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بانو در آیینه
شاید در اواسط ژانویه� امسال بود که برای اولین بار سر بلند کردم ولکه� روی دیوار را دیدم. برای این‌ک� بتوانم تاریخش را مشخص کنم باید آن‌چ� را دیدم به خاطر بیاورم. شاید کودکی آن را ساخته باشد. لکه‌ا� بود گرد و کوچک، سیاه روی دیوار سفید، که بالای پیش‌بخار� قرار داشت.
252 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1921
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About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,852books27.1kfollowers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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April 21, 2022
A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, Virginia Woolf
A Haunted House is a collection of 18 short stories by Virginia Woolf published 1944. It was produced by her husband Leonard Woolf after her death.
18 short stories:
A Haunted House,
Monday or Tuesday,
An Unwritten Novel,
The String Quartet,
Kew Gardens,
The Mark on the Wall,
The New Dress,
The Shooting Party,
Lappin and Lappinova,
Solid Objects,
The Lady in the Looking-Glass,
The Duchess and the Jeweler,
Moments of Being,
The Man who Loved his Kind,
The Searchlight,
The Legacy,
Together and Apart,
and A Summing Up.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز هشتم ماه فوریه سال2016میلادی
عنوان: بانو در آینه؛ نویسنده: ویرجینیا وولف؛ مترجم: فرزانه قوجلو؛ تهران، نگاه، سال1386؛ در252ص؛ شابک9789643513955؛ چاپ دوم سال1390؛ چاپ ششم سال1399؛ چاپ هشتم سال1400؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده20م
فهرست: «پیش‌گفتار»� «لکه� روى دیوار»؛ «باغ‌ها� کیو»؛ «رمان نانوشته»؛ «اشیاء جامد»؛ «خانه اشباح»؛ «دوشنبه یا سه‌شنبه»� «گروه نوازندگان»؛ «آبى و سبز»؛ «در باغ میوه»؛ «نگاهى به کالجى زنانه»؛ «بانو در آینه: یک تصویر»؛ «مهمانى شکار»؛ «دوشس و جواهرفروش»؛ «مردى که همنوعان خود را دوست داشت»؛ «لباس نو»؛ «لحظه‌ها� هستى»؛ «ارثیه»؛ «با هم و جدا از هم»؛ «نورافکن»؛ «خطابه»؛ «لاپین و لاپینوا»؛ «انجمن»؛ «ویرجینیا وولف و جهان مدرن»؛
این کتاب «بانو در آینه» همگی داستانها� کوتاه روانشاد خانم «ویرجینیا وولف» را دارایی خویش میداند؛ این داستان‌ه� از سوی بسیاری از ناقدان آثار و طوطیان شکر شکن شیرین گفتار با‌ارز� نامیده شده اند، چرا که به یاری همین داستان‌ه� می‌توا� به دنیای پیچیده ی نویسنده‌ا� راه یافت که آثارش همچنان پرخوانش است
در کتاب ترجمه شده «بانو در آینه» بیست و دو داستان کوتاه آرمیده اند؛ برخی از داستان‌ه� در نخستین مجموعه داستانى� ایشان با عنوان «دوشنبه یا سه شنبه» در زمان زنده بودن نویسنده به چاپ رسیده بود، و شماری از داستانها در کتاب کوچکى با نام «خانه� اشباح» که همسر ایشان «لئونارد وولف» پس از درگذشت روانشاد «ویرجینیا» منتشر کردند، و یک کتاب دیگر را نیز انتشارات پنگوئن با عنوان «ویرجینیا وولف، داستانها� کوتاه برگزیده» در سال1993میلادی منتشر کرد، که داراییش چهار داستان کوتاه بودند که همسرش «لئونارد وولف» آنها را از سرى خود حذف کرده بودند، با این برهان که مى‌دانس� اگر «ویرجینیا» زنده بود نمى‌خواس� آن‌ه� منتشر شوند
اما این داستان‌ه� کاملا بیانگر دلبستگى و باور «وولف» به ضمیر ناخودآگاه و یا به تعبیرى «جریان سیال ذهن� هستند.» خیال در این داستان‌ه� حضورى پر� رنگ دارد، تخیلى که به روشنی براى «وولف» نقشى اساسى داشته، ایشان که شیفته� ى ادبیات و کتاب بودند، به� گونه ای که در یادمانهایش مى‌گوی� «اگر این بارقه� تخیل و دلبستگى به کتاب نبود من زنى کاملا عادى بودم.»؛ زنى که شاید بتوان گفت نوشتن برهانی برای زنده ماندنش بود؛ «اکنون مى‌توان� بنویسم، بنویسم و بنویسم؛ شادى ناب در جهان همین است.» داستانها� کوتاه «وولف» نماینده� ى بارز جریان سیال هوشیارى و خودآگاه و زندگى درونى هستى� هستند؛ زبانى که «وولف» در داستانها� کوتاهشان به کار مى‌برند� بسیار شاعرانه است، زبانى که به نگاره نیز حال و هوایى شاعرانه مى‌دهد� و در دوران خود ایشان، به عنوان زبان غنایى، نکوهیده بوده است؛ «اى.ام فورستر»، نویسنده و منتقد هم‌عص� «ویرجینیا» مى‌گفت� که آثار «وولف» نه تنها پایانى شاعرانه، که هماره آغازى شاعرانه نیز دارند، و به همین برهان به جایگاه تغزلى خود دست مى‌یابن� (البته که از نظر فورستر این امتیاز نبود)؛ اما آنگاه که همین زبان شاعرانه با خیال «وولف» و آفریشنشگری ناخودآگاه ایشان درمى‌آمیزد� به داستانهای� بدل مى‌شون� که در نوع خود اگر نخواهیم بگوییم بى‌نظی� اما بى‌تردی� بی همانند هستند، و منتقدین امروز نیز در بررسى آثار «وولف» براى داستانها� کوتاه ایشان به� عنوان طرح‌ها� نخستین رمان‌ها� ایشان ارزشى ویژه قائل هستند، چرا که به مدد این داستان‌ه� مى‌توا� به دنیاى پیچیده� نویسنده‌ا� راه یافت، که پس از گذشت شصت و شش سال از درگذشت ایشان در سال1941میلادی همچنان میتازند
نقل از متن خانه اشباح: (هر ساعت که بیدار مى‌شدى� درى بسته مى‌شد� آنها از اتاقى به اتاق دیگر مى‌رفتند� دست در دست هم، این طرف چیزى را جا به جا مى‌کردند� آن طرف درى را باز مى‌کردند� تا یقین کنند، زوج شبح وار؛ زن گفت «این‌ج� رهایش کردیم.» و مرد افزود «اما این‌ج� نیز.» زن زمزمه کرد «بالاى پله‌هاست»� مرد به نجوا گفت «و در باغ.» گفتند «آرام باشیم»، «وگرنه بیدارشان مى‌کنی�.»)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 31/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
A Haunted House is a collection of 18 short stories by Virginia Woolf published 1944. It was produced by her husband Leonard Woolf after her death.
18 short stories:
A Haunted House,
Monday or Tuesday,
An Unwritten Novel,
The String Quartet,
Kew Gardens,
The Mark on the Wall,
The New Dress,
The Shooting Party,
Lappin and Lappinova,
Solid Objects,
The Lady in the Looking-Glass,
The Duchess and the Jeweler,
Moments of Being,
The Man who Loved his Kind,
The Searchlight,
The Legacy,
Together and Apart,
and A Summing Up.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز هشتم ماه فوریه سال2016میلادی
عنوان: بانو در آینه؛ نویسنده: ویرجینیا وولف؛ مترجم: فرزانه قوجلو؛ تهران، نگاه، سال1386؛ در252ص؛ شابک9789643513955؛ چاپ دوم سال1390؛ چاپ ششم سال1399؛ چاپ هشتم سال1400؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده20م
فهرست: «پیش‌گفتار»� «لکه� روى دیوار»؛ «باغ‌ها� کیو»؛ «رمان نانوشته»؛ «اشیاء جامد»؛ «خانه اشباح»؛ «دوشنبه یا سه‌شنبه»� «گروه نوازندگان»؛ «آبى و سبز»؛ «در باغ میوه»؛ «نگاهى به کالجى زنانه»؛ «بانو در آینه: یک تصویر»؛ «مهمانى شکار»؛ «دوشس و جواهرفروش»؛ «مردى که همنوعان خود را دوست داشت»؛ «لباس نو»؛ «لحظه‌ها� هستى»؛ «ارثیه»؛ «با هم و جدا از هم»؛ «نورافکن»؛ «خطابه»؛ «لاپین و لاپینوا»؛ «انجمن»؛ «ویرجینیا وولف و جهان مدرن»؛
این کتاب «بانو در آینه» همگی داستانها� کوتاه روانشاد خانم «ویرجینیا وولف» را دارایی خویش میداند؛ این داستان‌ه� از سوی بسیاری از ناقدان آثار و طوطیان شکر شکن شیرین گفتار با‌ارز� نامیده شده اند، چرا که به یاری همین داستان‌ه� می‌توا� به دنیای پیچیده ی نویسنده‌ا� راه یافت که آثارش همچنان پرخوانش است
در کتاب ترجمه شده «بانو در آینه» بیست و دو داستان کوتاه آرمیده اند؛ برخی از داستان‌ه� در نخستین مجموعه داستانى� ایشان با عنوان «دوشنبه یا سه شنبه» در زمان زنده بودن نویسنده به چاپ رسیده بود، و شماری از داستانها در کتاب کوچکى با نام «خانه� اشباح» که همسر ایشان «لئونارد وولف» پس از درگذشت روانشاد «ویرجینیا» منتشر کردند، و یک کتاب دیگر را نیز انتشارات پنگوئن با عنوان «ویرجینیا وولف، داستانها� کوتاه برگزیده» در سال1993میلادی منتشر کرد، که داراییش چهار داستان کوتاه بودند که همسرش «لئونارد وولف» آنها را از سرى خود حذف کرده بودند، با این برهان که مى‌دانس� اگر «ویرجینیا» زنده بود نمى‌خواس� آن‌ه� منتشر شوند
اما این داستان‌ه� کاملا بیانگر دلبستگى و باور «وولف» به ضمیر ناخودآگاه و یا به تعبیرى «جریان سیال ذهن� هستند.» خیال در این داستان‌ه� حضورى پر� رنگ دارد، تخیلى که به روشنی براى «وولف» نقشى اساسى داشته، ایشان که شیفته� ى ادبیات و کتاب بودند، به� گونه ای که در یادمانهایش مى‌گوی� «اگر این بارقه� تخیل و دلبستگى به کتاب نبود من زنى کاملا عادى بودم.»؛ زنى که شاید بتوان گفت نوشتن برهانی برای زنده ماندنش بود؛ «اکنون مى‌توان� بنویسم، بنویسم و بنویسم؛ شادى ناب در جهان همین است.» داستانها� کوتاه «وولف» نماینده� ى بارز جریان سیال هوشیارى و خودآگاه و زندگى درونى هستى� هستند؛ زبانى که «وولف» در داستانها� کوتاهشان به کار مى‌برند� بسیار شاعرانه است، زبانى که به نگاره نیز حال و هوایى شاعرانه مى‌دهد� و در دوران خود ایشان، به عنوان زبان غنایى، نکوهیده بوده است؛ «اى.ام فورستر»، نویسنده و منتقد هم‌عص� «ویرجینیا» مى‌گفت� که آثار «وولف» نه تنها پایانى شاعرانه، که هماره آغازى شاعرانه نیز دارند، و به همین برهان به جایگاه تغزلى خود دست مى‌یابن� (البته که از نظر فورستر این امتیاز نبود)؛ اما آنگاه که همین زبان شاعرانه با خیال «وولف» و آفریشنشگری ناخودآگاه ایشان درمى‌آمیزد� به داستانهای� بدل مى‌شون� که در نوع خود اگر نخواهیم بگوییم بى‌نظی� اما بى‌تردی� بی همانند هستند، و منتقدین امروز نیز در بررسى آثار «وولف» براى داستانها� کوتاه ایشان به� عنوان طرح‌ها� نخستین رمان‌ها� ایشان ارزشى ویژه قائل هستند، چرا که به مدد این داستان‌ه� مى‌توا� به دنیاى پیچیده� نویسنده‌ا� راه یافت، که پس از گذشت شصت و شش سال از درگذشت ایشان در سال1941میلادی همچنان میتازند
نقل از متن خانه اشباح: (هر ساعت که بیدار مى‌شدى� درى بسته مى‌شد� آنها از اتاقى به اتاق دیگر مى‌رفتند� دست در دست هم، این طرف چیزى را جا به جا مى‌کردند� آن طرف درى را باز مى‌کردند� تا یقین کنند، زوج شبح وار؛ زن گفت «این‌ج� رهایش کردیم.» و مرد افزود «اما این‌ج� نیز.» زن زمزمه کرد «بالاى پله‌هاست»� مرد به نجوا گفت «و در باغ.» گفتند «آرام باشیم»، «وگرنه بیدارشان مى‌کنی�.»)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 31/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
January 13, 2016
“Safe, safe, safe,� the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—� he sighs. “Again you found me.� “Here,� she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—� Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!� the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”~The Haunted House"Come, dream with me," beckons Virginia Woolf in this collection of eighteen stories, some previously published, some unfinished and offered up posthumously by her husband, Leonard.
