Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф

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СКАЧАТЬ Lydia, and Duncan. Clive is conspicuously dumb; Mortimer has flu and can’t review it; Nancy saw him reading it, but reported no opinion; all signs which point to a dull chill depressing reception; and complete failure. I have just come through the hoping fearing stage and now see any disappointment floating like an old bottle in my wake and am off on fresh adventures. Only if the same thing happens to Dalloway one need not be surprised. But I must write to Gwen.

      Monday, May 4th.

      This is the temperature chart of a book. We went to Cambridge, and Goldie said he thought me the finest living critic: said, in his jerky angular way: ‘Who wrote that extraordinarily good article on the Elizabethans two or three months ago in the Lit. Sup.?’ I pointed to my breast. Now there’s one sneering review in Country Life, almost inarticulate with feebleness, trying to say what a Common reader is, and another, says Angus, in the Star, laughing at Nessa’s cover. So from this I prognosticate a good deal of criticism on the ground that I’m obscure and odd; and some enthusiasm; and a slow sale, and an increased reputation. Oh yes, my reputation increases.

      Saturday, May 9th.

      As for The Common Reader, the Lit. Sup. had close on two columns sober and sensible praise—neither one thing nor the other—my fate in The Times. And Goldie writes that he thinks ‘this is the best criticism in English—humorous, witty and profound’. My fate is to be treated to all extremes and all mediocrities. But I never get an enthusiastic review in the Lit. Sup. And it will be the same for Dalloway, which now approaches.

      Thursday, May 14th.

      I meant to register more of my books’ temperatures. C.R. does not sell; but is praised. I was really pleased to open the Manchester Guardian this morning and read Mr Fausset on the Art of V.W.; brilliance combined with integrity; profound as well as eccentric. Now if only The Times would speak out thus, but The Times mumbles and murmurs like a man sucking pebbles. Did I say that I had nearly two mumbling columns on me there? But the odd thing is this: honestly I am scarcely a shade nervous about Mrs D. Why is this? Really I am a little bored, for the first time, at thinking how much I shall have to talk about it this summer. The truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial. I’m now all on the strain with desire to stop journalism and get on to To the Lighthouse. This is going to be fairly short; to have father’s character done complete in it; and mother’s; and St Ives; and childhood; and all the usual things I try to put in—life, death, etc. But the centre is father’s character, sitting in a boat, reciting We perished, each alone, while he crushes a dying mackerel. However, I must refrain. I must write a few little stories first and let the Lighthouse simmer, adding to it between tea and dinner till it is complete for writing out.

      Friday, May 15th.

      Two unfavourable reviews of Mrs D. (Western Mail and Scotsman); unintelligible, not art etc. and a letter from a young man in Earls Court. ‘This time you have done it—you have caught life and put it in a book …’ Please forgive this outburst, but further quotation is unnecessary; and I don’t think I should bother to write this if I weren’t jangled. What by? The sudden heat, I think, and the racket of life. It is bad for me to see my own photograph.

      Wednesday, May 19th.

      Well, Morgan admires. This is a weight off my mind. Better than Jacob he says: was sparing of words; kissed my hand, and on going said he was awfully pleased, very happy (or words to that effect) about it. He thinks—but I won’t go into detailed criticism; I shall hear more; and this is only about the style being simpler, more like other people’s this time.

      Monday, June 1st.

      Bank holiday, and we are in London. To record my books’ fates slightly bores me; but now both are floated, and Mrs D. doing surprisingly well. 1070 already sold. I recorded Morgan’s opinion; then Vita was a little doubtful; then Desmond, whom I see frequently about his book, dashed all my praise by saying that Logan thought the C.R. well enough, but nothing more. Desmond has an abnormal power for depressing me. He takes the edge off life in some extraordinary way. I love him; but his balance and goodness and humour, all heavenly in themselves, somehow diminish lustre. I think I feel this not only about my work but about life. However, now comes Mrs Hardy to say that Thomas reads, and hears the C.R. read, with ‘great pleasure’. Indeed, save for Logan, and he’s a salt-veined American, I have had high praise. Also Tauchnitz asks about them.

      Sunday, June 14th.

      A disgraceful confession—this is Sunday morning and just after ten, and here I am sitting down to write diary and not fiction or reviews, without any excuse, except the state of my mind. After finishing those two books, though, one can’t concentrate directly on a new one; and then the letters, the talk, the reviews, all serve to enlarge the pupil of my mind more and more. I can’t settle in, contract, and shut myself off. I’ve written 6 little stories, scrambled them down untidily and have thought out, perhaps too clearly, To the Lighthouse. And both books so far are successful. More of Dalloway has been sold this month than of Jacob in a year. I think it possible we may sell 2,000. The Common one is making money this week. And I get treated at great length and solemnity by old gentlemen.

      Thursday, June 18th.

      No, Lytton does not like Mrs Dalloway, and, what is odd, I like him all the better for saying so, and don’t much mind. What he says is that there is a discordancy between the ornament (extremely beautiful) and what happens (rather ordinary—or unimportant). This is caused, he thinks, by some discrepancy in Clarissa herself: he thinks she is disagreeable and limited, but that I alternately laugh at her and cover her, very remarkably, with myself. So that I think as a whole, the book does not ring solid; yet, he says, it is a whole; and he says sometimes the writing is of extreme beauty. What can one call it but genius? he said! Coming when, one never can tell. Fuller of genius, he said, than anything I had done. Perhaps, he said, you have not yet mastered your method. You should take something wilder and more fantastic, a framework that admits of anything, like Tristram Shandy. But then I should lose touch with emotions, I said. Yes, he agreed, there must be reality for you to start from. Heaven knows how you’re to do it. But he thought me at the beginning, not at the end. And he said the C.R. was divine, a classic, Mrs D. being, I fear, a flawed stone. This is very personal, he said, and old fashioned perhaps; yet I think there is some truth in it, for I remember the night at Rodmell when I decided to give it up, because I found Clarissa in some way tinselly. Then I invented her memories. But I think some distaste for her persisted. Yet, again, that was true to my feeling for Kitty and one must dislike people in art without its mattering, unless indeed it is true that certain characters detract from the importance of what happens to them. None of this hurts me, or depresses me. It’s odd that when Clive and others (several of them) say it is a masterpiece, I am not much exalted; when Lytton picks holes, I get back into my working fighting mood, which is natural to me. I don’t. Have see myself a success. I like the sense of effort better. The sales collapsed completely for three days; now a little dribble begins again. I shall be more than pleased if we sell 1500. It’s now 1250.

      Saturday, June 27th.

      A bitter cold day, succeeding a chilly windy night, in which were lit all the Chinese lanterns of Roger’s garden party. And I do not love my kind. I detest them. I pass them by. I let them break on me like dirty rain drops. No longer can I summon up that energy which, when it sees one of these dry little shapes floating past, or rather stuck on the rock, sweeps round them, steeps them, infuses them, nerves them, and so finally fills them and creates them. Once I had a gift for doing this, and a passion, and it made parties arduous and exciting. So when I wake early now I luxuriate most in a whole day alone; a day of easy natural poses, a little printing; slipping tranquilly off into the deep water of my own thoughts navigating the underworld; and then replenishing СКАЧАТЬ