Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф

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СКАЧАТЬ publishing on October 27th. I daresay Duckworth is a little cross with me. I snuff my freedom. It is I think true, soberly and not artificially for the public, that I shall go on unconcernedly whatever people say. At last, I like reading my own writing. It seems to me to fit me closer than it did before. I have done my task here better than I expected. Mrs Dallo way and the Chaucer chapter are finished: I have read 5 books of the Odyssey; Ulysses; and now begin Proust. I also read Chaucer and the Pastons. So evidently my plan of the two books running side by side is practicable and certainly I enjoy my reading with a purpose. I am committed to only one Supt. article—on essays—and that at my own time; so I am free. I shall read Greek now steadily and begin The Prime Minister on Friday morning. I shall read the Trilogy and some Sophocles and Euripides and a Plato dialogue: also the lives of Bentley and Jebb. At forty I am beginning to | learn the mechanism of my own brain—how to get the greatest amount of pleasure and work out of it. The secret is I think always so to contrive that work is pleasant.

      Saturday, October 14th.

      I have had two letters, from Lytton and Carrington, about Jacob’s Room, and written I don’t know how many envelopes; and here we are on the verge of publication. I must sit for my portrait to John 0’ London’s on Monday. Richmond writes to ask that date of publication may be put ahead, so that they may notice it on Thursday. My sensations? they remain calm. Yet how could Lytton have praised me more highly? prophesies immortality for it is as poetry; is afraid of my romance; but the beauty of the writing etc. Lytton praises me too highly for it to give me exquisite pleasure; or perhaps that nerve grows dulled. I want to be through the splash and swimming in calm water again. I want to be writing unobserved. Mrs Dalloway has branched into a book; and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side—something like that. Septimus Smith? is that a good name? and to be more close to the fact than Jacob: but I think Jacob was a necessary step, for me, in working free. And now I must use this benignant page for making out a scheme of work.

      I must get on with my reading for the Greek chapter. I shall finish The Prime Minister in another week—say 21st. Then I must be ready to start my Essay article for The Times: say on the 23rd. That will take say till 2nd November. Therefore I must now concentrate on Essays: with some Aeschylus, and I think begin Zimmern, making rather a hasty end of Bentley, who is not really much to my purpose. I think that clears the matter up—though how to read Aeschylus I don’t quite know: quickly, is my desire, but that, I see, is an illusion.

      As for my views about the success of Jacob, what are they? I think we shall sell 500; it will then go slowly and reach 800 by June. It will be highly praised in some places for ‘beauty’; will be crabbed by people who want human character. The only review I am anxious about is the one in the Supt.: not that it will be the most intelligent, but it will be the most read and I can’t bear people to see me clowned in public. The W.G. will be hostile; so, very likely, the Nation. But I am perfectly serious in saying that nothing budges me from my determination to go on, or alters my pleasure; so whatever happens, though the surface may be agitated, the centre is secure.

      Tuesday, October 17th.

      As this is to be a chart of my progress I enter hastily here: one, a letter from Desmond who is halfway through says ‘You have never written so well … I marvel and am puzzled’—or words to that effect: two, Bunny rings up enthusiastic; says it is superb, far my best, has great vitality and importance: also he takes 36 copies, and says people already ‘clamour’. This is not confirmed by the bookshops, visited by Ralph. I have sold under 50 today; but the libraries remain and Simpkin Marshall.

      Sunday, October 29th.

      Miss Mary Butts being gone, and my head too stupid for reading, I may as well write here, for my amusement later perhaps. I mean I’m too riddled with talk and harassed with the usual worry of people who like and people who don’t like J.R. to concentrate. There was The Times review on Thursday—long, a little tepid, I think—saying that one can’t make characters in this way; flattering enough. Of course, I had a letter from Morgan in the opposite sense—the letter I’ve liked best of all. We have sold 650, I think; and have ordered a second edition. My sensations? as usual—mixed. I shall never write a book that is an entire success. This time the reviews are against me and the private people enthusiastic. Either I am a great writer or a nincompoop. ‘An elderly sensualist,’ the Daily News calls me. Tall Mall passes me over as negligible. I expect to be neglected and sneered at. And what will be the fate of our second thousand then? So far of course the success is much more than we expected. I think I am better pleased so far than I have ever been. Morgan, Lytton, Bunny, Violet, Logan, Philip, have all written enthusiastically. But I want to be quit of all this. It hangs about me like Mary Butts’ scent. I don’t want to be totting up compliments, and comparing reviews. I want to think out Mrs Dalloway. I want to foresee this book better than the others and get the utmost out of it. I expect I could have screwed Jacob up tighter, if I had foreseen; but I had to make my path as I went.

1923.

       Table of Contents

      Monday, June 4th.

      I’m over peevish in private, partly in order to assert myself. I am a great deal interested suddenly in my book. I want to bring in the despicableness of people like Ott. I want to give the slipperiness of the soul. I have been too tolerant often. The truth is people scarcely care for each other. They have this insane instinct for life. But they never become attached to anything outside themselves. Puff said he loved his family and had nothing whatever to knock over. He disliked cold indecency. So did Lord David. This must be a phrase in their set. Puff said—I don’t quite know what. I walked round the vegetable garden with him, passing Lytton flirting on a green seat; and round the field with Sackville West, who said he was better, and was writing a better novel, and round the lake with Menasseh (?) an Egyptian Jew, who said he liked his family and they were mad and talked like books; and he said that they quoted my writings (the Oxford youth) and wanted me to go and speak; and then there was Mrs Asquith. I was impressed. She is stone white; with the brown veiled eyes of an aged falcon; and in them more depth and scrutiny than I expected; a character, with her friendliness and ease and decision. Oh if we could have had Shelley’s poems; and not Shelley the man! she said. Shelley was quite intolerable, she pronounced; she is a rigid frigid puritan; and in spite of spending thousands on dress. She rides life, if you like; and has picked up a thing or two, which I should like to plunder and never shall. She led Lytton off and plucked his arm, and hurried—and thought ‘people’ pursued her; yet was very affable with ‘people’ when she had to be, and sat on the window sill talking to a black shabby embroideress, to whom Ott. is being kind. That’s one of her horrors—she’s always being kind in order to say to herself at night, then Ottoline invites the poor little embroideress to her party and so to round off her own picture of herself. To sneer like this has a physical discomfort in it. She told me I looked wonderfully well, which I disliked. Why? I wonder. Because I had had a headache perhaps, partly. But to be well and use strength to get more out of life is, surely, the greatest fun in the world. What I dislike is feeling that I’m always taking care, or being taken care of. Never mind—work, work. Lytton says we have still 20 years before us. Mrs Asquith said she loved Scott.

      Wednesday, June 13th.

      There was Lady Colefax in her hat with the green ribbons. Did I say that I lunched with her last week? That was Derby Day and it rained, and all the light was brown and cold and she went on talking, talking, in consecutive sentences like the shavings that come from planes, artificial, but unbroken. It was not a successful party, Clive and Lytton and me. For Clive’s back; and he dined here with Leo Myers the other night; and then I went to Golders Green and sat with Mary Sheepshanks in her garden and beat up the waters of talk, as I do so courageously, СКАЧАТЬ