It is Finished: March 21, 2016

There it was--her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.

To  the Lighthouse (211)

365 days ago, I committed to posting a year of blog entries on Woolf and flowers.  This is my 338^th post.  I will continue to post from time to time, filling in days I missed or doubling up on days when I have a particularly good anniversary to celebrate.  Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.

Oblongs upon Squares: March 20, 2016

There is a square; there is an oblong.  The players take the square and place it upon the oblong.  They place it very accurately; they make a perfect dwelling-place.  Very little is left outside.  The structure is now visible; what is inchoate is here stated; we are not so various or so mean; we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares.  This is our triumph; this is our consolation.

The Waves (118)

A Pattern Behind the Cotton Wool: March 19, 2016

From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven ; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.

“A Sketch of the Past” (MOB 72)

Incomplete Emotions: March 18, 2016

March 18, 1925

At the moment (I have 7½ before dinner) I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time.  It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.  (D3 5)

No Plot of Earth without Its Bloom: March 17, 2016

Sissinghurst

At length, however, there was no room in the galleries for another table no room on the tables for another cabinet; no room in the cabinet for another rose-bowl; no room in the bowl for another handful of potpourri; there was no room for anything anywhere; in short the house was furnished. In the garden snowdrops, crocuses, hyacinths, magnolias, roses, lilies, asters, the dahlia in all its varieties, pear trees and apple trees and cherry trees and mulberry trees, with an enormous quantity of rare and flowering shrubs, of trees evergreen and perennial, grew so thick on each other's roots that there was no plot of earth without its bloom, and no stretch of sward without its shade. 

Orlando (81)

March 17, 1928 finishes writing Orlando at 1:00 PM

Wave in the Mind: March 16, 2016

March 16, 1926 

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm.  Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.  But on the other hand here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm.  Now this  is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words.  A sight, an emotion, creates a wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my preent belief) one hasto recapture this, and set the working (which has apparently nothing to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it: But no doubt I shall feel differently next year.

(L3 247)

Proportion: March 15, 2016

Proportion, divine proportion, Sir William's goddess, was acquired by Sir William walking hospitals, catching salmon, begetting one son in Harley Street by Lady Bradshaw, who caught salmon herself and took photographs scarcely to be distinguished from the work of professionals.  Worshipping proportion, Sir William not only prospered himself but made England prosper, secluded her lunatics, forbade childbirth, penalised despair, made it impossible for the unfit to propagate their views until they, too, shared his sense of proportion--his, if they were men, Lady Bradshaw's if they were women (she embroidered, knitted, spent four nights out of seven at home with her son), so that not only did his colleagues respect him, his subordinates fear him, but the friends and relations of his patients felt for him the keenest gratitude for insisting that these prophetic Christs and Christesses, who prophesied the end of the world, or the advent of God, should drink milk in bed, as Sir William ordered; Sir William with his thirty years' experience of these kinds of cases, and his infallible instinct, this is madness, this sense; in fact, his sense of proportion.

Mrs. Dalloway (97)

Written March 15, 1924

Set in a Garden: March 14, 2016

Talland House Garden, northern corner

[I]n what garden did all this happen? For one had settings for these scenes; trees that grew there; flowers; a certain light; a few figures. Everything tended to set itself in a garden where there was none of this gloom.

To the Lighthouse (188)

Billowing Downs: March 13, 2016

As we drove along through lanes deeply cut in the chalk, I kept likening the downs to long curved waves of the sea.  It is as though the land here, all molten once, & rolling in vast billows had solidified while the waves were still swollen & on the point of breaking.  From a height it looks as thought he whole land were flowing.

1903   

A Passionate Apprentice (192)

Deep Roots: March 12, 2016

Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green.  The petals are harlequins.  Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath.  The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters.  I hold a stalk in my hand.  I am the stalk.  My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver.  I am all fibre.  All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.  Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.

The Waves (6)