The Waves (original) (raw)
433 reviews4,663 followers
For the unprepared reader the first fifty pages can be as baffling as an unknown code. But once the code is cracked, the whole experiment has a brilliant simplicity.
Imagine this: a biography of you and your five best friends. From early childhood to death. Told not within the usual matrix of bald accountable facts, social landmarks of achievement and failure. But through a linguistic transposition of the ebb and flow, the forging and eroding, of the waves of our inner life. Those secret and unspoken moments known only to ourselves when we feel at our most isolated or connected, our most transfigured, lost or unknowable. The narrative a fluid continuum where all six of you are continually merging and separating in a fellowship and divorce of feeling. The six of you ultimately becoming one voice endeavouring to give shape to this one shared life.
So The Waves is the biography of six characters, all of whom speak for the other five as much as for themselves. But it's a new kind of biography. A biography of sensibility. A kind of archaeology excavating identity entirely from what’s buried and sacrosanct. Epiphanies, private moments of triumph and failure - or what Virginia Woolf called "moments of being".
Virginia Woolf speaks somewhere of her earliest childhood memory – of being in bed as a very young child and listening to the sound of the waves distantly breaking on the beach out in the night. She believed the experience remained at the very heart of her inner life, a kind of oracle. The native ground from where all her shoots would spring forth. Authenticity, for her, was to be found in the secret and unspoken experiences of life, her “moments of being”. All six characters in The Waves experience a similar crucible childhood moment. A haunting moment of sensibility which will subsequently act as a motif in the quest to know intimacy and achieve identity. The opening section of The Waves, a depiction of the dawning of day, calls to mind the act of creation itself. For she is questioning the origins and nature of consciousness in this novel. Except no god appears. Instead we see nature as a dispassionate encompassing force locked into its relentless merciless rhythms. The first section introduces us to the six children and their first impressions of the world around them. Baptism comes here, not in church, but when the nurse squeezes a sponge and sends rivulets of sensation down the spines of the six children. An early indication of how Woolf will concentrate on private rather than public events to build the biographies of her six characters. By the end of the first part all six are identifying themselves in relation to each other, all six are struggling with fears and insecurities, all six jarred and flailing in their attempts to achieve identity – as for example Rhoda: “Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.”
Each section depicts the next phase in the lifespan of the characters. And in each section prevails the endless repetition of the sound and rhythm of the waves. Ultimately the suggestion is that it’s only through sensibility, our creative inner life, that we are able to achieve love, forge abiding worth and find the fellowship that are the principle sources of light and warmth in life.
It’s left to Bernard, the writer, to draw some sort of conclusion: “And in me too the wave rises.it swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death.”
1,832 reviews6,136 followers
The Waves is like a song sung by the surf on a bright breezy day…
‘I see a ring,’ said Bernard, ‘hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.’
‘I see a slab of pale yellow,’ said Susan, ‘spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.’
‘I hear a sound,’ said Rhoda, ‘cheep, chirp; cheep chirp; going up and down.’
‘I see a globe,’ said Neville, ‘hanging down in a drop against the enormous flanks of some hill.’
‘I see a crimson tassel,’ said Jinny, ‘twisted with gold threads.’
‘I hear something stamping,’ said Louis. ‘A great beast’s foot is chained. It stamps, and stamps, and stamps.’
This is the way the world appears out of nocturnal nonexistence in the morning… This is the way consciousness dawns in a child in the beginning of life…
Six persons are telling the tale… And their lives are six waves in the ocean of mankind…
And there are intermissions in which Virginia Woolf draws parallels between the time of day and the time of life…
The sun rose. Bars of yellow and green fell on the shore, gilding the ribs of the eaten-out boat and making the sea-holly and its mailed leaves gleam blue as steel. Light almost pierced the thin swift waves as they raced fan-shaped over the beach. The girl who had shaken her head and made all the jewels, the topaz, the aquamarine, the water-coloured jewels with sparks of fire in them, dance, now bared her brows and with wide-opened eyes drove a straight pathway over the waves.
Everything in the world goes in cycles… Daybreak, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night… Birth, infancy, childhood, youth, adulthood, old age, death… Wave follows wave… As soon as a wave breaks on the beach a new wave is born somewhere in the sea.
1,025 reviews1,273 followers
The Waves Playlist
Pop songs, not classical or Jazz.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7q9qxb4kvl...
The characters
Rules: One song each. Gender matching. Must express as many of the key character traits as possible. I must love it.
