Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
a portrait
Translated by Jody Gladding
VIVIANE FORRESTER
Columbia University Press New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
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Copyright 2015 Columbia University Press
Original French edition Editions Albin MichelParis 2009
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E-ISBN 978-0-231-53512-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forrester, Viviane.
[Virginia Woolf. English]
Virginia Woolf : a portrait / Viviane Forrester; translated by Jody Gladding.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15356-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-231-53512-0 (electronic)
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. 2. Novelists, English20th centuryBiography. I. Gladding, Jody, 1955- translator. II. Title.
PR6045.O72Z63513 2013
823'.912dc23
[B]
2012045644
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COVER IMAGE: Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK The Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust/Bridgeman Images
COVER AND BOOK DESIGN: Lisa Hamm
TITLE-PAGE ART: Dahlias, illustration from a volume containing woodcuts by seven artists, published by the Omega Workshops Ltd, London, 1918 (woodcut), Bell, Vanessa (1879-1961)/Private Collection/The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
HEARING the breath issuing from another body as it brushes against the skin: this can and does endlessly result from the pages brought to life by Virginia Woolf.
There she is. In these signs. Virginia, so distant from herself, as is each of us, but ever relentless in her attempt to assemble, to feel the scattered mobility, the multiplicity that constitutes her. Worried as well about responding to the impossible desires to embrace the whole world with the arms of understanding.
And endlessly failing in this, having failed, having admitted that no, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known, having rejected such proof or knowledge and retained the uncertainty of achieving the exactitude beyond the silence that surrounds words, having above all and endlessly repeated her quest: this makes it all the more real, quivering with what she does not know but senses, trembling with what cannot be written down but what she knows how to indicate.
Here she is, passionate, ever watchful for what is always escaping, although she manages to capture its transience; here she is demanding, a little weary, impatient: Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on & say, This is it?
But can we say of her novels, which are so many live beings, her letters, her personal diaries that reveal her in all her states, sparkling or fragile, that make us convulse with laughter or tremble with emotion, that make us detest her too, can we say, Thats her? Thousands of pages overflowing with thrills, gossip, angst, and so rich as well in detailed analysis of her battles with the text, exposing the very core of the science of writing, of being a writerthe very wound, the miracle, the disaster not only of being alive but also of becoming lifes stunned, sensual, greedy, and desperate witness.
Around her, a constellation of men and women, of bodies, of destinies, all interwoven and, if fickle, also faithful to one another throughout, we discover. Telling their own stories, or each others, most left their marks which shape her. So many elements that more or less corroborate one another, each protagonist revealing himself, his circle, much more than he thinks. So many elements of which Virginia is usually unaware, whereas, of her own existence, she registers even the least tremor.
And thus the sensation of opening and, yes, of rummaging through drawers that even she does not know about, but also of living with her in the places, the homes, the landscapes that were hers; of knowing the climate accompanying each of her encounters and what impressions the hours of a day left in her; what impulses pushed her to the limits and to expand the limits, regardless of danger; what laughter enchanted her.
We do not know anyone, much less ourselves and those closest to us, as we are able to know her, not only her but also her circle and all the entangled lives, the secrets, the lies, the dramatic misunderstandings that ensued. Through those convolutions runs the work that cuts its way, that churns, unyielding. The body that perceives it.
But surrounding the woman who was the site for that work and who managed to shatter the frozen tongue, opening it to other languages? So many countertruths. She submitsentrusts?to us so many clues about herself and the conflicts and accords, the quest and doubts that she comprised. So much information long kept secret was leaked by her circle through their memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, and letters. Throughout the innumerable moments of being offered us, we will discover beings bearing little resemblance to the perceptions they had of one another and often of themselves, who often differ fundamentally from their well-known profiles.
Without Virginia knowing it, most of those closest to her, in particular, her father, sister, and especially her husband, differed sharply, and in vital ways, from their reputationswhich often still endure. In their own and in others eyes, so many equivocations fixed them in roles that were not theirs but that they performed as such, creating serious misunderstandings that Virginia labored under, equivocal as well, deceived by the false appearances that are often still accepted, even confirmed, today.
Some examples? They abound throughout her life, surround her self-inflicted death. The death that Mrs. Dalloway called an embrace. Perhaps the only one possible for Virginia, all the more alone the more she was surrounded.
How is one to live in such a world! she exclaims at fifteen, before making Clarissa Dalloway, once again, say how very, very dangerous it is to live even one day. But she has the answer: to become someone who could write, years later and shortly before her end, I feel in my fingers the weight of every word.
And that was the essential thing.
But was it?
What is the weight of a life?
What we absorb from a work born of the torments and delights experienced by another, thrown naked, raw, into the worst indecency, utterly entangling us: does it compensate for the exploration of loss that sometimes devastated, ravaged as much as intoxicated, that otherin our place and to our profit?
What entangled Virginia?
But, before launching into whole new aspects of her trajectory, one more remark: outside of any religion, Virginia recognized the point at which life itself (a fortiori the life of a human being) cannot be grasped, discerned, much less explained, and how reducing it to narration, to plots, an outline, or worse, conclusions, denies its very beingand how pinning it down to some configuration of conventional reality would destroy the shadow of its passage, its tenuous tie to a conventional reality.