This is the sensation I had while reading—dreaming scenes that seemed perfectly normal at first, but which were beset by a surreality, a super-reality shimmering just beneath the surface, signaling not all is as it seems.
"Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours.”~Monday or TuesdayThis "worshipping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours" is the theme at the heart of this collection. Woolf takes the impersonal world like a glass ball in her hands and cracks it open ever so slightly, revealing the chaos within.
In Kew Gardens, surely one of the finest in the collection, she juxtaposes the order of natural world with the disorder of human emotion.
Woolf shows in the tense and eerie The Mark on the Wall what the most minute shift of the kaleidoscope of our perspective can do to shape our chose reality.
A New Dress is an exercise in acute self-consciousness, a woman realizing, or imagining she knows, how she appears to others. It is a cruel and perceptive knife thrust at classism.
“She was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer.�Her skewering of Britain's gentry continues in the parodic The Shooting Party, which has a scene I had to read several times to make certain I understood what was happening. Why yes, the Squire does lash his whip about, causing Miss Rashleigh to fall into the fireplace, toppling the shield of the Rashleighs and a picture of King Edward. It's a laugh-out-loud moment of horror.
We talk about powerful opening lines in novel and short stories, but this. This may be one of my favorite closing lines, ever: "So that was the end of that marriage."~Lappin and Lapinova A devastating story of the fickle nature of . . . what? Love? Was there ever love here?
But speaking of opening lines, this one, belonging to The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection is sublime: “People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more then they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.� It is also a perceptive and tragic story. One that will have you avoiding mirrors. For how can you trust what you see within? Is your reflection reality or a mistaken image of your own creation?
The Dalloways, particularly, Clarissa, make frequent appearances in this collection, as if Woolf had crafted small sketches, playing with her characters, trying to sort them out. I've not yet read Mrs. Dalloway, so perhaps the integration of these stories and the novel will become clear to me once I've put them all together.
Of all things, nothing is so strange as human intercourse, she thought, because of its changes, its extraordinary irrationality, her dislike being now nothing short of the most intense and rapturous love, but directly the word love occurred to her, she rejected it, thinking again how obscure the mind was, with its very few words for all these astonishing perceptions, these alternations of pain and pleasure. For how did one name this. That is what she felt now, the withdrawal of human affection, Serle’s disappearance, and the instant need they were both under to cover up what was so desolating and degrading to human nature that everyone tried to bury it decently from sight... ~Together and ApartFrom the voice of a character, yet one feels the author keening to uncover what society, the society of her time, wants to desperately to hide: the vulnerability of human emotion, the insistence on "worshiping the impersonal world" instead of acknowledging the very personal within and without ourselves.
A beautiful, raw, vulnerable collection of stories, rendered in language both intimate and abstract. I remain in awe of Woolf's ability to transcend the limits of the word and create something divine.
January 19, 2020
"زندگی یک رشته لامپ نیست که به ترتیب ردیف شده باشد,بلکه پرتوی نورانی است,پوششی نیمه شفاف که ما را از زمان شروع ضمیر ناخوداگاه تا پایان در خود گرفته است."
لکه روی دیوار شاهکار ویرجینیا وولف است,نوشته ای که از زمان میگذرد..نوشته که زمان هرگز نخواهد توانست بر ان غلبه کند.
زمانی که این نوشته ها را میخوانم مرا به سال ها پیش باز میگرداند..به لحظاتی که بر فراز تپه هایی سبز در نزدیکی شهر زادگاهم می ایستادم..گرمای خورشید چون اغوش مادرم مرا در برمیگرفت...و باد...که عاشقانه دست سرشار از لطافتش را بر چهره ام میکشید..و پرواز پرندگان که افکارم را سوار بر بال های زنده و گرمشان به اسمان میبرد..آسمان آبی..شفاف و پاک..که افکارم در آن همیشه به مقصد می رسیدند..
دی ماه 98.
"زندگی همانی ست که شما در چشم های مردم میبینید؛زندگی همانی است که انها می اموزندو پس از انکه اموختند,گرچه می کوشند که پنهانش کنند,هرگز نمی توانند انکارش کنند.."
لکه روی دیوار شاهکار ویرجینیا وولف است,نوشته ای که از زمان میگذرد..نوشته که زمان هرگز نخواهد توانست بر ان غلبه کند.
زمانی که این نوشته ها را میخوانم مرا به سال ها پیش باز میگرداند..به لحظاتی که بر فراز تپه هایی سبز در نزدیکی شهر زادگاهم می ایستادم..گرمای خورشید چون اغوش مادرم مرا در برمیگرفت...و باد...که عاشقانه دست سرشار از لطافتش را بر چهره ام میکشید..و پرواز پرندگان که افکارم را سوار بر بال های زنده و گرمشان به اسمان میبرد..آسمان آبی..شفاف و پاک..که افکارم در آن همیشه به مقصد می رسیدند..
دی ماه 98.
"زندگی همانی ست که شما در چشم های مردم میبینید؛زندگی همانی است که انها می اموزندو پس از انکه اموختند,گرچه می کوشند که پنهانش کنند,هرگز نمی توانند انکارش کنند.."
June 19, 2024
I don't expect any less from Virginia Woolf. Her ideas and experimentation go beyond what I have ever seen from any one author. I love her descriptions of nature and marvel at how well she captures the process of thought and what we think and what we presume...our tumultuous inner self and the guarded outward face that we show.
September 7, 2024
Wonderful quick read! Poetic and romantic. A new side of Woolf. (Haunted House, only)
Update: 9/7/24
Discovering this wonderful collection of stories has much advanced my opinion of Woolf’s skill. Though some stories were just average, and number of them very good, there were four that stood out for me as being brilliant: Together and Apart; Moments of Being; The New Dress; and The Legacy. Overall, a delightful, stimulating, heartwarming read! And a must for shortstory fans
Update: 9/7/24
Discovering this wonderful collection of stories has much advanced my opinion of Woolf’s skill. Though some stories were just average, and number of them very good, there were four that stood out for me as being brilliant: Together and Apart; Moments of Being; The New Dress; and The Legacy. Overall, a delightful, stimulating, heartwarming read! And a must for shortstory fans
August 21, 2018
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."
Virginia Woolf's "A Haunted House" is a lovely story about a ghost couple and a living couple occupying the same dwelling. This is as playful and lighthearted a story as Woolf has ever written.
This is another beautiful piece of writing by my beloved Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf's "A Haunted House" is a lovely story about a ghost couple and a living couple occupying the same dwelling. This is as playful and lighthearted a story as Woolf has ever written.
This is another beautiful piece of writing by my beloved Virginia Woolf.
October 19, 2021
#WITMonth
E enquanto meditava neste aspecto das criaturas, na paciência que possuem, na sua capacidade de sofrimento, no modo como conseguem consolo por meio de pequenos prazeres tão miseráveis, tão mesquinhos e tão sórdidos, os olhos acabaram por se lhe encher realmente de lágrimas.
Na sua maioria estes contos de Virginia Woolf são excelentes, mas o primeiro e o último, “A Marca na Parede� e “O Vestido Novo�, são perfeitos. Diria que o que une estas oito histórias é a escrita sublime, ainda que mais difusa em “A Casa Assombrada� e “Segunda ou Terça-Feira�, e o alheamento da realidade, tanto consciente como inconscientemente, que se traduz em ilusão ou num profundo sentimento de inadequação.
Naquele que me parece ser o mais famoso conto que escreveu, “A Marca na Parede�, Woolf põe a protagonista a divagar sobre uma mancha que detecta na parede, em sucessivas associações de ideias.
A todo o momento vou construindo uma imagem de mim própria, apaixonadamente furtiva, que não posso adorar directamente, porque se o fizesse, cairia imediatamente em mim e deitaria a mão a um livro num gesto de autodefesa. É curioso, com efeito, como uma pessoa protege a sua própria imagem de toda a idolatria ou de qualquer outro sentimento que a possa tornar ridícula ou demasiado diferente do original para ser verosímil.
Em “O Vestido Novo�, por outro lado, entramos na cabeça de Mabel que, na tentativa de ser arrojada e poupada na escolha de um vestido de festa, se deixa levar pela insegurança perante os outros convidados. É curioso que este conto, juntamente com “Resumo�, decorra no universo das festas de Mrs. Dalloway, que aqui não passa de personagem secundária.
Somos como moscas tentando andar no bordo de um pires de leite, pensou Mabel, e repetiu a frase como se estivesse doente e procurasse uma palavra que aliviasse o seu mal-estar, tornasse suportável aquela agonia. Fragmentos de Shakespeare, linhas de livros que lera havia séculos, subitamente emergiam da sua memória agonizante.
A Marca na Parede � 5*
A Casa Assombrada � 3*
Segunda ou Terça-Feira - 4*
Lappin e Lapinova - 4*
A Duquesa e o Joalheiro - 4*
O Legado � 4*
Resumo � 4*
O Vestido Novo � 5*
E enquanto meditava neste aspecto das criaturas, na paciência que possuem, na sua capacidade de sofrimento, no modo como conseguem consolo por meio de pequenos prazeres tão miseráveis, tão mesquinhos e tão sórdidos, os olhos acabaram por se lhe encher realmente de lágrimas.
Na sua maioria estes contos de Virginia Woolf são excelentes, mas o primeiro e o último, “A Marca na Parede� e “O Vestido Novo�, são perfeitos. Diria que o que une estas oito histórias é a escrita sublime, ainda que mais difusa em “A Casa Assombrada� e “Segunda ou Terça-Feira�, e o alheamento da realidade, tanto consciente como inconscientemente, que se traduz em ilusão ou num profundo sentimento de inadequação.