Bernard: Bob Dylan – To Ramona
Susan: Kate bush - Mrs. Bartolozzi
Rhoda: Throwing Muses – Fear
Neville: Anthony and the Johnsons – Crazy in Love
Jinny: Julia Holter - Gold Dust Woman
Louis: Jeff Buckley - A Satisfied Mind
[Percival: John Cage - 4'33]
The novel
4 rules here - reference to water in title or song (mist or fog counts), thematic connection over and above this to the novel, something about the feel matches the novel too, and it has to be a song I love.
Grouper – Heavy Water/I'd rather be sleeping
Joanna Newsom - Time, a symptom
Joanna Newsom - Divers
Smog - Rock bottom riser
Judee Sill - Kiss
Julie Holter - Sea calls me home
Beach house - On the sea
*******************
This is It. This is The Book. The One. The collection of carefully crafted words I hold most dear in the world.
It is for this very reason I cannot write a reasonable review, I cannot simply tell you that this is a masterpiece, that this deals with the most profound and important issues of Being in the most beautiful ways imaginable, nor can I simply say that, though I have read it many times, I still find new pearls to treasure in almost every line.
So I will take a quote, a relatively famous one, and ramble on a little about what makes it so wonderful. From this one can extrapolate the rest…
Towards the end of the novel, Bernard says the following:
"How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half-sheets of note-paper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement. I begin to seek some design more in accordance with those moments of humiliation and triumph that come now and then undeniably. Lying in a ditch on a stormy day, when it has been raining, then enormous clouds come marching over the sky, tattered clouds, wisps of cloud. What delights me then is the confusion, the height, the indifference and the fury. Great clouds always changing, and movement; something sulphurous and sinister, bowled up, helter-skelter; towering, trailing, broken off, lost, and I forgotten, minute, in a ditch. Of story, of design, I do not see a trace then."
This is, of course, a comment by Woolf on her art, and illuminates some of her key concerns as they relate to the confused and tattered nature of reality. But I do not wish to speak of that here. I want to talk about the music of this passage, the song of her writing.
We begin with an old Rhetorical trick: repetition. He is tired, that much is clear, and do we not feel a similar fatigue? The fall of those sentences, like an exhausted sigh raising themselves up to the exclamation point at the end. Then alliteration, that echo of anglo-saxon origin, propels us through the next, short sentence. All those hard "d"s, the rippling between "life" and "half" (deep ripples those, though I will not explore them here)…
And the alliterative magic continues, bouncing like bows on taught strings, "L"'s for longing, little, language and lovers, the repetition of "words", shuffling the sentence like those feet on the pavement.
Then, as if to prove such shattering and shuffling inevitable, a sentence which falls on its own sword, ending with its feet over its head and undeniably unstuck.
But we shall right ourselves. Pulled back by the gentle arms of another "L", and those commas, like the beats of a conductor's baton, getting us back up to speed, ready for the pounding out of those key words "confusion", "height", "indifference" and "fury". And we understand how fury can be delightful, how indifference can fill us with joyous awe.
The next sentence is, according to Microsoft Word, incorrect. It is a fragment which I should consider revising. But how can one truly speak of the fragmented without using broken and un-finished lines? Here too all our alliterative friends return – those "C"s, "L"s, "D"s and "S"s, the repetition of "ing", like light and dancing footsteps following the music they themselves create.
This is Design. This is Song. This is the tension between the beauty and craft of great prose, and the dirty, broken Truth of the World. Woolf is the Master of this tension, she walks on the thin thread tied tight between them. And when the thread broke, she drowned and the World lost too much to be easily comprehended.
Of all books in the world, of all the voices I have been lucky enough to overhear through the magic of literature, hers is the one I love most, and the one I miss most. Read her. Read all of her. Then go back and start all over again.
2015-the-modernists favorites signed-and-or-first-editions
1,057 reviews3,598 followers
Quitémonos lo fácil de encima rápidamente: diálogos interiores de seis personajes, una sola voz en personalidades dispares, prosa poética carente de acción.
Pero si quieren saber un poco más, y aunque esto sea solo la espuma de la ola, les diré que la novela se estructura en nueve secciones separadas por la sucesiva descripción de un día simbólico que transcurre a la par que la vida de estos seis personajes: lo que les marcará desde la infancia, la búsqueda de identidad, las esperanzas y los anhelos de la juventud, la madurez y la constatación del éxito o el fracaso en el camino elegido, el repaso en la vejez y las formas de afrontar el final. Seis personas que se conocen, pero no se conocen, que anhelan, quieren, envidian y lloran a Godot, el séptimo personaje, Percival, el único sin texto, representante de “todo lo que no podemos explicar, todo lo que convierte la simetría en absurdo”; lector de novelas policiacas y el que todo lo comprende, un gran maestro en el arte de vivir y el ser que les enfrentó a la muerte.
