Discover more from APS Together
Chapter 3
Let no one ever say Virginia Woolf is a “domestic” novelist (implication: a merely domestic novelist.) Her characters grapple with all the eternal questions.
“What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying ‘Life stand still here’; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent)—this was of the nature of a revelation.”
This seems to me—always—Woolf’s revelation.
The Moment was all; the moment was enough. [The Waves]
“Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. ‘Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!’ she repeated. She owed it all to her.
Chapter 4
The children, now teenagers, have only one parent. They’ve lost two siblings.
“Cam now felt herself overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and wondered how to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his entreaty—forgive me, care for me; while James the lawgiver, with the tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee (his hand on the tiller had become symbolical to her), said, Resist him. Fight him. He said so rightly; justly. For they must fight tyranny to the death, she thought.”
Join us on May 15 for a virtual discussion of To the Lighthouse with Mona Simpson.
 | A guest post by
|
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Day 12
“Life stand still here” seems like a fine intention for a morning meditation practice. Matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. Shape in the midst of chaos. And as I write these words, the croak of a roadrunner hunting for lizards in my back yard. Part Two of this book was rough sailing for me at this particular moment in my life, but I have reached calm waters again. Story stand still here.
Love and agree with everything Mona writes today about the beautiful and surprisingly hopeful (for me anyway) revelation on time: "Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."
And in the next chapter, amid James' conflicted thoughts of his father, his sudden riff on time in the next chapter also adds to VW's idea of these accumulated "moments of being":
"He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea, how a man had marched up and down and stopped dead, upright, over them."