Naquele que me parece ser o mais famoso conto que escreveu, “A Marca na Parede�, Woolf põe a protagonista a divagar sobre uma mancha que detecta na parede, em sucessivas associações de ideias.
A todo o momento vou construindo uma imagem de mim própria, apaixonadamente furtiva, que não posso adorar directamente, porque se o fizesse, cairia imediatamente em mim e deitaria a mão a um livro num gesto de autodefesa. É curioso, com efeito, como uma pessoa protege a sua própria imagem de toda a idolatria ou de qualquer outro sentimento que a possa tornar ridícula ou demasiado diferente do original para ser verosímil.
Em “O Vestido Novo�, por outro lado, entramos na cabeça de Mabel que, na tentativa de ser arrojada e poupada na escolha de um vestido de festa, se deixa levar pela insegurança perante os outros convidados. É curioso que este conto, juntamente com “Resumo�, decorra no universo das festas de Mrs. Dalloway, que aqui não passa de personagem secundária.
Somos como moscas tentando andar no bordo de um pires de leite, pensou Mabel, e repetiu a frase como se estivesse doente e procurasse uma palavra que aliviasse o seu mal-estar, tornasse suportável aquela agonia. Fragmentos de Shakespeare, linhas de livros que lera havia séculos, subitamente emergiam da sua memória agonizante.
A Marca na Parede � 5*
A Casa Assombrada � 3*
Segunda ou Terça-Feira - 4*
Lappin e Lapinova - 4*
A Duquesa e o Joalheiro - 4*
O Legado � 4*
Resumo � 4*
O Vestido Novo � 5*
July 19, 2011
So fucking beautiful and dark it makes my soul ache.
My Favorites:
Solid Objects:
"his eyes lost their intensity, or rather the background of thought and experience which gives an inscrutable depth to the eyes of grown people disappeared, leaving only the clear transparent surface, expressing nothing but wonder, which the eyes of young children display."
Kew Gardens:
"and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul. Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air."
My Favorites:
Solid Objects:
"his eyes lost their intensity, or rather the background of thought and experience which gives an inscrutable depth to the eyes of grown people disappeared, leaving only the clear transparent surface, expressing nothing but wonder, which the eyes of young children display."
Kew Gardens:
"and in the drone of the aeroplane the voice of the summer sky murmured its fierce soul. Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women, and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire, or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise; breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear; like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air."
Read
July 26, 2024Se quiséssemos um termo de comparação para a vida, o melhor seria o de um metropolitano, atravessando o túnel a cinquenta milhas à hora e deixando-nos do outro lado sem um gancho sequer no cabelo! Cuspidos aos pés de Deus, inteiramente nus!
Virginia Woolf foi relevante para a sua (e nossa) época, mas, arrisco dizer, será ainda mais relevante com o passar do tempo, pois o seu olhar não abarcava apenas o que via, queria ir mais longe e, fazendo-o, demarcava-se do palpável, do real e chegava a um estado quase quântico da literatura. Por isso, Woolf não obedecia a regras - estruturalistas, éticas ou outras - e estava simultaneamente aqui e agora, e ali e depois. Sem barreiras, recreava os espaços intelectuais das mulheres (que, forçadas ao exílio do mundo dos homens sempre se criaram universos alternativos), falava para ontem, hoje e amanhã. Woolf criava espaços simultâneos onde se desdobram as múltiplas possibilidades da existência - uma espécie de paradoxo de Schrödinger aplicado à existência da Mulher. E mesmo sem se explanar por centenas de páginas, mesmo sem fazer uso de uma corrente de pensamento (corrente de consciência, fluxo de consciência, como preferirem - corrente de pensamento engloba também uma nova filosofia), a autora revela em três e quatro páginas uma capacidade de análise do subconsciente, do feminismo e das maquinações sociais construtivistas como nenhum outro seu contemporâneo.
(...)o ponto de vista masculino que governa as nossas vidas, que fixa as regras de comportamento,(.)uma velha metade de fantasma(.)que, em breve, espero, será posta no caixote do lixo, que é o fim dos fantasmas, dos armários de mogno(.)dos Deuses e Demónios e o mais que se sabe, deixando-nos por fim uma impressão tóxica de liberdade ilícita - se é que tal coisa existe, a liberdade...
A MARCA NA PAREDE
⭐⭐⭐⭐�
A CASA ASSOMBRADA
⭐⭐�
SEGUNDA OU TERÇA FEIRA
⭐⭐�
LAPPIN E LAPPINOVA
⭐⭐�
A DUQUESA E O JOALHEIRO
⭐⭐⭐⭐
O LEGADO
⭐⭐⭐⭐�
RESUMO
⭐⭐�
E como isto vai curtinho, um pequenino aparte: os contos (e a obra) de Woolf dispensavam completamente o posfácio do editor. É certo que vender 80 páginas por 14 ou 15� é um roubo, e tirar-lhe esta meia dúzia de folhas só o tornava mais sórdido, mas o que acrescentam as palavras generalistas e a dezena e meia de citações (sem fonte) com que Francisco Vale demostra que leu a autora? Não vejo em que medida arrogar esse feito à laia de demonstração gratuita engrandece uma escritora que não precisa de contextos - ou ajuda sequer o leitor mais leigo. Se o senhor editor, em vez de se pôr a dizer o que já todos sabemos, tivesse recuperado o último conto que constava da edição anterior, teria feito melhor figura.
Virginia Woolf foi relevante para a sua (e nossa) época, mas, arrisco dizer, será ainda mais relevante com o passar do tempo, pois o seu olhar não abarcava apenas o que via, queria ir mais longe e, fazendo-o, demarcava-se do palpável, do real e chegava a um estado quase quântico da literatura. Por isso, Woolf não obedecia a regras - estruturalistas, éticas ou outras - e estava simultaneamente aqui e agora, e ali e depois. Sem barreiras, recreava os espaços intelectuais das mulheres (que, forçadas ao exílio do mundo dos homens sempre se criaram universos alternativos), falava para ontem, hoje e amanhã. Woolf criava espaços simultâneos onde se desdobram as múltiplas possibilidades da existência - uma espécie de paradoxo de Schrödinger aplicado à existência da Mulher. E mesmo sem se explanar por centenas de páginas, mesmo sem fazer uso de uma corrente de pensamento (corrente de consciência, fluxo de consciência, como preferirem - corrente de pensamento engloba também uma nova filosofia), a autora revela em três e quatro páginas uma capacidade de análise do subconsciente, do feminismo e das maquinações sociais construtivistas como nenhum outro seu contemporâneo.
(...)o ponto de vista masculino que governa as nossas vidas, que fixa as regras de comportamento,(.)uma velha metade de fantasma(.)que, em breve, espero, será posta no caixote do lixo, que é o fim dos fantasmas, dos armários de mogno(.)dos Deuses e Demónios e o mais que se sabe, deixando-nos por fim uma impressão tóxica de liberdade ilícita - se é que tal coisa existe, a liberdade...
A MARCA NA PAREDE
⭐⭐⭐⭐�
A CASA ASSOMBRADA
⭐⭐�
SEGUNDA OU TERÇA FEIRA
⭐⭐�
LAPPIN E LAPPINOVA
⭐⭐�
A DUQUESA E O JOALHEIRO
⭐⭐⭐⭐
O LEGADO
⭐⭐⭐⭐�
RESUMO
⭐⭐�
E como isto vai curtinho, um pequenino aparte: os contos (e a obra) de Woolf dispensavam completamente o posfácio do editor. É certo que vender 80 páginas por 14 ou 15� é um roubo, e tirar-lhe esta meia dúzia de folhas só o tornava mais sórdido, mas o que acrescentam as palavras generalistas e a dezena e meia de citações (sem fonte) com que Francisco Vale demostra que leu a autora? Não vejo em que medida arrogar esse feito à laia de demonstração gratuita engrandece uma escritora que não precisa de contextos - ou ajuda sequer o leitor mais leigo. Se o senhor editor, em vez de se pôr a dizer o que já todos sabemos, tivesse recuperado o último conto que constava da edição anterior, teria feito melhor figura.
June 26, 2023
Something has dissolved my face. Through the mist of silver candle light it scarcely appears. People pass me without seeing me. They have faces. In their faces the stars seem to shine through rose coloured flesh.
There are various editions of Woolf's stories and they seem to have been combined here on GoodReads so, for clarity, I'm reviewing the Vintage with the apposite cover design of fragile pink blossom in a shaft of sunlight.
I say apposite because there's something ethereal and impressionistic about most of these pieces, which also tend to defy the usual definitions of 'story'. These are generally plot-free though there may be movement internally and externally so they're certainly not static or precious. Woolf seems to be using them as palate cleansers and places of experimentation, trying out the techniques she was always struggling with and honing through all her writing: how to capture the ephemerality of moments of life; how to express consciousness and its fleetingness; how to articulate the sensual ways in which we experience the world, and the subjectivity that colours everything.
There are commonalities throughout: the vivid use of colour and light (did that come from Vanessa's art?), the concern with time and how to catch its progress through the mind of those experiencing it individually, the inner experience of living in a social world and the split selves that are created. There are continued uses of mirrors and reflections, often in water, as devices to catch personal alienation and fractured selves. There are moments of intense beauty, and strange perspectives: the snail in 'Kew Gardens', for example, or the well-anthologised mind-drift of 'The Mark on the Wall.' More than the novels, these pieces make clear the synchronicities between Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.
The collected Dalloway pieces are here, intersecting with both her eponymous book and also the first disconcerting appearances of Clarissa and Richard in .
Are these 'stories' places to meet Woolf for the first time? I'd say not. These pieces can feel like writing exercises and moments of play - they are free-form and inconclusive. They seem to provide a kind of literary playground for Woolf, offering a freedom of form and from narrative structuring. They are limitless.
As such, this is a glorious collection for Woolf devotees both to feel a sense of her stretching and flying beyond the constraints of the novel, and for dipping into when only a little Woolf will do.
January 21, 2024
De 11 de Setembro a 24 de Novembro de 2023 li - em leitura acompanhada - todos os contos da Virginia Woolf por ordem cronológica. O curso foi oferecido pelo Literatura Inglesa Brasil com lives semanais e em directo no Youtube. Foi uma experiência enriquecedora pelos conhecimentos tão generosamente transmitidos pelos professores convidados.
Contos com unidade temática, contos com diferentes pontos de vista sobre o mesmo assunto, contos que conversam entre si, unen fragmentos da vida, esboços, rascunhos.
Uma sociedade, base de Um Quarto Só Seu, a atracção pela água em Uma Simples Melodia e O Fascínio Pelo Poço, a paleta de cores em diversos contos como o roxo, por exemplo, também importante em Rumo ao Farol.
A natureza, as estações do ano, o clima, as mudanças climáticas são assuntos caros à autora.
Uma escrita pictórica, a pintura e escrita e os seus pontos em comum.
A teatralidade das festas subversivas ou aderentes conforme os convidados ou não convidados; opressoras, consensuais, polifónicas, fúteis.
A grande festa que é a escrita woolfiana, um coro que forma uma unanimidade do conto ao romance do romance ao conto. Observação. Ambiguidade. Cenas do quotidiano. Momentos.
O legado? O feminismo e o empoderamento estético das mulheres.