“Ni un hilo, ni una hoja de papel, media entre él y el sol, entre él y la lluvia, entre él y la luna, cuando yace desnudo, lacio, ardiente, en cama”.
Ahora lo esencial: “Las olas” es una obra de arte, un libro hermoso, de los más hermosos que he leído en mi vida, cautivador, descarnado, bello, oscuro y sugerente, tan oscuro y sugerente que el libro será algo distinto para cada uno de ustedes, más de lo que siempre es todo buen libro.
Contribuye a ello la abundancia de imágenes, de metáforas, de crípticas asociaciones, de símbolos que se van repitiendo como mantras a lo largo de la novela: un pañuelo donde encerrar las penas, una mano que se levanta y apremia, grises cenizas en un hogar apagado, cartas inacabadas, un charco que no se puede cruzar, un manzano por el que no se puede pasar, una puerta de rugoso roble a la que llamar, otras puertas que se abren y se cierran sin cesar, por dónde puede llegarnos lo que tememos, por donde no sabemos si entrará quien anhelamos…Y, por supuesto, las olas, las que marcan el paso del tiempo indiferentes a nuestros afanes, a nuestros miedos; la inestabilidad sobre la que establecemos nuestras construcciones en un no siempre alcanzable equilibrio; aquello que viene, que nos golpea o nos besa, que nos abandona; olas y olas, siempre parecidas, nunca iguales, como las vidas; olas que al retirarse dejan al descubierto nuestro ser, que a veces solo nos rozan; olas en las que algunos son capaces de dejarse llevar y contra las que otros luchan; olas que bañan las playas de las islas que en realidad somos; olas que mecen, que inundan, que atraen, que te rodean, que te acarician, que te hipnotizan, que te revuelcan…
En el primer capítulo, el dedicado a la infancia, un beso va a descubrirnos las naturalezas de los seis protagonistas, personalidades que caracterizarán sus caminos de forma invariable durante toda la vida.
Louis, acomplejado pese a la plena conciencia de sus méritos, se esconde tras un seto rogando que no lo encuentren, odiándolos por obligarle a estas extravagancias y aun así ansiando sus presencias; su éxito será el trabajo, su refugio las ensoñaciones de un pasado glorioso; alguna vez sacará un libro de poemas y leerá uno, uno es suficiente.
“Los nombres se repiten, los nombres son siempre los mismos. Son los voluntarios, son los jugadores de cricket, son los oficiales de la Historia Natural de la Sociedad. Van siempre en formación de cuatro de a fondo, marcando el paso con insignias en los gorros, saludan al mismo tiempo cuando pasan ante la figura de su general. ¡Qué mayestático es su orden, qué hermosa su obediencia! Si pudiera seguirles, si pudiera ir con ellos… Sacrificaría cuanto sé para poder hacerlo… Les contemplo con envidia… Si hubiera pertenecido a su grupo y hubiera ganado partidos, y hubiera remado en las grandes regatas, y hubiera galopado durante un día entero, ¡cantaría canciones con fuerza de trueno a medianoche! ¡Qué torrente de palabras surgiría de mi garganta!”
Jinny descubre a Louis, se arroja sobre él, lo besa. Jinny es una gaviota que se deja llevar por la ola de su belleza, que se servirá de su aspecto. Jinny no miente, no sueña, no le preocupa si la vida es esto o lo otro, quiere balancearse, ser azotada, subir y bajar, como un buque sobre las olas. Sabe que llegará el momento en el que levantará la mano y nadie acudirá, que no habrá quién se percate de que ha caído su pañuelo, que ya no habrá reflejos en los cristales de las ventanillas de un tren, sabe que al final “nada queda para guardar en relicarios” pero también sabe que no tendrá miedo.
“Habrá fiestas en deslumbrantes salas. Y un hombre se fijará en mí, y me dirá lo que a nadie ha dicho. Le gustaré más que Rhoda y Susan. Descubrirá en mí cierta cualidad, algo peculiar. Pero no estoy dispuesta a quedar vinculada a una persona tan sólo. No quiero quedar fijada, inmovilizada… Toda de oro, flotando en este rumbo, le digo a éste: «Ven». Rizándome en negro, digo a este otro: «No». Uno abandona su puesto bajo la vitrina. Se acerca. Se dirige a mí. Es el momento más excitante que he vivido en mi vida. Me estremezco. Me rizo. Me balanceo como una planta en el río, flotando hacia aquí, flotando hacia allá, pero enraizada, para que venga hacia mí. «Ven», le digo. «Ven».”
