttering somewhere between coffee-induced mania and exhaustion-induced lethargy. Perfect way to talk about two articles.
The first article, which sets up the latter, is by Woolf herself. It's called "The Cinema" and its recommendable to anyone who's interesting it either literary or film theory. In it, she speaks on the weakness of the still-pretty-new form of media presentation, and, in a bit of unintentional foreshadowing, the possible strengths. More specifically--she must have just watched "Anna Karenina" when she wrote this--she talks about the cinema's tendency at the moment to limit rather than expand the interpretive quality of the story: "The eye says, 'Here is Anna Karenina.' A voluptuous lady in black velvet wearing pearls....but the brain says, 'That is no more Anna Karenina than it is Queen Victoria.' For the brain knows Anna almost entirely by the inside of her mind--her charm, her passion, her despair. All the emphasis is laid by the cinema upon her teeth, her pearls, and her velvet." Her we also see Woolf's continuing focus on the interior of the mind and its workings: more or less, she's criticizing the cinema for doing the exact same things that she was criticizing Victorian writers for in Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. However, her disdain is less evident, and more encouraging: she knows it is a fledglings form. Likewise, she apparently sees potential to relate these complex emotions--her example is a black spot that emerges on the film. It turned out to be entirely by accident, but Woolf nevertheless says "[I]f a shadow at a certain moment can suggest so much more than the actual gestures and words of men and women in a state of fear, it seems plain that the cinema has within its grasp innumerable symbols for emotions that have so fair failed to find expression."
She connects what the cinema should do with, what I think, is her own view of what literature should impart; remember, Woolf's living during a time of impressionism and post-impressionism, so when she says: "Even the simplest image...presents us with impressions of moisture and warmth and the glow of crimson and the softness of petals," she's giving us her thoughts on the power of words--and something the cinema should avoid because it simply cannot impart the same things (also a bit of pre-Derrida differance ideology, if you want to stretch it). In the end, she compares the cinema, currently, to people who stumble upon the beach to find perfect instruments, with no idea how to play them...yet they play them anyway. But she never relinquishes this tone of pontentiality, that the cinema can, or could, do things if it grew out of its box that even words couldn't do.
The first article, which sets up the latter, is by Woolf herself. It's called "The Cinema" and its recommendable to anyone who's interesting it either literary or film theory. In it, she speaks on the weakness of the still-pretty-new form of media presentation, and, in a bit of unintentional foreshadowing, the possible strengths. More specifically--she must have just watched "Anna Karenina" when she wrote this--she talks about the cinema's tendency at the moment to limit rather than expand the interpretive quality of the story: "The eye says, 'Here is Anna Karenina.' A voluptuous lady in black velvet wearing pearls....but the brain says, 'That is no more Anna Karenina than it is Queen Victoria.' For the brain knows Anna almost entirely by the inside of her mind--her charm, her passion, her despair. All the emphasis is laid by the cinema upon her teeth, her pearls, and her velvet." Her we also see Woolf's continuing focus on the interior of the mind and its workings: more or less, she's criticizing the cinema for doing the exact same things that she was criticizing Victorian writers for in Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. However, her disdain is less evident, and more encouraging: she knows it is a fledglings form. Likewise, she apparently sees potential to relate these complex emotions--her example is a black spot that emerges on the film. It turned out to be entirely by accident, but Woolf nevertheless says "[I]f a shadow at a certain moment can suggest so much more than the actual gestures and words of men and women in a state of fear, it seems plain that the cinema has within its grasp innumerable symbols for emotions that have so fair failed to find expression."