Contos com unidade temática, contos com diferentes pontos de vista sobre o mesmo assunto, contos que conversam entre si, unen fragmentos da vida, esboços, rascunhos.
Uma sociedade, base de Um Quarto Só Seu, a atracção pela água em Uma Simples Melodia e O Fascínio Pelo Poço, a paleta de cores em diversos contos como o roxo, por exemplo, também importante em Rumo ao Farol.
A natureza, as estações do ano, o clima, as mudanças climáticas são assuntos caros à autora.
Uma escrita pictórica, a pintura e escrita e os seus pontos em comum.
A teatralidade das festas subversivas ou aderentes conforme os convidados ou não convidados; opressoras, consensuais, polifónicas, fúteis.
A grande festa que é a escrita woolfiana, um coro que forma uma unanimidade do conto ao romance do romance ao conto. Observação. Ambiguidade. Cenas do quotidiano. Momentos.
O legado? O feminismo e o empoderamento estético das mulheres.
November 21, 2022
Short, cool story. Almost poetry. Maybe showing a softer side of the author!
December 31, 2022
From Leonard Woolf's introduction to this posthumous collection:
"Moments of Being" had indeed been published, in Forum in January 1928.
I discuss the stories in Monday or Tuesday, and indeed the omission of "A Society" from this collection, in my review of that work: /review/show...
And four of the pieces here - "The New Dress", "Together and Apart", "The Man who Loved his Kind" and "A Summing Up" - all link to the novel and were included in the later collection (not one assembled with Leonard's input), and I have discussed those in my review of that collection here: /review/show...
That leaves as previously unreviewed stories here for me to consider:
6 previously published works:
"Solid Objects" (1920), "Moments of Being" (1928), "The Lady in the Looking Glass" (1929), "The Duchess and the Jeweller" (1938), "The Shooting Party" (1938), "Lappin and Lappinova" (1939)
and 1 that Virginia Woolf had part revised: "The Searchlight"
And 1 "sketch": "The Legacy"
"Solid Objects" starts with two men walking on a beach when one picks up a piece of glass, which develops into a hobby to collect such obhects:
He did not see, or if he had seen would hardly have noticed, that John, after looking at the lump for a moment, as if in hesitation, slipped it inside his pocket. That impulse, too, may have been the impulse which leads a child to pick up one pebble on a path strewn with them, promising it a life of warmth and security upon the nursery mantelpiece, delighting in the sense of power and benignity which such an action confers, and believing that the heart of the stone leaps with joy when it sees itself chosen from a million like it, to enjoy this bliss instead of a life of cold and wet upon the high road. “It might so easily have been any other of the millions of stones, but it was I, I, I!�
...
In a few months he had collected four or five specimens that took their place upon the mantelpiece. They were useful, too, for a man who is standing for Parliament upon the brink of a brilliant career has any number of papers to keep in order—addresses to constituents, declarations of policy, appeals for subscriptions, invitations to dinner, and so on.
and eventually an obsession that overtakes his budding Parliamentary career.
"Moments of Being" is subtitled "Slater’s pins have no points" and begins:
“Slater’s pins have no points—don’t you always find that?� said Miss Craye, turning round as the rose fell out of Fanny Wilmot’s dress, and Fanny stooped, with her ears full of the music, to look for the pin on the floor. The words gave her an extraordinary shock, as Miss Craye struck the last chord of the Bach fugue. Did Miss Craye actually go to Slater’s and buy pins then, Fanny Wilmot asked herself, transfixed for a moment. Did she stand at the counter waiting like anybody else, and was she given a bill with coppers wrapped in it, and did she slip them into her purse and then, an hour later, stand by her dressing table and take out the pins? What need had she of pins? For she was not so much dressed as cased, like a beetle compactly in its sheath, blue in winter, green in summer. What need had she of pins—Julia Craye—who lived, it seemed, in the cool glassy world of Bach fugues, playing to herself what she liked, and only consenting to take one or two pupils at the Archer Street College of Music (so the Principal, Miss Kingston, said) as a special favour to herself, who had “the greatest admiration for her in every way.�
with Fanny going on to imagine her way into Julia Craye's life while she hunts for a stray pin on the ground.
"The Searchlight" is an intriguing impressionistic, and quite short, story very open to interpretation.
"Lappin and Lappinova" is a highly effective portrait of initial infatuation and then the gradual disintegration of a marriage centered around a couple’s nicknames for each other and shared fantasy, that they are both rabbits.
"The Duchess and the Jeweller" is an unusually, for Woolf, conventional story and also one with some worrying tinges of racial stereotyping and anti-Semitism, and that after it was apparently toned down for publication (the original title omitted the 'eller'). Albeit later critics such as Hermione Lee have argued Woolf’s '“offensive caricature� was designed to critique “the habitual Anti-Semitism of her circle� ().
“The Shooting Party� has rather more plot that one associates with Woolf, a rather dramatised story of a shooting party and a once-rich family in their literally crumbling house, with a melodramatic ending. Woolf’s framing device, that gives the story a rather ghostly air, is however effective and elevates thew text.
“The Legacy� has a senior politician disposing of his wife’s effects after her sudden death:
How strange it was, Gilbert Clandon thought once more, that she had left everything in such order—a little gift of some sort for every one of her friends. It was as if she had foreseen her death. Yet she had been in perfect health when she left the house that morning, six weeks ago; when she stepped off the kerb in Piccadilly and the car had killed her.
...
To him, of course, she had left nothing in particular, unless it were her diary. Fifteen little volumes, bound in green leather, stood behind him on her writing table. Ever since they were married, she had kept a diary. Some of their very few—he could not call them quarrels, say tiffs—had been about that diary. When he came in and found her writing, she always shut it or put her hand over it. “No, no, no,� he could hear her say, “After I’m dead—perhaps.� So she had left it him, as her legacy.
As he browses her diaries, he picks out the passages that concern him, at first his wife’s main preoccupation but He skipped on. His own name occurred less frequently. His interest slackened, at least until another name starts to appear more frequently and the truth of their marriage and the accident (ableit a rather telegraphed twist) is revealed.
“The Lady in The Looking Glass� is subtitled “a reflection� and opens with the intriguing line:
People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.
The narrator imagines a life of a woman through what is reflected in a looking glass, but the reality, when the subject herself comes into view, is rather disappointing. For me the main interest here lay mainly in the narrator spelling out the modernist techniques that Woolf uses generally:
If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand—the imagination.
...
She was thinking, perhaps, that she must order a new net for the strawberries; that she must send flowers to Johnson’s widow; that it was time she drove over to see the Hippesleys in their new house. Those were the things she talked about at dinner certainly. But one was tired of the things that she talked about at dinner. It was her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words, the state that is to the mind what breathing is to the body.
Overall, I find it hard to rate this one. If one wanted to buy and read just one collection of Woolf's stories to understand her over her career, then this would be the one to pick for its breadth of style and timespan, as well as being close to an authorised collection. But her complete works (novels and all) are now available on the Kindle for almost no cost if one wants to sample Woolf, and as a collection it doesn't, unlike , at all cohere. And ultimately I'd recommend people to start with the three magnificent novels - The Waves, Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse - which stand as some of the finest English literature of all time. 3.5 stars
Monday or Tuesday, the only book of short stories by Virginia Woolf which appeared in her lifetime, was published 22 years ago, in 1921. It has been out of print for years.
All through her life, Virginia Woolf used at intervals to write short stories. It was her custom, whenever an idea for one occurred to her, to sketch it out in a very rough form and then to put it away in a drawer. Later, if an editor asked her for a short story, and she felt in the mood to write one (which was not frequent), she would take a sketch out of her drawer and rewrite it, sometimes a great many times. Or if she felt, as she often did, while writing a novel that she required to rest her mind by working at something else for a time, she would either write a critical essay or work upon one of her sketches for short stories.
For some time before her death we had often discussed the possibility of her republishing Monday or Tuesday, or publishing a new volume of collected short stories. Finally, in 1940, she decided that she would get together a new volume of such stories and include in it most of the stories which had appeared originally in Monday or Tuesday, as well as some published subsequently in magazines and some unpublished. Our idea was that she should produce a volume of critical essays in 1941 and the volume of stories in 1942.
In the present volume I have tried to carry out her intention. I have included in it six out of the eight stories or sketches which originally appeared in Monday or Tuesday. The two omitted by me are “A Society,� and “Blue and Green�; I know that she had decided not to include the first and I am practically certain that she would not have included the second. I have then printed six stories which appeared in magazines between 1922 and 1941; they are: “The New Dress,� “The Shooting Party,� “Lappin and Lapinova,� “Solid Objects,� “The Lady in the Looking-Glass,� and “The Duchess and the Jeweller.� The magazines in which they appeared were: The Forum, Harper’s Bazaar, The Athenæum, Harper’s Monthly Magazine.
Finally I have included six unpublished stories. (It is possible that one of these, “Moments of Being,� was published. My own recollection was that it had been, but there is no record of its publication, and I have printed it from a typescript.) It is with some hesitation that I have included them. None of them, except “Moments of Being� and “The Searchlight,� are finally revised by her, and she would certainly have done a great deal of work on them before she published them. At least four of them are only just in the stage beyond that of her first sketch.
"Moments of Being" had indeed been published, in Forum in January 1928.
I discuss the stories in Monday or Tuesday, and indeed the omission of "A Society" from this collection, in my review of that work: /review/show...
And four of the pieces here - "The New Dress", "Together and Apart", "The Man who Loved his Kind" and "A Summing Up" - all link to the novel and were included in the later collection (not one assembled with Leonard's input), and I have discussed those in my review of that collection here: /review/show...
That leaves as previously unreviewed stories here for me to consider:
6 previously published works:
"Solid Objects" (1920), "Moments of Being" (1928), "The Lady in the Looking Glass" (1929), "The Duchess and the Jeweller" (1938), "The Shooting Party" (1938), "Lappin and Lappinova" (1939)
and 1 that Virginia Woolf had part revised: "The Searchlight"
And 1 "sketch": "The Legacy"
"Solid Objects" starts with two men walking on a beach when one picks up a piece of glass, which develops into a hobby to collect such obhects:
He did not see, or if he had seen would hardly have noticed, that John, after looking at the lump for a moment, as if in hesitation, slipped it inside his pocket. That impulse, too, may have been the impulse which leads a child to pick up one pebble on a path strewn with them, promising it a life of warmth and security upon the nursery mantelpiece, delighting in the sense of power and benignity which such an action confers, and believing that the heart of the stone leaps with joy when it sees itself chosen from a million like it, to enjoy this bliss instead of a life of cold and wet upon the high road. “It might so easily have been any other of the millions of stones, but it was I, I, I!�
...
In a few months he had collected four or five specimens that took their place upon the mantelpiece. They were useful, too, for a man who is standing for Parliament upon the brink of a brilliant career has any number of papers to keep in order—addresses to constituents, declarations of policy, appeals for subscriptions, invitations to dinner, and so on.
and eventually an obsession that overtakes his budding Parliamentary career.
