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How Virginia Woolf read Proust

Monday 15 February 2010 by Alice Lowe

I know more people who, like myself, keep threatening to read Remembrance of Things Past “some day” than those who have actually done so.

This year I have the time and the resolve; I have acquired the first volume and have dipped in for a few warm-up sessions. Initial reactions: I find the languid pace entrancing at times, frustrating at others. I love his keen observations, his humor, but I can’t stay focused for very long at a time, so it will be slow going.

And of course I keep thinking about Woolf, about comparisons between the two, and particularly about her own response to this work at the time of its publication and acclaim. She started reading it in 1922 and was still working her way through in 1934, when she is said to have finished.

Proust appears frequently in her diaries and letters over the years, as a topic of conversation among friends as well as her own reactions to her reading. Given the frequency and relevance of her remarks, I’m amazed that Leonard Woolf includes no mentions of Proust in A Writer’s Diary, since clearly her reading influenced both her thinking and her writing.

She starts the second volume in January of 1923 and wonders if her writing will be influenced by his, as “one can hardly fail to profit” (Diary 2: February 10, 1923). She later writes: “No doubt Proust could say what I mean… . He makes it seem easy to write well; which only means that one is slipping along on borrowed skates” (Diary 2: Nov. 18, 1924). In 1932 she remarks that reading Proust, she feels free and can escape, compared to Lawrence, who makes her feel confined.

And so with a cup of tea and a madeleine, I open to page 66…

Posted in A Writer's Diary, Alice Lowe, Proust, Virginia Woolf, Woolf diary | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Getting the facts straight about Dreadnought

Wednesday 10 February 2010 by Paula Maggio

The Dreadnought Hoax, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

A bit of a back and forth about the Dreadnought Hoax took place on the VWoolf Listserv today. So now that the dust has cleared, here are the facts, as established by our Woolf experts:

  • The hoax occurred Monday, Feb. 7, 1910.  Peter Stansky verified the date by checking the original telegram related to the affair. It is housed in the National Archives at Kew, which was formerly known as the Public Records Office. You can access the Archives’ Dreadnought folder here. Stanksy included a full account of the hoax in his book, On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and its Intimate World, published by Harvard University Press in 1996.
  • Quentin Bell gives Feb. 10 as the date of the hoax in his biography of Woolf. In her biography, Hermione Lee gives Feb. 7 as the date, although she does not cite her source. In her 1997 biography Duncan Grant, Frances Spalding doesn’t give a source for her date either, but she does use the correct date of Feb. 7.
  • The Daily Mirror reported on Feb. 16, 1910, that “All England is laughing at the practical joke played a few days ago…”, beneath a photograph of the participants in the hoax.
  • The Dreadnought talk that Woolf gave to the Rodmell branch of the Women’s Institute is published in The Platform of Time, edited by S. P Rosenbaum. Georgia Johnston discovered the manuscript of the talk, and her account was published in the Woolf Studies Annual, Vol XV in 2009.
  • Adrian Stephen wrote The Dreadnought Hoax, published by the Hogarth Press in 1936.

Posted in Bloomsbury, Dreadnought Hoax, Hogarth Press | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

Sifting through Woolf notes on a snowy evening

Tuesday 9 February 2010 by Paula Maggio

I am enjoying a snow evening. Not a snow day, just a snow evening.

My university cancelled evening classes because of the snow, which means I don’t have to teach tonight. So instead of standing in front of a classroom, I am sitting at home on a sofa.

The unexpected free time feels especially fine. Outdoors I can hear my neighbor running his snow blower. In the kitchen, the tea kettle sounds ready to boil. The only jarring note is the TV, but it is the news hour, and my husband does have it tuned to PBS.

Meanwhile, with Jim Lehrer in the background, I pull together Woolf notes:

