Last time here, we wrote about a Virginia Woolf cocktail. This time, we write about her encounter with an inebriated T.S. Eliot at tea, as she documented in her diary on this date, Dec. 19, 100 years ago today.
How elliptical this book becomes! I dont respect events any more; I’d like to record poor Tom’s getting drunk, all the same. We went to a flat in an arcade, & asked for Captain Eliot. I noticed that his eyes were blurred. He cut the cake meticulously. He helped us to coffee–or was it tea? Then to liqueurs. He repeated, L. noticed, “Mrs Ricardo”, as L. told his story; he got things a little wrong . . . Tom then quietly left the room. L. heard sounds of sickness. After a long time, he came back, sank into the corner, & I saw him, ghastly pale, with his eyes shut, apparently in a stupor. When we left he was only just able to stand on his legs . . . Next day, I spent 10 minutes at the telephone receiving apologies–how distressing, what could we all think? Could we forgive him– the first time–would we ever come again? . . . One of those comedies which life sometimes does to perfection. – Diary 2, 278.
A still from the documentary “Orlando, My Political Biography”
“The contemporary world is full of Orlandos who are changing the course of history,” says Spanish-born philosopher turned director Paul B. Preciado.
“Orlando, My Political Biography,” his documentary adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 pseudo-biography Orlando, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year — and took home four prizes — while interrogating the relevance of Woolf’s Orlando in the process.
The film is described as a “cinematic essay in conversation with Woolf’s 1928 satiric fantasy Orlando: A Biography, as well as “a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto.” Preciado, who first read Woolf’s novel at the age of 15, also describes it as “my own biography.”
In it, Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of more than 20 trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they interpret scenes from the novel, weaving their own stories of identity and transition into Woolf’s narrative.
Choosing the cast
Preciado explains how he chose the cast this way: “The way I selected the other participants was by trying to understand if they could speak the language of Virginia Woolf. This, to me, was the most difficult aspect of any Orlando performance, because Virginia Woolf’s language is so sophisticated, so crystalized and sparkling, that it’s hard to speak her words without sounding phony or ridiculous.”
The documentary enlists a cast that includes well-known French LGBTQ+ figures to share the role of the novel’s eponymous hero as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition.
It also includes footage of singer and trans pioneer Christine Jorgensen and fiery advocate Sylvia Rivera to help reflect the history of queer resistance.
Choosing the scenes
Preciado explains how scenes from Woolf’s novel were chosen for the film: “Some of the scenes were chosen by the Orlandos through the reading sessions . . . some Orlandos lobbied for certain scenes in the novel to be included in the film, and we went with those.
“The scene of Orlando returning to England by ship after having transformed into a woman, I really wanted to adapt this scene properly since it’s one of the crucial scenes in the novel. But it became so difficult. We went to the north of France and obtained a small boat that we had to pretend was bigger than it was–it was extremely expensive, and I had very little money with which to make the film. Very quickly we realized that this scene was impossible, that it wasn’t going to work. So we decided to make a mock-up of a boat in a studio and see how that would look.
“Many of the scenes I had in mind–especially since Orlando is a book of adventures and travel and changing epochs and countries–couldn’t be rendered on film as they are in the novel.
“Another example was a scene in the desert that became difficult to pull off since I had to find a desert that was nearby–and there are no deserts close to France!
“At a certain point I realized that faithfully adapting such scenes was less important than capturing the language of Virginia Woolf as well as representing the main adventure of the book, which is transitioning. It would be less about constructing the proper settings and decor and more of a spiritual or internal journey.”
Reappropriating Woolf’s words
“We discovered a freedom in reappropriating the words of Virginia Woolf,” Preciado said. “And not because Virginia Woolf said everything possible about transitioning, but because I think Virginia Woolf may have also been non-binary.
“In the last 40 to 50 years she’s been read–perhaps even over-read–as an exemplar of female and feminist authorship. But when re-reading her I realized she was very much at odds with what was supposed to be her own femininity. She was not comfortable with it and never aligned with it so much–she wasn’t even very interested in a naturalistic definition of feminism, at least as it existed during her lifetime.
“So I’ve thought, how interesting would it be if she was a non-binary author who lived during a time when the thought of being non-binary was impossible? That opened for me a very different way of reading Orlando. I’m not content with the politics of reading works through the identity of the author–for example, the idea that if the author isn’t trans then his or her book can’t be trans. Because maybe the author was able to recreate him, herself or themselves, in his, her or their own mind. The things we do exceed identity–otherwise if we have to be measured by our anatomy or whatever else then we’re going to be caged within the language of normative binaries. So that’s crucial for me.
“And when working on the readings of Orlando something started to happen–we brought Woolf into a contemporary, non-binary world, and a sort of joyful, amusing adventure began to occur in how we experienced her words, to the point where the cast members and their families would call me and say, ‘These readings are great, can we come back for more of them?’ Then it became clear to me that this was working, that we could use the language of Virginia Woolf against the language of normative identity.”
Now in theaters
Interested in seeing the film? Check this link for locations, dates, and tickets.
One hundred years ago today, on Dec 3, 1923, Virginia Woolf began a long diary entry about her brother Adrian’s separation from his wife Karin with a rumination on writing vs. reading:
Back from Rodmell; unable to settle in; therefore I write diary. How often I have said this! An odd psychological fact–that I can write when I’m too jangled to read. Morever, I want to leave as few pages blank as possibe; & the end of the year is only some three weeks off. – Diary 2, p. 276.
What: A free online talk on “The Surreal Real: Proust, Woolf, and World Cinema,” as part of the Woolf Seminars series of the Virginia Woolf Society Turkey. Who: Delia Ungurenau is associate director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature and associate professor of literary theory in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest. She is the author of From Paris to Tlôn: Surrealism as World Literature and The Poetics of Apocalypse: The Cultural War in Romanian Literary Magazines, 1944-1947 When: Friday, Dec. 8, 6-8 pm Turkey time (10 a.m. – noon EST). Please check your local time. Cost: Free Registration: Registration is free at Eventbrite.
Virginia Woolf wrote hundreds of essays during her lifetime. The total varies from “nearly 600” (Fernald 160) to “640,” (Rigel Daughtery 9) so it can be difficult to locate just the right essay when needed. For that reason, sometimes a slim collection of Virginia Woolf essays that focus on a specific topic is just the thing.
Here are two.
On freedom
The first is part of a 27-volume Vintage Mini collection, a Vintage Classic published by Penguin/Random House. Titled Liberty, it includes selections from A Room of One’s Own (1929), The Waves (1931), and the essays “Street Haunting” and “How Should One Read a Book.”
Here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes – jacket quote from Liberty (2018)
On the visual arts
The second is the twentieth volume in the ekphrasis series published by David Zwirner Books in 2021 and is a collection of Woolf’s writings on the visual arts.
Titled Oh, to Be a Painter!, the volume begins with an introduction by Claudia Tobin and includes Woolf’s longest essay on painting, “Walter Sickert: A Conversation” (1934), alongside shorter essays and reviews, including “Pictures and Portraits” (1920) and “Pictures” (1925).
References:
Fernald, Anne E. “A Feminist Public Sphere? Virginia Woolf’s Revisions of the Eighteenth Century.” Feminist Studies 31:1 (2005): 158-182.