"Moments of Being" is subtitled "Slater’s pins have no points" and begins:
“Slater’s pins have no points—don’t you always find that?� said Miss Craye, turning round as the rose fell out of Fanny Wilmot’s dress, and Fanny stooped, with her ears full of the music, to look for the pin on the floor. The words gave her an extraordinary shock, as Miss Craye struck the last chord of the Bach fugue. Did Miss Craye actually go to Slater’s and buy pins then, Fanny Wilmot asked herself, transfixed for a moment. Did she stand at the counter waiting like anybody else, and was she given a bill with coppers wrapped in it, and did she slip them into her purse and then, an hour later, stand by her dressing table and take out the pins? What need had she of pins? For she was not so much dressed as cased, like a beetle compactly in its sheath, blue in winter, green in summer. What need had she of pins—Julia Craye—who lived, it seemed, in the cool glassy world of Bach fugues, playing to herself what she liked, and only consenting to take one or two pupils at the Archer Street College of Music (so the Principal, Miss Kingston, said) as a special favour to herself, who had “the greatest admiration for her in every way.�
with Fanny going on to imagine her way into Julia Craye's life while she hunts for a stray pin on the ground.
"The Searchlight" is an intriguing impressionistic, and quite short, story very open to interpretation.
"Lappin and Lappinova" is a highly effective portrait of initial infatuation and then the gradual disintegration of a marriage centered around a couple’s nicknames for each other and shared fantasy, that they are both rabbits.
"The Duchess and the Jeweller" is an unusually, for Woolf, conventional story and also one with some worrying tinges of racial stereotyping and anti-Semitism, and that after it was apparently toned down for publication (the original title omitted the 'eller'). Albeit later critics such as Hermione Lee have argued Woolf’s '“offensive caricature� was designed to critique “the habitual Anti-Semitism of her circle� ().
“The Shooting Party� has rather more plot that one associates with Woolf, a rather dramatised story of a shooting party and a once-rich family in their literally crumbling house, with a melodramatic ending. Woolf’s framing device, that gives the story a rather ghostly air, is however effective and elevates thew text.
“The Legacy� has a senior politician disposing of his wife’s effects after her sudden death:
How strange it was, Gilbert Clandon thought once more, that she had left everything in such order—a little gift of some sort for every one of her friends. It was as if she had foreseen her death. Yet she had been in perfect health when she left the house that morning, six weeks ago; when she stepped off the kerb in Piccadilly and the car had killed her.
...
To him, of course, she had left nothing in particular, unless it were her diary. Fifteen little volumes, bound in green leather, stood behind him on her writing table. Ever since they were married, she had kept a diary. Some of their very few—he could not call them quarrels, say tiffs—had been about that diary. When he came in and found her writing, she always shut it or put her hand over it. “No, no, no,� he could hear her say, “After I’m dead—perhaps.� So she had left it him, as her legacy.
As he browses her diaries, he picks out the passages that concern him, at first his wife’s main preoccupation but He skipped on. His own name occurred less frequently. His interest slackened, at least until another name starts to appear more frequently and the truth of their marriage and the accident (ableit a rather telegraphed twist) is revealed.
“The Lady in The Looking Glass� is subtitled “a reflection� and opens with the intriguing line:
People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.
The narrator imagines a life of a woman through what is reflected in a looking glass, but the reality, when the subject herself comes into view, is rather disappointing. For me the main interest here lay mainly in the narrator spelling out the modernist techniques that Woolf uses generally:
If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand—the imagination.
...
She was thinking, perhaps, that she must order a new net for the strawberries; that she must send flowers to Johnson’s widow; that it was time she drove over to see the Hippesleys in their new house. Those were the things she talked about at dinner certainly. But one was tired of the things that she talked about at dinner. It was her profounder state of being that one wanted to catch and turn to words, the state that is to the mind what breathing is to the body.
Overall, I find it hard to rate this one. If one wanted to buy and read just one collection of Woolf's stories to understand her over her career, then this would be the one to pick for its breadth of style and timespan, as well as being close to an authorised collection. But her complete works (novels and all) are now available on the Kindle for almost no cost if one wants to sample Woolf, and as a collection it doesn't, unlike , at all cohere. And ultimately I'd recommend people to start with the three magnificent novels - The Waves, Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse - which stand as some of the finest English literature of all time. 3.5 stars
November 17, 2023
Tive ajudas preciosas para a compreensão destes contos, mesmo assim a minha mente ainda se recusa a voltar à normalidade. (que já não é grande coisa🥴)
Piadas à parte, Virgínia era mesmo um ser priveligiado com grande perspicácia.
Piadas à parte, Virgínia era mesmo um ser priveligiado com grande perspicácia.
November 2, 2017
بی نظیر بود. کتاب از مجموعه داستان های شکل گرفته که اکثرن با محتوای فلسفی و فمینیستی مواجه است. به خصوص داستان یک تصویر از ولف بسیار استادانه طراحی شده که با نماد آینه (ضمیر ناخوداگاه، هویت) با استحاله ی سه شخصیت که هر سه هم یکی هستند مواجه می شویم. در جاهایی زاویه دید سوم شخص (دانای کل) روایت می شود و در بعضی جا دوم شخص و اول شخص. چرا که شخصیت داستانی، دیگر پیر و ناتوان شده و با نماد آیینه به معنای هویت هر بار به دوران جوانی, عاشقی و پیری فرتوت بودن خود می نگرد. در دیدگاهی فمینیستی افراطی در پایان عمر و کهندسالی متوجه آن می شود که هرگز ازدواج نکرده و با حسرت به گذشته، جوانی و میان سالی می نگرد. در جوانی از نامه های عاشقانه اش و از رابطه با مردانی که رابطه را منع می کرده صحبت به میان آمده و در میان سالی عاشق شده عشق را تجربه و زیسته است. که حالا نامه های عاشقی را جمع آوری می کرده و در کهن سالی تازه متوجه شده که هیچ ازدواجی نکرده است...
داستان از تکنیک سیال ذهن و ذهن خود پیرزن با فلاش بک و تغییر زاویه دید روایت می شود و...
داستان از تکنیک سیال ذهن و ذهن خود پیرزن با فلاش بک و تغییر زاویه دید روایت می شود و...
January 15, 2023
Contos favoritos:
A marca na parede
Lappin e Lapinova
O legado
A marca na parede
Lappin e Lapinova
O legado
November 21, 2022
I guess there are no ghosts, and if yes, then there was only one ghost, of course, the holy ghost � and, as we know it, nothing has been heard about it since 2000+ years back. No news, even the Vatican is silent.
There are no ghosts, there are only dead skeletons underneath, yet, surprisingly, Virginia Woolf has fresh news: from room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple
So, I hope the soul goes on moving to new forms (fingers crossed), but it certainly depends on how one has lived, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?�
I guess one’s whole life essence determines the new form, in other words, what you have desired your whole life and have not been able to fulfill, that desire at the last moment of your life stands as the only thing that determines your life. Like there is nobody directing anything, just it is simply the law. As such, for those that loved each other deeply and truly and passed away, then being by-gone is not a sorry state of affairs, as ’wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy
They don’t stand in mournful recollection about all that had been lost, quite the opposite, they look out for each other again in the house where they had spent together some wonderful joys, so that it would finally return to be a home again, a family home� ”Safe, safe, safe�, the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room…� the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
No need for grief, no need for despair, no matter the time passed in-between�
’Here we slept�, she says. And he adds, ‘Kisses without number�. ‘Waking in the morning�, ‘silver between the trees�, ‘upstairs—in the garden, ‘when the summer came---, ‘in the winder snowtime--'Look�, he breaths. ‘Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.��’Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart .
There are no ghosts, there are only dead skeletons underneath, yet, surprisingly, Virginia Woolf has fresh news: from room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple
So, I hope the soul goes on moving to new forms (fingers crossed), but it certainly depends on how one has lived, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?�
I guess one’s whole life essence determines the new form, in other words, what you have desired your whole life and have not been able to fulfill, that desire at the last moment of your life stands as the only thing that determines your life. Like there is nobody directing anything, just it is simply the law. As such, for those that loved each other deeply and truly and passed away, then being by-gone is not a sorry state of affairs, as ’wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy
They don’t stand in mournful recollection about all that had been lost, quite the opposite, they look out for each other again in the house where they had spent together some wonderful joys, so that it would finally return to be a home again, a family home� ”Safe, safe, safe�, the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room…� the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
No need for grief, no need for despair, no matter the time passed in-between�
’Here we slept�, she says. And he adds, ‘Kisses without number�. ‘Waking in the morning�, ‘silver between the trees�, ‘upstairs—in the garden, ‘when the summer came---, ‘in the winder snowtime--'Look�, he breaths. ‘Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.��’Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart .
January 24, 2020
ویرجینیا ولف را باید نماینده ادبیات مدرن دانست. وقتی داستان های کوتاهش را در این مجموعه می خواندم به یاد جیمز جویس می افتادم. صرف نظر از مباحث فمینیستی ش در بقیه موارد عجیب شبیه جویس است. ابهام و روایت ضمیر خودآگاه از مواردی است که داستان های وی را دشوار می کند. این اثر سرشار از اشارات فمینیستی و فلسفی بود.
September 20, 2020
There are several posthumously published collections of Woolf’s short stories and I chose this one because it was selected and introduced by her husband Leonard Woolf, 3 years after her death. I was even more pleasantly surprised to read in his introduction that this selection came from Virginia’s conversations with him about what short fictions to include in her future collection. “Our idea was that she should produce a volume of critical essays in 1941 and the volume of stories in 1942.� Her tragic suicide in 1941 intervened but LW still made it happen for her short stories with this publication in 1943/44. It includes all but 2 stories from the only collection published during her lifetime, (1921), several stories published in magazines, and the set of unpublished ones most of which she conceived as a cycle of interconnected stories about the guests at a party in her novel .
Although she is better known for her novels and essays, after reading a few of her stories I was so drawn to her unique style that I couldn’t resist this collection. It’s interesting to read the first-hand account from LW how his wife approached this genre:
They range from short sketches to slightly longer ‘stream of consciousness� plotless stories. Some make it difficult to draw the line with prose poems, others read almost, though not entirely, as essays. Only about 2-3 were written in the conventional plot-driven form, oddly mostly in her late period, but even then her fluid prose, like seamless continuous transitions between the character’s thoughts and the confessions in his late wife’s diary that he reads in “The Legacy� story, make them uniquely hers.
In most stories her interest is clearly in searching for the truth about the characters (and individuals in general) through their inner monologue or the narrator’s interpretations of their exterior clues. The end result is not always as expected, as in "An Unwritten Novel" or “Moments of Being.�
At other times, a story would be an exploration into the puzzles that surround us, from as simple and trivial as an unusually positioned dot on the wall ("The Mark on the Wall") to our (mostly failed) expectations from our life choices such as marriage, as uncovered in a brilliantly imaginative story "Lappin and Lapinova" and a rather predictable, but still beautifully written, conventional “The Legacy.� I thought that the themes of status-seeking aspirations with their ironic and cruel twists were also perceptively approached in "The New Dress" and "The Duchess and the Jeweller.�
There is one more story that I love very much but it is not included in this collection probably because its final version was written after LW and VW had made plans for publishing her collected short fiction or perhaps it could have been too painful for Leonard to include it (it seems that the latter is less likely). The revised typescript dates from 1 March 1941, entitled “The Symbol� (with the old title “Inconclusions� crossed out), only 4 weeks before her suicide. It’s about the mountain as a symbol, but the question of what it symbolizes in this story is never clearly answered. I would say it stands for death but then it can also be inconclusive� as is the case with many of her other stories which I read more than once and each time uncovered something more, even a greater beauty or subtler meaning than what impressed me on the first reading.