  • From Anne Fernald of Fernham, comes a tweet advising us to read “Always A Rambling Post on Common Readers, Classes and the Noise of Poetry,” which extols the virtues of Woolf, “a poet who wrote novels.”
  • S. Shulman shared a story about a Princeton exhibit in the Firestone Library’s Main Gallery called “The Author’s Portrait.” The exhibit runs through July 5 and includes a 1928 portrait of Woolf.
  • She also sent a link to a Londonist story, “Which is the Best London Novel?” Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is tied for the number three spot on the list. And Ian McEwan’s Saturday, inspired by Mrs. D, is number nine.
  • In an article in the London Times, Naomi Wolf cites Virginia Woolf in her article, Sleep is a Feminist Issue.
  • On The Walrus Blog, a post called “Ghost Stories” argues that the cult of authors may result in ” fancy editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grocery lists, or leather-bound copies of Virginia Woolf’s to-do reminders.”
  • A note from the Literary Gift Co. illustrates our fetishization of authors. The company offers “Virginia Woolf Parcel Tape” to seal your special packages. It is emblazoned with a Woolf quotation, “Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope which surrounds us from the beginning of conciousness to the end,” from her essay  “Modern Fiction.”
  • A VWoolf Listserv conversation about Woolf’s mental state generated tips for further reading. They include:
  • And if you need a chuckle after all this serious talk, take a look at the Punch cartoon whose link was sent by Stuart N. Clarke in response to the discussion on the VWoolf Listserv regarding Woolf and weather, a topic obviously dear to my heart.

Which leads me full circle to the topic with which I began: I am enjoying a snow evening. And it is pure white bliss.

Posted in commodification, Mrs. Dalloway, Online discussions, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, Twitter, VWoolf Listserv, Woolf and feminism, Woolf sightings | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pondering differences between writing fiction and letters

Sunday 7 February 2010 by Paula Maggio

I love getting post from abroad. Everything about it is charming: the feel of the envelope, the look of the stamps, even the fact that “U.S.A.” is included in the address.

I never rip it right open. I usually hold the letter in my hands for a minute, thinking about the long distance it has come, the water it has crossed, the person on the other end who has taken the time to sit down and put pen to paper.

Sometimes I have to wait for the right moment before I can open it. I never want to read a letter from abroad when I am agitated or in a hurry or distracted by some mundane matter.

But when the moment is right, I settle down on my favorite sofa, the one where the late afternoon sun slants across my shoulder. In that calm and quiet spot, I carefully slit open the envelope. I sip the words slowly, letting them swish around in my mind. I savor their flavor and their meaning. I note their nuances and subtleties. I picture the person who wrote it and the place where he wrote.

A letter, an old-fashioned handwritten letter from abroad, is something I can tuck in my book and read again later. It is something I can take with me wherever I go. It is something I can save forever, tied up with others like it, bound together and stored in a drawer.

So where is the Virginia Woolf connection in all of this? Well, we all know she wrote and received lots of letters — volumes in fact. Five of them sit on my bookshelf.

But two other things have made me think about letters. The first was a note I received from Cecil Woolf, nephew of Leonard and Virginia, who wrote to say that he and his wife Jean Moorcroft Wilson had spent 12 days in South Africa, where they spoke at the University of Capetown. Cecil’s talk was titled “As I Remember Them: Virginia and Leonard Woolf.” His missive was dated Jan. 26, and I thought about the significance of that date as well.

Cecil Woolf

The second thing that made me think about letters was the much-discussed news that Angelica Garnett has published a new volume of short stories, The Unspoken Truth: A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories. These stories are not letters. But Garnett has been quoted as saying that the stories are autobiographical, not invented, for the most part.

Those things led me to ponder the similarities between real life and fiction and the differences between real life stories and the lives we share via letters. Both are edited, either formally or informally. Both alter the realities of our daily lives. Both stay true to those realities.

Posted in Bloomsbury, books, Cecil Woolf, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Woolf Letters | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Two calls for Woolf papers at 2011 MLA Annual Convention

Wednesday 3 February 2010 by Paula Maggio

Call for Papers: International Society of Virginia Woolf Panel on Bloomsbury and Africa

Welcomed subjects include Woolf’s imaginative uses of Africa, the Dreadnought Hoax, Bloomsbury and African art, Leonard Woolf and Africa and Hogarth Press publications.

Abstracts of 500 words are due March 12, 2010, to Danell Jones, danelljones@bresnan.net.

The 2011 MLA Annual Convention will be held Jan. 6 to 9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Call for Papers: Woolf Panel on Victorian Woolf

Possible topics include Woolf’s Victorians and Victorianisms, her debts to Victorian contexts, sources and precursors; her modernism reframed, denied or backdated; her late- or neo-Victorian politics, technologies, travels and afterlives.

Abstracts of 250 words are due by March 2, 2010, to Jesse E. Matz, matzj@kenyon.edu.

The 2011 MLA Annual Convention will be held Jan. 6 to 9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Posted in Bloomsbury, call for papers, conferences | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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