Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф

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СКАЧАТЬ extraordinary emotions possessed me. I forget now what. Often now I have to control my excitement—as if I were pushing through a screen; or as if something beat fiercely close to me. What this portends I don’t know. It is a general sense of the poetry of existence that overcomes me. Often it is connected with the sea and St Ives. Going to 46 continues to excite. The sight of two coffins in the Underground luggage office I daresay constricts all my feelings. I have the sense of the flight of time; and this shores up my emotions.

      Tuesday, June 19th.

      I took up this book with a kind of idea that I might say something about my writing—which was prompted by glancing at what K.M. said about her writing in The Dove’s Nest. But I only glanced. She said a good deal about feeling things deeply: also about being pure, which I won’t criticize, though of course I very well could. But now what do I feel about my writing?—this book, that is, The Hours, if that’s its name? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoievsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do? No, I think not. In this book I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense. But here I may be posing. I heard from Ka this morning that she doesn’t like In the Orchard. At once I feel refreshed. I become anonymous, a person who writes for the love of it. She takes away the motive of praise, and lets me feel that without any praise I should be content to go on. This is what Duncan said of his painting the other night. I feel as if I slipped off all my ball dresses and stood naked—which as I remember was a very pleasant thing to do. But to go on. Am I writing The Hours from deep emotion? Of course the mad part tries me so much, makes my mind squirt so badly that I can hardly face spending the next weeks at it. It’s a question though of these characters. People, like Arnold Bennett, say I can’t create, or didn’t in Jacob’s Room, characters that survive. My answer is—but I leave that to the Nation: it’s only the old argument that character is dissipated into shreds now; the old post-Dostoievsky argument. I daresay it’s true, however, that I haven’t that ‘reality’ gift. I insubstantize, wilfully to some extent, distrusting reality—its cheapness. But to get further. Have I the power of conveying the true reality? Or do I write essays about myself? Answer these questions as I may, in the uncomplimentary sense, and still there remains this excitement. To get to the bones, now I’m writing fiction again I feel my force glow straight from me at its fullest. After a dose of criticism I feel that I’m writing sideways, using only an angle of my mind. This is justification; for free use of the faculties means happiness. I’m better company, more of a human being. Nevertheless, I think it most important in this book to go for the central things. Even though they don’t submit, as they should, however, to’ beautification in language. No, I don’t nail my crest to the Murrys, who work in my flesh after the manner of the jigger insect. It’s annoying, indeed degrading, to have these bitternesses. Still, think of the 18th Century. But then they were overt, not covert, as now.

      I foresee, to return to The Hours, that this is going to be the devil of a struggle. The design is so queer and so masterful. I’m always having to wrench my substance to fit it. The design is certainly original and interests me hugely. I should like to write away and away at it, very quick and fierce. Needless to say, I can’t. In three weeks from today, I shall be dried up.

      Friday, August 17th.

      The question I want to debate here is the question of my essays: and how to make them into a book. The brilliant idea has just come to me of embedding them in Otway conversation. The main advantage would be that I could then comment and add what I had had to leave out, or failed to get in, e.g. the one on George Eliot certainly needs an epilogue. Also to have a setting for each would ‘make a book’; and the collection of articles is in my view an inartistic method. But then this might be too artistic; it might run away with me; it will take time. Nevertheless I should very much enjoy it. I should graze nearer my own individuality. I should mitigate the pomposity and sweep in all sorts of trifles. I think I should feel more at my ease. So I think a trial should be made. The first thing to do is to get ready a certain number of essays. There could be an introductory chapter. A family which reads the papers. The thing to do would be to envelop each essay in its own atmosphere. To get them into a current of life, and so to shape the book; to get a stress upon some main line—but what the line is to be, I can only see by reading them through. No doubt fiction is the prevailing theme. Anyhow the book should end with modern literature.

      Saturday, August 29th.

      I’ve been battling for ever so long with The Hours, which is proving one of my most tantalizing and refractory of books. Parts are so bad, parts so good; I’m much interested; can’t stop making it up yet—yet. What is the matter with it? But I want to freshen myself, not deaden myself, so will say no more. Only I must note this odd symptom; a conviction that I shall I go on, see it through, because it interests me to write it.

      Thursday, August 30th.

      I was called, I think, to cut wood; we have to shape logs for the stove, for we sit in the lodge every night and my goodness, the wind! Last night we looked at the meadow trees, flinging about, and such a weight of leaves that every brandish seems the end. Only a strewing of leaves from the lime tree, though,! this morning. I read such,a white dimity rice pudding chapter of Mrs Gaskell at midnight in the gale Wives and Daughters—I think it must be better than The Old Wives’ Tale all the same. You see, I’m thinking furiously about Reading and Writing. I have no time to describe my plans. I should say a good deal about The Hours and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment. Dinner!

      Wednesday, September 5th.

      And I’m slightly dashed by the reception of my Conrad conversation, which has been purely negative. No one has mentioned it. I don’t think M. or B. quite approved. Never mind; to be dashed is always the most bracing treatment for me. A cold douche should be taken (and generally is) before beginning a book. It invigorates; makes one say ‘Oh all right. I write to please myself and so go ahead. It also has the effect of making me more definite and outspoken in my style, which I imagine all to the good. At any rate, I began for the fifth but last time, I swear, what is now to be called The Common Reader; and did the first page quite moderately well this morning. After all this stew, it’s odd how, as soon as I begin, a new aspect, never all this two or three years thought of, at once becomes clear; and gives the whole bundle a new proportion. To curtail, I shall really investigate literature with a view to answering certain questions about ourselves. Characters are to be merely views: personality must be avoided at all costs. I’m sure my Conrad adventure taught me this. Directly you specify hair, age etc. something frivolous, or irrelevant gets into the book. Dinner!

      Monday, October 15th.

      I am now in the thick of the mad scene in Regent’s Park. I find I write it by clinging as tight to fact as I can, and write perhaps 50 words a morning. This I must re-write some day. I think the design is more remarkable than in any of my books. I daresay I shan’t be able to carry it out. I am stuffed with ideas for it. I feel I can use up everything I’ve ever thought. Certainly, I’m less coerced than I’ve yet been. The doubtful point is, I think, the character of Mrs Dalloway. It may be too stiff, too glittering and tinselly. But then I can bring innumerable other characters to her support. I wrote the 100th page today. Of course, I’ve only been feeling my way into it—up till last August anyhow. It took me a year’s groping to discover what I call my tunnelling process, by which I tell the past by instalments, as I have need of it. This is my prime discovery so far; and the fact that I’ve been so long finding it proves, I think, how false Percy Lubbock’s doctrine is—that you can do this sort of thing consciously. One feels about in a state of misery—indeed I made up my mind СКАЧАТЬ