It occurred to me that, although Woolf's short fiction is not as well-known as her novels, her writing was nevertheless in some ways seminal, foreshadowing a few trends favored by many writers today such as blurring the line with essay forms or having a 'novel' as a cycle of interconnected stories (in her case it was never published during her lifetime, but she had an idea and even wrote the 'party' stories for it).
Recommended.
4.5/5
Although she is better known for her novels and essays, after reading a few of her stories I was so drawn to her unique style that I couldn’t resist this collection. It’s interesting to read the first-hand account from LW how his wife approached this genre:
All through her life, Virginia Woolf used at intervals to write short stories. It was her custom, whenever an idea for one occurred to her, to sketch it out in a very rough form and then to put it away in a drawer. Later, if an editor asked her for a short story, and she felt in the mood to write one (which was not frequent), she would take a sketch out of her drawer and rewrite it, sometimes a great many times. Or if she felt, as she often did, while writing a novel that she required to rest her mind by working at something else for a time, she would either write a critical essay or work upon one of her sketches for short stories.The title story can be misleading if possibly suggesting that the collection has ghost stories, which is not the case. Even “A Haunted House� is not a typical “ghost� fiction, the genre that consistently fails to appeal to me. I personally experienced it as a beautiful dream-like story about the shared ‘treasure� of living in the same house between the past and current residents. And it turned out to be one of my favorites, along with some old ones I previously read, now re-reading them with great pleasure, (, , ) and a few new for me.
They range from short sketches to slightly longer ‘stream of consciousness� plotless stories. Some make it difficult to draw the line with prose poems, others read almost, though not entirely, as essays. Only about 2-3 were written in the conventional plot-driven form, oddly mostly in her late period, but even then her fluid prose, like seamless continuous transitions between the character’s thoughts and the confessions in his late wife’s diary that he reads in “The Legacy� story, make them uniquely hers.
In most stories her interest is clearly in searching for the truth about the characters (and individuals in general) through their inner monologue or the narrator’s interpretations of their exterior clues. The end result is not always as expected, as in "An Unwritten Novel" or “Moments of Being.�
At other times, a story would be an exploration into the puzzles that surround us, from as simple and trivial as an unusually positioned dot on the wall ("The Mark on the Wall") to our (mostly failed) expectations from our life choices such as marriage, as uncovered in a brilliantly imaginative story "Lappin and Lapinova" and a rather predictable, but still beautifully written, conventional “The Legacy.� I thought that the themes of status-seeking aspirations with their ironic and cruel twists were also perceptively approached in "The New Dress" and "The Duchess and the Jeweller.�
There is one more story that I love very much but it is not included in this collection probably because its final version was written after LW and VW had made plans for publishing her collected short fiction or perhaps it could have been too painful for Leonard to include it (it seems that the latter is less likely). The revised typescript dates from 1 March 1941, entitled “The Symbol� (with the old title “Inconclusions� crossed out), only 4 weeks before her suicide. It’s about the mountain as a symbol, but the question of what it symbolizes in this story is never clearly answered. I would say it stands for death but then it can also be inconclusive� as is the case with many of her other stories which I read more than once and each time uncovered something more, even a greater beauty or subtler meaning than what impressed me on the first reading.
It occurred to me that, although Woolf's short fiction is not as well-known as her novels, her writing was nevertheless in some ways seminal, foreshadowing a few trends favored by many writers today such as blurring the line with essay forms or having a 'novel' as a cycle of interconnected stories (in her case it was never published during her lifetime, but she had an idea and even wrote the 'party' stories for it).
Recommended.
4.5/5
August 20, 2017
A selection of prose/poetry that reminds me much of James joyce: after all, they were both working at the same time and both had experienced the modernist movement. There are lovely lines here such as "Blue are the ribs of the wrecked rowing boats"; there is what feels like prose/poetry that needs to be read and reread to (hopefully) get a grip on what, exactly, Woolf was trying to say; and there are bits that, to me, seemed like a writer scribbling: I can't imagine these notes were meant to be published. But, all in all, this is a fascinating look into Woolf's world.
January 1, 2023
But at night the town looks quite ethereal. There is a white glow on the horizon. There are hoops and coronets in the streets. The town has sunk down into the water. And the skeleton only is picked out in fairy lamps.
the closing words of The Watering Place, likely written in March 1941, the month of Virginia Woolf's death.
The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf is a definitive work resulting from Susan Dick's heroic efforts to assemble all of Woolf's shorter fiction, from her first piece in 1906, "Phyllis and Rosamond", to her last, a month before her death, in 1941, "The Watering Place", into one volume.
This was an undertaking that required significant judgement as to the final form of unpublished works, as well as to the boundary between essay and fiction (I have included in this collection only those short pieces that are, to my mind, clearly fictions, that is, works in which the characters, scenes, and actions are more imaginary than they are factual, and in which the narrator's voice is not necessarily identified with the author). The latter judgement has led to the exclusion of certain works, such as biographical sketches, and the inclusion of others (notably "A Woman's College from Outside") more commonly classed as essays.
Dick's Introduction acknowledges the existence of three previous key partial collections, all of which I have previously read:
- the only collection of short stories published in Woolf’s lifetime, Monday or Tuesday � my review: /review/show...
- the overlapping collection assembled by Leonard Woolf after his wife’s deathA Haunted House and Other Stories - my review: /review/show...
And another collection assembled by Hogarth Press in 1973, but without input from either Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway's Party: A Short Story Sequence I review here: /review/show...
I therefore restricted my reading of this book, and in particular my rating, to the pieces not covered by any of the above, which comprised the following:
"Phyllis and Rosamond"
"The Mysterious Case of Miss V"
"The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn"
"A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus"
"Memoirs of a Novelist"
"The Evening Party"
"Sympathy"
"A Woman's College from Outside"
"In the Orchard"
"The Prime Minister" (which became part of Mrs Dalloway)
"Nurse Lugton's Curtain"
"The Widow and the Parrot: A True Story"
"Happiness"
"A Simple Melody"
"The Fascination of the Pool"
"Three Pictures"
"Scenes from the Life of a British Naval Officer"
"Miss Pryme"
"Ode Written Partly in Prose.."
"Portraits"
"Uncle Vanya"
"Gypsy, the Mongrel"
"The Symbol"
"The Watering Place"
"Phyllis and Rosamond"is a great starting piece as, though very early in her development as a writer, it shows Woolf thinking about the demands of the age on the form:
In this very curious age, when we are beginning to require pictures of people, their minds and their coats, a faithful outline, drawn with no skill but veracity, may possibly have some value.
Let each man, I heard it said the other day, write down the details of a day's work; posterity will be as glad of the catalogue as we should be if we had such a record of how the door keeper at the Globe, and the man who kept the Park gates passed Saturday March 18th in the year of our Lord 1568.
And as such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worth while to take as model one of those many women who cluster in the shade.
"Happiness" and "A Simple Melody" rather belong with the other stories in , indeed the latter makes for a great companion read with George Carslake, from whose PoV it is written, observing Stuart Elton from Happiness, Mabel Waring from The New Dress (Carslake remarks on her pretty yellow dress but that She looked agitated, and we know from The New Dress that Mabel is insecure in her choice of fashion) and, most deliciously, that angry looking chap with the toothbrush moustache who seemed to know nobody, who we know from "The Man who Loved his Kind" is Prickett Ellis, an old school acquaintance of Richard Dalloway who invited him to the party when he ran in to him in the street.
The appendix to the collection also contains some fragmentary pieces, such as "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday" which features lavender from Sandringham, which Dick correctly comments in her notes likely meant from the then recently founded lavender fields of nearby Heacham. Another Norfolk link comes from The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn, written in 1906 while Virginaia Woolf was staying in Blo'Norton Hall and set in a ficticious country house in the area - We in Norfolk today are much the same as we were in the day of Helen [of Troy], whenever she may have lived.. Mistess Joan writes fearfully of the journey to London via the 15th century equivalent of the M11 in a passage which feels harsh but true of Essex:
There is but one road and it passes through vast lands, where no man live, but only those who have murdered or robbed.
As a carefully assembled, helpfully annotated and comprehensive collection of Woolf's shorter fiction this is highly worthwhile, although I remain a fan of her novels, followed by her essays, with her stories seeming mostly exercises towards the longer form. The marginal effect of this book for me, after the three aforementioned published collections, was also rather diminished, particularly as almost all of the pieces that remain had not been revised for publication by the author. So 3 stars for my reading experience.
the closing words of The Watering Place, likely written in March 1941, the month of Virginia Woolf's death.
The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf is a definitive work resulting from Susan Dick's heroic efforts to assemble all of Woolf's shorter fiction, from her first piece in 1906, "Phyllis and Rosamond", to her last, a month before her death, in 1941, "The Watering Place", into one volume.
This was an undertaking that required significant judgement as to the final form of unpublished works, as well as to the boundary between essay and fiction (I have included in this collection only those short pieces that are, to my mind, clearly fictions, that is, works in which the characters, scenes, and actions are more imaginary than they are factual, and in which the narrator's voice is not necessarily identified with the author). The latter judgement has led to the exclusion of certain works, such as biographical sketches, and the inclusion of others (notably "A Woman's College from Outside") more commonly classed as essays.
Dick's Introduction acknowledges the existence of three previous key partial collections, all of which I have previously read:
- the only collection of short stories published in Woolf’s lifetime, Monday or Tuesday � my review: /review/show...
- the overlapping collection assembled by Leonard Woolf after his wife’s deathA Haunted House and Other Stories - my review: /review/show...
And another collection assembled by Hogarth Press in 1973, but without input from either Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway's Party: A Short Story Sequence I review here: /review/show...
I therefore restricted my reading of this book, and in particular my rating, to the pieces not covered by any of the above, which comprised the following:
"Phyllis and Rosamond"
"The Mysterious Case of Miss V"
"The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn"
"A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus"
"Memoirs of a Novelist"
"The Evening Party"
"Sympathy"
"A Woman's College from Outside"
"In the Orchard"
"The Prime Minister" (which became part of Mrs Dalloway)
"Nurse Lugton's Curtain"
"The Widow and the Parrot: A True Story"
"Happiness"
"A Simple Melody"
"The Fascination of the Pool"
"Three Pictures"
"Scenes from the Life of a British Naval Officer"
"Miss Pryme"
"Ode Written Partly in Prose.."
"Portraits"
"Uncle Vanya"
"Gypsy, the Mongrel"
"The Symbol"
"The Watering Place"
"Phyllis and Rosamond"is a great starting piece as, though very early in her development as a writer, it shows Woolf thinking about the demands of the age on the form:
In this very curious age, when we are beginning to require pictures of people, their minds and their coats, a faithful outline, drawn with no skill but veracity, may possibly have some value.
Let each man, I heard it said the other day, write down the details of a day's work; posterity will be as glad of the catalogue as we should be if we had such a record of how the door keeper at the Globe, and the man who kept the Park gates passed Saturday March 18th in the year of our Lord 1568.
And as such portraits as we have are almost invariably of the male sex, who strut more prominently across the stage, it seems worth while to take as model one of those many women who cluster in the shade.
"Happiness" and "A Simple Melody" rather belong with the other stories in , indeed the latter makes for a great companion read with George Carslake, from whose PoV it is written, observing Stuart Elton from Happiness, Mabel Waring from The New Dress (Carslake remarks on her pretty yellow dress but that She looked agitated, and we know from The New Dress that Mabel is insecure in her choice of fashion) and, most deliciously, that angry looking chap with the toothbrush moustache who seemed to know nobody, who we know from "The Man who Loved his Kind" is Prickett Ellis, an old school acquaintance of Richard Dalloway who invited him to the party when he ran in to him in the street.