She connects what the cinema should do with, what I think, is her own view of what literature should impart; remember, Woolf's living during a time of impressionism and post-impressionism, so when she says: "Even the simplest image...presents us with impressions of moisture and warmth and the glow of crimson and the softness of petals," she's giving us her thoughts on the power of words--and something the cinema should avoid because it simply cannot impart the same things (also a bit of pre-Derrida differance ideology, if you want to stretch it). In the end, she compares the cinema, currently, to people who stumble upon the beach to find perfect instruments, with no idea how to play them...yet they play them anyway. But she never relinquishes this tone of pontentiality, that the cinema can, or could, do things if it grew out of its box that even words couldn't do.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Orlando
We talked about how "To the Lighthouse" is probably Woolf's most perfect novel as far as structure and form goes, and I think that's true after finishing Orlando--the difference between the two is that "To the Lighthouse" maintains a uniform structure and tone--while in Orlando the conceit of the biographer is distinctly lessened as the novel goes on, until he almost disappears altogether. You can see Woolf try to keep up the pretense--she injects comments every once in a while--but in the end it appears like she drops it almost entirely...perhaps this was intentional as Orlando gets blasted more and more by THE PRESENT. And you can't exactly be a biographer of the present, can you?
The tone definitely gets more serious here...or perhaps I should say socially oriented? Woolf seems to be taking this half of the novel to examine some societal problems, specifically those of women, using Orlando as a synecdoche; the witticism are funny, like when the sailor falls off the mast because Orlando accidentally shows TWO INCHES of her calf...wow.
Not to Mention the ubiquitous Mr. Greene, who seems to possess about the same amount of uncanny lifespan as Orlando and who is, I'm almost certain, a representation of literary thought as a whole. Notice how now he thinks that Shakespeare and Marlowe are the bees' knees, while the contemporary writers are hacks. I also like how Woolf equates the literary transformation into Victorianism with the societal transformation into Victorianism--the description of the "damp" setting in is both creepy and fitting.
The tone definitely gets more serious here...or perhaps I should say socially oriented? Woolf seems to be taking this half of the novel to examine some societal problems, specifically those of women, using Orlando as a synecdoche; the witticism are funny, like when the sailor falls off the mast because Orlando accidentally shows TWO INCHES of her calf...wow.
Not to Mention the ubiquitous Mr. Greene, who seems to possess about the same amount of uncanny lifespan as Orlando and who is, I'm almost certain, a representation of literary thought as a whole. Notice how now he thinks that Shakespeare and Marlowe are the bees' knees, while the contemporary writers are hacks. I also like how Woolf equates the literary transformation into Victorianism with the societal transformation into Victorianism--the description of the "damp" setting in is both creepy and fitting.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Hey....it's criticism time! (Article 7)
For this weeks issue, we turn to a succinct article by one Wayne Narey, entitled "Virginia Woolf's 'The Mark on the Wall': An Einsteinian View of Art." Now, while we've already covered "The Mark on the Wall" a long time ago, this article does articulate a few good points about time, its relativity, and its velocity, which is what prompted the always-generous Mylene to let me have it in the first place--which also explains the fabulous margin notes, many of which are better than the actual article.
Wayne Narey main point here is t hat Woolf "offers an artistic manifesto of an emerging concept of time and perspective." (35) He then goes on to talk about how these views were possibly influenced by Albert Einstein, whose theories of relativity were becoming popular at the time. Problem being that he has no really proof of that, so mentioning Einstein's influence is rather pointless...I think Mylene sums it up best:
"Well that's just a f'in guess!"
Narey also makes the statement that "nor would I press the Einsteinian 'influence' beyond a few of her early stories." (35) To which I made my own note, which looked something like this:
".....whaaaaaaat?"
Did this guy even READ anymore Woolf? I just find this funny cause this relativistic influence is basically what I'm doing my essay on; but apparently she stopped after her first short stories. Ha, okay--this statement had the ability to undermine his credibility, but fortunately a few insightful statements redeem him.
Now a lot of the stuff he talks about centers on text in "The Mark on the Wall." Being that we've already tread that ground, I instead focused on the stuff that would apply to most of her work. For example, on 36 Neary states: "In breaking with a literary past, Woolf gives a particular emphasis to the relationship between time and perspective." This I think is very interesting, because it's one of the myriad things she's playing with in Mrs. Dalloway. The nature of the "walks" of the characters and their examinations and interpretations of objects that cross their paths--which stretches the book--in meta-time--to a four or five hour read, even though the walks don't take more than an hour, if that; not to mention the way the objects on the walks, the wandering thoughts, play with memory, which is our clearest and perhaps only manifestation of the past.
