Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф

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СКАЧАТЬ that there’s truth in it; more than a grain in the criticism that I’m damnably refined in The Times; refined and cordial; I don’t think it’s easy to help it; since, before beginning the H.J. article, I took a vow I’d say what I thought, and say it in my own way. Well, I’ve written all this page and not made out how to steady myself when the Unwritten Novel appears.

      Tuesday, May 11th.

      It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I’m a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don’t enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult.

      Wednesday, June 23rd.

      I was struggling, at this time, to say honestly that I don’t think Conrad’s last book a good one. I have said it. It is painful (a little) to find fault there, where almost solely, one respects. I can’t help suspecting the truth to be that he never sees anyone who knows good writing from bad, and then being a foreigner, talking broken English, married to a lump of a wife, he withdraws more and more into what he once did well, only piles it on higher and higher, until what can one call it but stiff melodrama. I would not like to find The Rescue signed Virginia Woolf. But will anyone agree with this? Anyhow nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing—nothing. Only perhaps if it’s the book of a young person—or of a friend—no, even so, I think myself infallible. Haven’t I lately dismissed Murry’s play, and exactly appraised K.’s story, and summed up Aldous Huxley; and doesn’t it somehow wound my sense of fitness to hear Roger mangling these exact values?

      Thursday, August 5th.

      Let me try to say what I think as I read Don Quixote after dinner—Principally that writing was then story telling to amuse people sitting round the fire without any of our devices for pleasure. There they sit, women spinning, men contemplative, and the jolly, fanciful, delightful tale is told to them, as to grown up children. This impresses me as the motive of D.Q.: to keep us entertained at all costs. So far as I can judge, the beauty and thought come in unawares: Cervantes scarcely conscious of serious meaning, and scarcely seeing D.Q. as we see him. Indeed that’s my difficulty—the sadness, the satire, how far are they ours, not intended—or do these great characters have it in them to change according to the generation that looks at them? Much, I admit, of the tale-telling is dull—not much, only a little at the end of the first volume, which is obviously told as a story to keep one contented. So little said out, so much kept back, as if he had not wished to develop that side of the matter—the scene of the galley slaves marching is an instance of what I mean. Did C. feel the whole of the beauty and sadness of that as I feel it? Twice I’ve spoken of ‘sadness’.

      Is that essential to the modern view? Yet how splendid it is to unfurl one’s sail and blow straight ahead on the gust of the great story telling, as happens all through the first part. I suspect the Fernando-Cardino-Lucinda story was a courtly episode in the fashion of the day, anyhow dull to me. I am also reading Ghoa le Simple—bright, effective, interesting, yet so arid and spick and span. With Cervantes everything there; in solution if you like; but deep, atmospheric, living people casting shadows solid, tinted as in life. The Egyptians, like most French writers, give you a pinch of essential dust instead, much more pungent and effective, but not nearly so surrounding and spacious. By God! What stuff I’m writing! Always these images. I write Jacob every morning now, feeling each day’s work like a fence which I have to ride at, my heart in my mouth till it’s over, and I’ve cleared, or knocked the bar out. (Another image, unthinking it was one. I must somehow get Hume’s Essays and purge myself.)

      Sunday, September 26th.

      But I think I minded more than I let on; for somehow Jacob has come to a stop, in the middle of that party too, which I enjoyed so much. Eliot coming on the heel of a long stretch of writing fiction (two months without a break) made me listless; cast shade upon me; and the mind when engaged upon fiction wants all its boldness and self-confidence. He said nothing—but I reflected how what I’m doing is probably being better done by Mr Joyce. Then I began to wonder what it is that I am doing; to suspect, as is usual in such cases, that I have not thought my plan out plainly epough—so to dwindle, niggle, hesitate—which means that one’s lost. But I think my two months of work are the cause of it, seeing that I now find myself veering round to Evelyn and even making up a paper upon Women, as a counterblast to Mr Bennett’s adverse views reported in the paper. Two weeks ago I made up Jacob incessantly on my walks. An odd thing, the human mind! so capricious, faithless, infinitely shying at shadows. Perhaps at the bottom of my mind, I feel that I’m distanced by L. in every respect Monday, October 25th (First day of winter time)

      Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end. But why do I feel this: Now that I say it I don’t feel it. The fire burns; we are going to hear the Beggar’s Opera. Only it lies about me; I can’t keep my eyes shut. It’s a feeling of impotence; of cutting no ice. Here I sit at Richmond, and like a lantern stood in the middle of a field my light goes up in darkness. Melancholy diminishes as I write. Why then don’t I write it down oftener? Well, one’s vanity forbids. I want to appear a success even to myself. Yet I don’t get to the bottom of it. It’s having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old. I think too much of whys and wherefores; too much of myself. I don’t like time to flap round me. Well then, work. Yes, but I so soon tire of work—can’t read more than a little, an hour’s writing is enough for me. Out here no one comes in to waste time pleasantly. If they do, I’m cross. The labour of going to London is too great. Nessa’s children grow up, and I can’t have them in to tea, or go to the Zoo. Pocket money doesn’t allow of much. Yet I’m persuaded that these are trivial things; it’s life itself, I think sometimes, for us in our generation so tragic—no newspaper placard without its shriek of agony from someone. McSwiney this afternoon and violence in Ireland; or it’ll be the strike. Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity, which is worse. Still I don’t pluck the nettle out of me. To write Jacob’s Room again will revive my fibres, I feel. Evelyn is due; but I don’t like what I write now. And with it all how happy I am—if it weren’t for my feeling that it’s a strip of pavement over an abyss.

1921.

       Table of Contents

      Tuesday, March 1st.

      I am not satisfied that this book is in a healthy way. Suppose one of my myriad changes of style is antipathetic to the material? or does my style remain fixed? To my mind it changes always. But no one notices. Nor can I give it a name myself. The truth is that I have an internal, automatic scale of values; which decides what I had better do with my time. It dictates ‘this half hour must be spent on Russian’. ‘This must be given to Wordsworth.’ Or ‘Now I’d better darn my brown stockings.’ How I come by this code of values I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the legacy of puritan grandfathers. I suspect pleasure slightly. God knows. And the truth is also that writing, even here, needs screwing of the brain—not so much as Russian, but then half the time I learn Russian I look in the fire and think what I shall write tomorrow. Mrs Flanders is in the orchard. If I were at Rodmell I should have thought it all out walking on the flats. I should be in fine writing trim. As it is Ralph, Carrington and Brett have this moment gone; I’m dissipated; we dine and go out to the Guild. I can’t settle as I should to think of Mrs Flanders in the orchard.

      Sunday, March 6th.

      Nessa СКАЧАТЬ