The appendix to the collection also contains some fragmentary pieces, such as "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday" which features lavender from Sandringham, which Dick correctly comments in her notes likely meant from the then recently founded lavender fields of nearby Heacham. Another Norfolk link comes from The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn, written in 1906 while Virginaia Woolf was staying in Blo'Norton Hall and set in a ficticious country house in the area - We in Norfolk today are much the same as we were in the day of Helen [of Troy], whenever she may have lived.. Mistess Joan writes fearfully of the journey to London via the 15th century equivalent of the M11 in a passage which feels harsh but true of Essex:
There is but one road and it passes through vast lands, where no man live, but only those who have murdered or robbed.
As a carefully assembled, helpfully annotated and comprehensive collection of Woolf's shorter fiction this is highly worthwhile, although I remain a fan of her novels, followed by her essays, with her stories seeming mostly exercises towards the longer form. The marginal effect of this book for me, after the three aforementioned published collections, was also rather diminished, particularly as almost all of the pieces that remain had not been revised for publication by the author. So 3 stars for my reading experience.
August 2, 2021
I was reading a collection of short stories by Vita Sackville-West when it was time to choose my next Virginia Woolf title, so I thought it would be fun to read this collection of her short work. With selections ranging from before 1917 to 1941, there is a great deal to enjoy here.
And I did enjoy nearly everything, it was not until I reached the final section (1926 -1941) that I began to struggle. There were 17 pieces in the section; many of them were just one or two pages in length. But they all seemed distant to me, as if my brain just said 'here and no further'. I will come back some day and give this section proper attention, because I ended up skimming through it this time. And I had to skip all of the Notes And Appendices pages due to the extremely tiny print. I know I missed explanation notes for many references throughout the stories but old eyes have their limits.
From my notes, I see that I had a bit of trouble reading so many of these pieces one right after the other. Woolf makes you work, you cannot really relax and just absorb the tale, and that can get tiresome. Also the basic themes here are repeated over and over until you expect each story to be set in a gathering at someone's home, or show the inner frettings of outwardly socially confident people. Then when the basic theme changes to something else, it is like a breath of fresh air. I think this book should be read in small doses with other books in between, just to give your mental powers a rest every so often.
Also from my notes, I see that the majority of the stories I liked the best came from the years 1917-1921. For me these showcased VW's wonderful imagination and her ability to capture moods and settings in such a way as to make the reader experience them also. Kew Gardens was lovely: contrasting the life going on down in the soil of one of the flower beds with the life hurrying past on two feet. Solid Objects was a chilling portrayal of the development of an obsession that changed a man's life. An Unwritten Novel shows us the writer on a train, imagining a story for the woman across from her in the compartment, with changes in the planned plot showing up according to people and actions around her as the ride continues. And finally A Haunted House was a charming explanation of various noises and bumps in the night.
I have not yet read detailed biographies about Woolf. I am familiar with her general story, of course, but I am saving the two biographical titles in my stack until I have read the other prose works I have planned. But it seemed to me that during the years 1917 to 1921 she wrote more varied pieces, at least in these shorter lengths, and I would dare to say that perhaps she had more fun with them.
I am going to take a short break before I read the next Woolf Volume, but I will return soon to this intriguing author and see what other delights she has waiting for me.
And I did enjoy nearly everything, it was not until I reached the final section (1926 -1941) that I began to struggle. There were 17 pieces in the section; many of them were just one or two pages in length. But they all seemed distant to me, as if my brain just said 'here and no further'. I will come back some day and give this section proper attention, because I ended up skimming through it this time. And I had to skip all of the Notes And Appendices pages due to the extremely tiny print. I know I missed explanation notes for many references throughout the stories but old eyes have their limits.
From my notes, I see that I had a bit of trouble reading so many of these pieces one right after the other. Woolf makes you work, you cannot really relax and just absorb the tale, and that can get tiresome. Also the basic themes here are repeated over and over until you expect each story to be set in a gathering at someone's home, or show the inner frettings of outwardly socially confident people. Then when the basic theme changes to something else, it is like a breath of fresh air. I think this book should be read in small doses with other books in between, just to give your mental powers a rest every so often.
Also from my notes, I see that the majority of the stories I liked the best came from the years 1917-1921. For me these showcased VW's wonderful imagination and her ability to capture moods and settings in such a way as to make the reader experience them also. Kew Gardens was lovely: contrasting the life going on down in the soil of one of the flower beds with the life hurrying past on two feet. Solid Objects was a chilling portrayal of the development of an obsession that changed a man's life. An Unwritten Novel shows us the writer on a train, imagining a story for the woman across from her in the compartment, with changes in the planned plot showing up according to people and actions around her as the ride continues. And finally A Haunted House was a charming explanation of various noises and bumps in the night.
I have not yet read detailed biographies about Woolf. I am familiar with her general story, of course, but I am saving the two biographical titles in my stack until I have read the other prose works I have planned. But it seemed to me that during the years 1917 to 1921 she wrote more varied pieces, at least in these shorter lengths, and I would dare to say that perhaps she had more fun with them.
I am going to take a short break before I read the next Woolf Volume, but I will return soon to this intriguing author and see what other delights she has waiting for me.
September 25, 2016
Un relato tan pero tan corto, de sólo cinco páginas, que no puedo puntuar más.
April 17, 2023
Voy a ser super honesta, creo que no terminé de entender bien todos los cuentos. Creo que son relatos que tendré que releer varias veces para poder ir desentrañando las capas y descubrir qué es lo que realmente quería decir la autora. Además, son del tipo que hay que leer de forma consciente pues Virginia juega mucho con la prosa, con cambios de narradores, paso de diálogo a narración a pensamientos y así. Fue difícil seguir el hilo de lo que está diciendo porque son monólogos internos o corrientes de la consciencia, entonces muchas veces resultaron caóticos. Por todo eso, perdón si no puedo ofrecer una mejor reseña o comentario sobre ellos.
Esta edición de Seix Barral es la primera traducción hecha en Colombia que estuvo a cargo del Colectivo Barbárika. Estos 18 relatos fueron traducidos por el colectivo de forma conjunta, con retroalimentación constante y como un experimento para intentar transmitir de mejor manera las particularidades de la autora. Me gustó mucho esto, porque implicó todo un trabajo adicional y cuidadoso detrás de cada relato y, dada la complejidad de estos, era algo más que necesario.
Virginia Woolf es una autora cuya gracia, en mi opinión, está en el cómo narró la cotidianidad de su época a través de monólogos y corrientes de la consciencia con una prosa preciosa. De alguna forma, Woolf le dio voz a los pensamientos femeninos tan mirados en menos, sobre todo en esos años, así le dio voz a las preocupaciones de las mujeres. Desde mi ignorancia dividiría estos relatos en dos tipos principales. En el primero, la autora se centró en la corriente de la consciencia y pensamientos de su protagonista o protagonistas mientras hacían algo muy sencillo. Aquí entrarían los relatos como La marca en la pared, Kew Gardens o Una recopilación, por ejemplo.
En la segunda categoría, la prosa de la autora siguió siendo muy propia, pero mucho más clara y fácil de seguir, pues el foco del relato era el giro que tenía o lo que sucedía en él. Este estilo fue mi favorito, quizá porque como dije era el más fácil de seguir, aquí entrarían relatos como El legado, La duquesa y el joyero oLa partida de caza. La autora fue capaz de mantener por completo su estilo muy personal, pero dosificarlo lo suficiente como para permitir que no me perdiera los detalles de lo que sucedía, las pistas que dio y el giro que entregó cuando acabó el relato.
Si han leído a Cortázar es probable que el estilo se les haga parecido, pues Woolf logró construir una prosa que mezcló diálogo, narración, pensamientos y cambios de narrador. Sus relatos son cortos, pero te obligan a estar concentrado para poder seguir bien el hilo de lo que está narrando. Al mismo tiempo, incluso así al terminar es posible quedar con la sensación de que no acabamos de entender del todo lo que la autora quiso decir y varios relatos, si no todos, requieren una o varias releídas para ser apreciados por completo.
Hubo relatos en los que no pasó nada importante como en El vestido nuevo, pero la forma en que estaban construidos, los pensamientos, las subidas y bajadas de humor, el caos de las ideas y las emociones resultaron maravillosos de leer. Woolf no tuvo problemas en representar esos ir y venir de la mente, las dudas, la ansiedad, los pensamientos intrusivos, los miedos, puede ser caótico y, a veces, complicado de seguir, pero es una forma bastante cercana a cómo realmente funciona nuestra mente.
Es cierto que dio voces a mujeres y representó su cotidianidad de una forma muy bella, llena de complejidad y humanidad. No obstante, en sus relatos también fue capaz de ponerse en los zapatos de personajes masculinos con un resultado tan favorable como en los otros. Por ejemplo, en El hombre que amaba su prójimo retrató a un hombre que moralmente se creía superior y miraba en menos la superficialidad del evento al que se vio obligado a asistir. O lo que hizo conLa duquesa y el joyero narrando todo este plan por parte del joyero, su mente y su relación complicada con la mujer.
Algo interesante fue que, sin importar el largo del relato, la autora no solo era capaz de entrar en la mente de un personaje, sino que de varios. Si bien en algunos se centró solo en la mente de su protagonista como Lappin y Lappínova, la verdad es que también hubo relatos que se centraban en un lugar o un objeto e iban cambiando de punto de vista según la persona o las personas que pasaran por ahí, comoKew Gardens. O lo que hizo cuando lo que hacía era narrar la misma situación desde el punto de vista de ambos implicados, como fue el caso deJuntos y distantes en el que leímos a esta pareja que fue presentada y cómo su relación se fue desarrollando desde ambas partes.
Cuentos completos de Virginia Woolf son relatos que se deben leer con tiempo, dedicándose a disfrutar cada uno, permitirse la concentración para devorar palabra por palabra y entender que es posible que tengan que volver a ellos de vez en cuando para terminar de entender su complejidad. Sin embargo, desbordan no solo la creatividad de la autora, sino que también un estilo muy propio de su pluma y sus temas recurrentes.
Esta edición de Seix Barral es la primera traducción hecha en Colombia que estuvo a cargo del Colectivo Barbárika. Estos 18 relatos fueron traducidos por el colectivo de forma conjunta, con retroalimentación constante y como un experimento para intentar transmitir de mejor manera las particularidades de la autora. Me gustó mucho esto, porque implicó todo un trabajo adicional y cuidadoso detrás de cada relato y, dada la complejidad de estos, era algo más que necesario.
"Su mente era como su habitación, en donde luces avanzaban y retrocedían, venían haciendo piruetas y pisaban con delicadeza, extendían sus colas, picoteaban a su paso; y entonces todo su ser se bañaba, de nuevo como la habitación, con una nube de algún profundo conocimiento, algún arrepentimiento no expresado y entonces se llenaba de cajones con llave, rellenos de cartas como sus escritorios."
Virginia Woolf es una autora cuya gracia, en mi opinión, está en el cómo narró la cotidianidad de su época a través de monólogos y corrientes de la consciencia con una prosa preciosa. De alguna forma, Woolf le dio voz a los pensamientos femeninos tan mirados en menos, sobre todo en esos años, así le dio voz a las preocupaciones de las mujeres. Desde mi ignorancia dividiría estos relatos en dos tipos principales. En el primero, la autora se centró en la corriente de la consciencia y pensamientos de su protagonista o protagonistas mientras hacían algo muy sencillo. Aquí entrarían los relatos como La marca en la pared, Kew Gardens o Una recopilación, por ejemplo.