Neary goes on; he talks about Woolf creating a time "relative to the beholder" (37), and how this "separates [her art] from a fiction where time passes equally for all characters." (37)
Then we reach another interesting quote on 39. Again, it's specifically about "TMOTW," but the canonically relative portion reads as thus: "...painting a life run on emotional time rather than clock time." This is subtly, though not intrinsically, related to perspective, and again is something she puts to great effect in Mrs. Dalloway (despite not doing so after her early short stories.......whaaaaaaat?) This idea of emotional time is interesting, especially when thinking of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway, and how their emotions effect the velocity of temporality--a la when Mrs. Dalloway dwells, in the end, of Septimus death, which stretches over a certain amount of time--I'll have to read the novel again to be sure. But the time is definitely effected both meta (time taken to actually read the book) and in-universe (time that passes in the book itself) when the characters dwell on memories triggered by emotions or just emotional reactions themselves.
Neary ends with a very nice quote: "Virginia Woolf's "The Mark on the Wall" proposes a new fiction, likewise necessary, in which 'everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing. There is a vast upheaval of matter.'" (42) (Actually, considering most of that was a quote by Woolf, it probably should say that Woolf ends with a nice quote). But it's interesting to see how this new fiction evolves in her later stories and novels (even though she didn't use it after her early stories.............whaaaaaaaat?), specifically Mrs. Dalloway. But each plays with it in different ways. You have the slow, melodious, measured pace of "Time Passes," the impossible eddies in Orlando. Neary's article is not great, but it is good, and it has a lot of good quotes I can use in my paper many interesting points about the relationship of time and character in Woolf's writing.
..............whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Wayne Narey main point here is t hat Woolf "offers an artistic manifesto of an emerging concept of time and perspective." (35) He then goes on to talk about how these views were possibly influenced by Albert Einstein, whose theories of relativity were becoming popular at the time. Problem being that he has no really proof of that, so mentioning Einstein's influence is rather pointless...I think Mylene sums it up best:
"Well that's just a f'in guess!"
Narey also makes the statement that "nor would I press the Einsteinian 'influence' beyond a few of her early stories." (35) To which I made my own note, which looked something like this:
".....whaaaaaaat?"
Did this guy even READ anymore Woolf? I just find this funny cause this relativistic influence is basically what I'm doing my essay on; but apparently she stopped after her first short stories. Ha, okay--this statement had the ability to undermine his credibility, but fortunately a few insightful statements redeem him.
Now a lot of the stuff he talks about centers on text in "The Mark on the Wall." Being that we've already tread that ground, I instead focused on the stuff that would apply to most of her work. For example, on 36 Neary states: "In breaking with a literary past, Woolf gives a particular emphasis to the relationship between time and perspective." This I think is very interesting, because it's one of the myriad things she's playing with in Mrs. Dalloway. The nature of the "walks" of the characters and their examinations and interpretations of objects that cross their paths--which stretches the book--in meta-time--to a four or five hour read, even though the walks don't take more than an hour, if that; not to mention the way the objects on the walks, the wandering thoughts, play with memory, which is our clearest and perhaps only manifestation of the past.
Neary goes on; he talks about Woolf creating a time "relative to the beholder" (37), and how this "separates [her art] from a fiction where time passes equally for all characters." (37)
Then we reach another interesting quote on 39. Again, it's specifically about "TMOTW," but the canonically relative portion reads as thus: "...painting a life run on emotional time rather than clock time." This is subtly, though not intrinsically, related to perspective, and again is something she puts to great effect in Mrs. Dalloway (despite not doing so after her early short stories.......whaaaaaaat?) This idea of emotional time is interesting, especially when thinking of the characters in Mrs. Dalloway, and how their emotions effect the velocity of temporality--a la when Mrs. Dalloway dwells, in the end, of Septimus death, which stretches over a certain amount of time--I'll have to read the novel again to be sure. But the time is definitely effected both meta (time taken to actually read the book) and in-universe (time that passes in the book itself) when the characters dwell on memories triggered by emotions or just emotional reactions themselves.
