Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф

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СКАЧАТЬ should be reading Ulysses, and fabricating my case for and against. I have read 200 pages so far—not a third; and have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested, by the first 2 or 3 chapters—to the end of the cemetery scene; and then puzzled, bored, irritated and disillusioned by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom, thinks this on a par with War and?eace\ An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw? But I think if you are anaemic, as Tom is, there is a glory in blood. Being fairly normal myself I am soon ready for the classics again. I may revise this later. I do not compromise my critical sagacity. I plant a stick in the ground to mark page 200.

      For my own part I am laboriously dredging my mind for Mrs Dalloway and bringing up light buckets. I don’t like the feeling. I’m writing too quickly. I must press it together. I wrote 4 thousand words of Reading in record time, 10 days; but then it was merely a quick sketch of Pastons, supplied by books. Now I break off, according to my quick change theory, to write Mrs D. (who ushers in a host of others, I begin to perceive). Then I do Chaucer; and finish the first chapter early in September. By that time, I have my Greek beginning perhaps, in my head; and so the future is all pegged out; and when Jacob is rejected in America and ignored in England, I shall be philosophically driving my plough fields away. They are cutting the corn all over the country, which supplies that metaphor, and perhaps excuses it. But I need no excuses, since I am not writing for the Lit. Sup. Shall I ever write for them again?

      Tuesday, August 22nd.

      “The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life—yes, that’s why I disliked so much the irruption of Sydney—one must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one’s character, living in the brain. Sydney comes and I’m Virginia; when I write I’m merely a sensibility. Sometimes I like being Virginia, but only when I’m scattered and various and gregarious. Now, so long as we are here, I’d like to be only a sensibility. By the way, Thackeray is good reading, very vivacious, with ‘touches’ as they call them over the way at the Shanks’, of astonishing insight.

      Monday, August 28th.

      I am beginning Greek again, and must really make out some plan: today 28th: Mrs Dalloway finished on Saturday 2nd Sept: Sunday 3rd to Friday 8th; start Chaucer. Chaucer—that chapter, I mean, should be finished by Sept. 22nd. And then? Shall I write the next chapter of Mrs D.—if she is to have a next chapter; and shall it be The Prime Minister? which will last till the week after we get back—say October 12th. Then I must be ready to start my Greek chapter. So I have from today, 28th, till 12th—which is just over 6 weeks—but I must allow for some interruptions. Now what have I to read? Some Homer: one Greek play: some Plato: Zimmern: Sheppard, as textbook: Bentley’s Life: if done thoroughly, this will be enough. But which Greek play? and how much Homer, and what Plato? Then there’s the Anthology. All to end upon the Odyssey because of the Elizabethans. And I must read a little Ibsen to compare with Euripides—Racine with Sophocles—perhaps Marlowe with Aeschylus. Sounds very learned; but really might amuse me; and if it doesn’t, no need to go on.

      Wednesday, September 6th.

      My proofs come every other day and I could depress myself adequately if I went into that. The thing now reads thin and pointless; the words scarcely dint the paper; and I expect to be told I’ve written a graceful fantasy, without much bearing upon real life. Can one tell? Anyhow, nature obligingly supplies me with the illusion that I am about to write something good; something rich and deep and fluent, and hard as nails, while bright as diamonds.

      I finished Ulysses and think it a mis-fire. Genius it has, I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I’m reminded all the time of some callow board school boy, full of wits and powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him and stern ones merely annoyed; and one hopes he’ll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely. I have not read it carefully; and only once; and it is very obscure; so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair. I feel that myriads of tiny bullets pepper one and spatter one; but one does not get one deadly wound straight in the face—as from Tolstoy, for instance; but it is entirely absurd to compare him with Tolstoy.

      Thursday, September 7th.

      Having written this, L. put into my hands a very intelligent review of Ulysses, in the American Nation; which, for the first time, analyses the meaning; and certainly makes it very much more impressive than I judged. Still I think there is virtue and some lasting truth in first impressions; so I don’t cancel mine. I must read some of the chapters again. Probably the final beauty of writing is never felt by contemporaries; but they ought, I think, to be bowled over; and this I was not. Then again, I had my back up on purpose; then again I was over stimulated by Tom’s praises.

      Thursday, September 26th.

      Wittering. Morgan came on Friday; Tom on Saturday. My talk with Tom deserves writing down, but won’t get it for the light is fading; and we cannot write talk down either, as was agreed at Charleston the other day. There was a good deal of talk about Ulysses. Tom said, ‘He is a purely literary writer. He is founded upon Walter Pater with a dash of Newman.’ I said he was virile—a he-goat; but didn’t expect Tom to agree. Tom did though; and said he left out many things that were important. The book would be a landmark, because it destroyed the whole of the 19th Century. It left Joyce himself with nothing to write another book on. It showed up the futility of all the J English styles. He thought some of the writing beautiful. But there was no ‘great conception’; that was not Joyce’s intention. He thought that Joyce did completely what he meant to do. But he did not think that he gave a new insight into human nature—said nothing new like Tolstoy. Bloom told one nothing. Indeed, he said, this new method of giving the psychology proves to my mind that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t tell as much as some casual glance from outside often tells. I said I had found Tendennis more illuminating in this way. (The horses are now cropping near my window; the little owl calling, and so I write nonsense.) So we got on to S. Sitwell, who merely explores his sensibility—one of the deadly crimes as Tom thinks: to Dostoievsky—the ruin of English literature, we agreed; Singe a fake; present state disastrous, because the form don’t fit; to his mind not even promising well; he said that one must now be a very first rate poet to be a poet at all: When there were great poets, the little ones caught some of the glow, and were not worthless. Now there’s no great poet. When was the last? I asked, and he said none that interested him since the time of Johnson. Browning he said was lazy: they are all lazy he said. And Macaulay spoilt English prose. We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly. He thought D.H. Lawrence came off occasionally, especially in Aaron’s Rod, the last book; had great moments; but was a most incompetent writer. He could cling tight to his conviction though. (Light now fails—7.10 after a bad rainy day.)

      Wednesday, October 4th.

      I am a little uppish, though, and self assertive, because Brace wrote to me yesterday, ‘We think Jacob’s Room an extraordinarily distinguished and beautiful work. You have, of course, your own method, and it is not easy to foretell how many readers it will have; surely it will have enthusiastic ones, and we delight in publishing it’, or words to that effect. As this is my first testimony from an impartial person I am pleased. For one thing it must СКАЧАТЬ