"Lo que todos tenían miedo de decir, era que la felicidad es muy barata. Se puede tenerla por nada. La belleza."
En la segunda categoría, la prosa de la autora siguió siendo muy propia, pero mucho más clara y fácil de seguir, pues el foco del relato era el giro que tenía o lo que sucedía en él. Este estilo fue mi favorito, quizá porque como dije era el más fácil de seguir, aquí entrarían relatos como El legado, La duquesa y el joyero oLa partida de caza. La autora fue capaz de mantener por completo su estilo muy personal, pero dosificarlo lo suficiente como para permitir que no me perdiera los detalles de lo que sucedía, las pistas que dio y el giro que entregó cuando acabó el relato.
"Palabras cortas e insignificantes expresaban también algo, palabras con alas cortas para su pesado cuerpo de significado."
Si han leído a Cortázar es probable que el estilo se les haga parecido, pues Woolf logró construir una prosa que mezcló diálogo, narración, pensamientos y cambios de narrador. Sus relatos son cortos, pero te obligan a estar concentrado para poder seguir bien el hilo de lo que está narrando. Al mismo tiempo, incluso así al terminar es posible quedar con la sensación de que no acabamos de entender del todo lo que la autora quiso decir y varios relatos, si no todos, requieren una o varias releídas para ser apreciados por completo.
"Sería maravilloso ser ellos, pero estaba condenada a ser ella misma y tan solo podía, de este modo silencioso y entusiasta, sentada afuera en un jardín, aplaudir a la sociedad de la humanidad de la que estaba excluida."
Hubo relatos en los que no pasó nada importante como en El vestido nuevo, pero la forma en que estaban construidos, los pensamientos, las subidas y bajadas de humor, el caos de las ideas y las emociones resultaron maravillosos de leer. Woolf no tuvo problemas en representar esos ir y venir de la mente, las dudas, la ansiedad, los pensamientos intrusivos, los miedos, puede ser caótico y, a veces, complicado de seguir, pero es una forma bastante cercana a cómo realmente funciona nuestra mente.
"El alma -pues era consciente del movimiento en ella de una criatura que se abría camino a golpes en su interior e intentaba escapar, que por el momento llamaba el alma- es por naturaleza solitaria, un ave viuda; un ave posada distante en ese árbol."
Es cierto que dio voces a mujeres y representó su cotidianidad de una forma muy bella, llena de complejidad y humanidad. No obstante, en sus relatos también fue capaz de ponerse en los zapatos de personajes masculinos con un resultado tan favorable como en los otros. Por ejemplo, en El hombre que amaba su prójimo retrató a un hombre que moralmente se creía superior y miraba en menos la superficialidad del evento al que se vio obligado a asistir. O lo que hizo conLa duquesa y el joyero narrando todo este plan por parte del joyero, su mente y su relación complicada con la mujer.
"Deja entonces que perezca tu esperanza, que languidezca en el desierto mi alegría, que avance desnuda."
Algo interesante fue que, sin importar el largo del relato, la autora no solo era capaz de entrar en la mente de un personaje, sino que de varios. Si bien en algunos se centró solo en la mente de su protagonista como Lappin y Lappínova, la verdad es que también hubo relatos que se centraban en un lugar o un objeto e iban cambiando de punto de vista según la persona o las personas que pasaran por ahí, comoKew Gardens. O lo que hizo cuando lo que hacía era narrar la misma situación desde el punto de vista de ambos implicados, como fue el caso deJuntos y distantes en el que leímos a esta pareja que fue presentada y cómo su relación se fue desarrollando desde ambas partes.
"La vida es lo que se ve en los ojos de las personas; la vida es lo que aprenden y, habiéndolo aprendido, nunca, por más que intenten esconderlo, dejan de ser conscientes, ¿de qué? De que así es la vida, tal parece."
Cuentos completos de Virginia Woolf son relatos que se deben leer con tiempo, dedicándose a disfrutar cada uno, permitirse la concentración para devorar palabra por palabra y entender que es posible que tengan que volver a ellos de vez en cuando para terminar de entender su complejidad. Sin embargo, desbordan no solo la creatividad de la autora, sino que también un estilo muy propio de su pluma y sus temas recurrentes.
September 7, 2023
I fell in love with Virginia Woolf’s works only a few months ago and couldn’t get enough of her words so far, be it books, short stories, letters or diary entries (I’ve yet to read her essays, but I’m definitely planning to!). It’s just an intoxicating feeling to be able to take a look into the complicated mind of this fascinating, complex writer.
That’s why I couldn’t wait to read this book, which is an excerpt from her Complete Shorter Prose.
And really, the author proves her mastery once more in these short stories. Even more than in the longer prose, she shows her talent for throwing the reader off the scent and creating drama in small, everyday things.
Again I was completely and utterly enchanted by the power of her language. For example, her flower description in Kew Gardens is as intoxicating as a poem of maybe an Impressionist painting.
And of course I loved Slater’s Pins Have No Points, her “little story about Sapphism for the Americans�, as she wrote to Vita Sackville-West in 1927.
But: In her story An Unwritten Novel, SHE USES THE N-WORD!!!
Yes, I know that it’s actually not the author speaking, but the thoughts of a character in the story. Yes, I know that the story was written more than a hundred years ago and it was a different time. Yes, I know that VW was a member of the educated middle-class in England who grew up with different rules, ideas and ideals than people do today.
But dear Ms Woolf, despite everything, I think we REALLY need to talk about racism (and classism anyway)! Because in my opinion, using this word is okay under absolutely NO circumstances � and it was wrong back then, too! Which you, as the brilliant thinker you were, should have known as well.
I confess that my heart hurt a lot reading it, maybe even more so as the word is used in such a casual way here. I guess that was basically the moment my literary heroine was knocked off her pedestal � But I’ve been doing my very best to refuse to fall out of love because of her mistake, even though it’s unforgivable.
The rest of the stories are powerful, beautiful, profound, funny, tragic and poignant as ever.
4 Stars, with an uneasy feeling.
That’s why I couldn’t wait to read this book, which is an excerpt from her Complete Shorter Prose.
And really, the author proves her mastery once more in these short stories. Even more than in the longer prose, she shows her talent for throwing the reader off the scent and creating drama in small, everyday things.
Again I was completely and utterly enchanted by the power of her language. For example, her flower description in Kew Gardens is as intoxicating as a poem of maybe an Impressionist painting.
And of course I loved Slater’s Pins Have No Points, her “little story about Sapphism for the Americans�, as she wrote to Vita Sackville-West in 1927.
But: In her story An Unwritten Novel, SHE USES THE N-WORD!!!
Yes, I know that it’s actually not the author speaking, but the thoughts of a character in the story. Yes, I know that the story was written more than a hundred years ago and it was a different time. Yes, I know that VW was a member of the educated middle-class in England who grew up with different rules, ideas and ideals than people do today.
But dear Ms Woolf, despite everything, I think we REALLY need to talk about racism (and classism anyway)! Because in my opinion, using this word is okay under absolutely NO circumstances � and it was wrong back then, too! Which you, as the brilliant thinker you were, should have known as well.
I confess that my heart hurt a lot reading it, maybe even more so as the word is used in such a casual way here. I guess that was basically the moment my literary heroine was knocked off her pedestal � But I’ve been doing my very best to refuse to fall out of love because of her mistake, even though it’s unforgivable.
The rest of the stories are powerful, beautiful, profound, funny, tragic and poignant as ever.
4 Stars, with an uneasy feeling.
November 11, 2009
A collection of short, impressionistic stories by the woman who famously pioneered the stream of consciousness technique, and equally famously drowned herself by filling her pockets with stones and walking into a lake.
Typical of her style is the following start and end paragraphs from the title story:
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure � a ghostly couple.
‘Here we left it,� she said. And he added, ‘Oh, but here too!� ‘It’s upstairs,� she murmured. ‘And in the garden,� he whispered. ‘Quietly,� they said, ‘or we shall wake them.�
...................................................
‘Safe, safe, safe,� the heart of the house beats proudly. ‘Long years -� he sighs. ‘Again you found me.� ‘Here,� she murmurs, ‘sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure-Stooping, their light lifts the lid upon my eyes. ‘Safe! Safe! Safe!� the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry ‘Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.�
When I bought this book many years ago I was disappointed because I expected a 'proper' ghost story. But re-reading it now I realise that it really is a proper ghost story, and a heart-rending one at that.
Typical of her style is the following start and end paragraphs from the title story:
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure � a ghostly couple.
‘Here we left it,� she said. And he added, ‘Oh, but here too!� ‘It’s upstairs,� she murmured. ‘And in the garden,� he whispered. ‘Quietly,� they said, ‘or we shall wake them.�
...................................................
‘Safe, safe, safe,� the heart of the house beats proudly. ‘Long years -� he sighs. ‘Again you found me.� ‘Here,� she murmurs, ‘sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure-Stooping, their light lifts the lid upon my eyes. ‘Safe! Safe! Safe!� the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry ‘Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.�
When I bought this book many years ago I was disappointed because I expected a 'proper' ghost story. But re-reading it now I realise that it really is a proper ghost story, and a heart-rending one at that.
October 11, 2022
Death was the glass and functioned as a one-way mirror. You see your reflection and sense something beneath the surface, a murkiness beyond, something buried and hidden yet persistent.
This evocative short story (a prose poem really) will elicit different responses from readers. Having recently packed and moved, I identified with the sense of dislocation at the beginning, looking for misplaced objects, wandering through a house in search of what? I'd forgotten. Objects torn from routine slip through my fingers and must always always be searched out.
A house, like a life, has layers of significance, overlapping history, and meaning waiting to be discovered anew. Or maybe I'm just projecting again.
This evocative short story (a prose poem really) will elicit different responses from readers. Having recently packed and moved, I identified with the sense of dislocation at the beginning, looking for misplaced objects, wandering through a house in search of what? I'd forgotten. Objects torn from routine slip through my fingers and must always always be searched out.
A house, like a life, has layers of significance, overlapping history, and meaning waiting to be discovered anew. Or maybe I'm just projecting again.
June 9, 2019
Then she asked herself, “which view is the true one?�
These words, from the final story ‘Summing Up,� portray perfectly what Woolf is trying to get at in all of these very short stories. The stories showcase Woolf’s talent of relating minutiae; the ephemeral; thoughts that go flying off before circling back to the physical. Several of the stories in the middle, though worth reading, end with almost literal clunkers or even tell us too much, brief though they are; yet at the sentence-level, they are always thought-provoking.
These words, from the final story ‘Summing Up,� portray perfectly what Woolf is trying to get at in all of these very short stories. The stories showcase Woolf’s talent of relating minutiae; the ephemeral; thoughts that go flying off before circling back to the physical. Several of the stories in the middle, though worth reading, end with almost literal clunkers or even tell us too much, brief though they are; yet at the sentence-level, they are always thought-provoking.
October 10, 2022
18 short stories. Lots of experimentation by Woolf. Kew Gardens and the perspective of the snail. Several stream of conscious stories. Mrs Dalloway and her house in several. Flowers, skies and the people all show an insight by Woolf. Solid objects obsession, The legacy blindness of one close to you to Woolf’s imagination of people she sees.
May 25, 2019
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.�
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