Neary ends with a very nice quote: "Virginia Woolf's "The Mark on the Wall" proposes a new fiction, likewise necessary, in which 'everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing. There is a vast upheaval of matter.'" (42) (Actually, considering most of that was a quote by Woolf, it probably should say that Woolf ends with a nice quote). But it's interesting to see how this new fiction evolves in her later stories and novels (even though she didn't use it after her early stories.............whaaaaaaaat?), specifically Mrs. Dalloway. But each plays with it in different ways. You have the slow, melodious, measured pace of "Time Passes," the impossible eddies in Orlando. Neary's article is not great, but it is good, and it has
..............whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Lighthouse
Okay, this last portion of "Too the Lighthouse" is probably them most easily understood of everything by Woolf I've read...primarily, I think, because we so thoroughly deconstructed Mr. Ramsey's character that his actions in the third part hold no ambiguity. We know precisely what is going on with him and, therefore, what's going on with most of the characters. In fact, I think it's interesting that Mr. Ramsey, for all his faults, seems, ironically, to be the central figure in this entire section. Everything revolves around him: what the characters think, their reactions, their ruminations-it's almost like, meta-fictionally, Woolf is giving Mr. Ramsey exactly what he always desired, that is the unflagging attention of precisely...everyone...that's around him.
I thought the section with James was very true to life, and I would wager was a partial representation of Woolf's own feelings towards her father. The simultaneity of both hating your father and begging for his admiration is one of life's very, very, very true and hopelessly contradictory facets--well, if you have those kinds of conflicting feelings for someone. But James wants to strike his father down...wants to, in fact, stab his through the heart like a frackin' vampire...but then he entirely desires at the exact same instance that his father just affirm him, just compliment him, one time. There's something a little more poignant about this than Mr. Ramsey's desire for affirmation from Mrs. Ramsey.
Now this ending...there's something profound in it, that I haven't quite placed my finger on. It's become ridiculously obvious that the lighthouse stands for something--there's too much talk on it, what it looks like, its positioning...James' little rumination on how the lighthouse is the same ten feet away even though it looks completely different from the isle. So they reach the lighthouse, and their boat becomes lost in the haze, at the moment, more or less, that Lily finishes her painting, and Carmichael, who seems to be a stand in for some sort of Greek God, blesses the termination of the voyage, at least through Lily's eyes. What was this journey about? Why was the lighthouse so important? Why does the book end upon the completion of the journey--ten years in the making, mind you--and the last stroke upon Lily's canvas?
I thought the section with James was very true to life, and I would wager was a partial representation of Woolf's own feelings towards her father. The simultaneity of both hating your father and begging for his admiration is one of life's very, very, very true and hopelessly contradictory facets--well, if you have those kinds of conflicting feelings for someone. But James wants to strike his father down...wants to, in fact, stab his through the heart like a frackin' vampire...but then he entirely desires at the exact same instance that his father just affirm him, just compliment him, one time. There's something a little more poignant about this than Mr. Ramsey's desire for affirmation from Mrs. Ramsey.
Now this ending...there's something profound in it, that I haven't quite placed my finger on. It's become ridiculously obvious that the lighthouse stands for something--there's too much talk on it, what it looks like, its positioning...James' little rumination on how the lighthouse is the same ten feet away even though it looks completely different from the isle. So they reach the lighthouse, and their boat becomes lost in the haze, at the moment, more or less, that Lily finishes her painting, and Carmichael, who seems to be a stand in for some sort of Greek God, blesses the termination of the voyage, at least through Lily's eyes. What was this journey about? Why was the lighthouse so important? Why does the book end upon the completion of the journey--ten years in the making, mind you--and the last stroke upon Lily's canvas?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)