Susan ha visto como Jinny besaba a Louis y huye al bosque, a la naturaleza, con su angustia apretada en un pañuelo. Susan quiere dar y quiere recibir, ama y odia, pero a veces se siente como una hoja que es llevada por el viento, a veces desea que la plenitud de su casa, de su marido, de sus hijos, de su naturaleza se aleje de ella. A veces, odia a Jinny porque su presencia le recuerda que tiene las manos rojas y las uñas mordisqueadas y hasta el final jadeará «como un pájaro joven, insatisfecha, por algo que se me ha escapado.»
“Mis hijos me llevarán adelante… Quedaré degradada y encadenada por la bestial y hermosa pasión de la maternidad. Sin el menor escrúpulo, ayudaré a mis hijos a triunfar. Odiaré a cuantos vean sus defectos. Mentiré vilmente para favorecerlos. Y dejaré que me aíslen de ti y de ti y de ti… tendré criadas con delantales, trabajadores con horcas, una cocina a la que traerán a los cabritos enfermos para que cobren calor en un cesto, una cocina en la que colgarán jamones y brillarán las cebollas. Seré como mi madre, silenciosa, con delantal azul, recorriendo con la mirada las alacenas.”
Bernard ha visto como Susan huía, ha advertido su desdicha, la sigue, la envuelve en palabras. Bernard, con sus historias, consigue que la gente se sienta ligera y leve, liberada. Pero pronto le faltan las fuerzas, la frase se debilita, duda y calla. Su libreta está llena de frases imperfectas, de frases inacabadas. Es «como el cordón roto de una campanilla, siempre oscilando». Necesita el estímulo de los demás, sus miradas iluminándole, cambia según sea la estancia en la que se encuentra, según la compañía.
“Cuando no veo palabras retorciéndose a mi alrededor como anillos de humo, estoy en tinieblas y nada soy. Cuando estoy solo, caigo en un letargo, y me digo entristecido, mientras hago caer las cenizas por entre las barras de la parrilla, que la señora Moffat vendrá. Vendrá y lo limpiará todo.”
Neville se siente abandonado cuando Bernard le deja tras los pasos de Susan. Ama a Percival y advierte que su destino es causar repulsión a quién ama, que está condenado a producir asco, a ser un poeta. Opuesto a las convenciones, no soporta que haya dependientas de comercio. Sus risitas, su comadreo, le recuerdan su degradada naturaleza. Dedicará su vida a la perfección, a seguir la curva de la frase y acabará en paz, pero sin gloria. Llegará a gustarle ver a la gente salir en torrente del metro, mirará sin pasión.
“Poco me falta para chillar ante la cómoda satisfacción de sí mismo, y la mediocridad de este mundo que produce tratantes de caballos con adornos de coral pendientes de la cadena del reloj. Llevo en mi interior algo que los destruirá por entero. Mi risa les hará retorcerse en sus sillones, les obligará a echar a correr aullando. No: son inmortales. Triunfan.”
Rhoda permanece ajena a todo, concentrada en un cuenco donde flotan pétalos blancos, su flota navegando en el mar alzado en oleaje. Se siente fuera del mundo, con el peligro constante de caer en la nada. Tras la puerta le espera el tigre que se abalanzará sobre ella. No se concibe en su cuerpo, experimenta constantemente la indiferencia o el desprecio de los hombres mientras ella ansía columnas de mármol y lagos en el otro lado del mundo donde una golondrina moja la punta del ala.
“No tengo cara. Los demás tienen cara. Susan y Jinny tienen cara. Están aquí. Su mundo es el mundo real. Las cosas que levantan son cosas que pesan. Dicen «sí», dicen «no». Pero yo oscilo y cambio, y en menos de un segundo devengo transparente. Cuando se cruzan con una criada, la criada las mira sin reírse. Pero se ríe de mí. Ellas saben lo que han de decir, cuando alguien les habla. Se ríen de veras, se enojan de veras, en tanto que yo he de mirar primero a mi alrededor, y hacer lo que los demás hacen, cuando ya lo han hecho… Debo tergiversar y defenderme con mentiras.”
“Son tan solo hombres, tan solo mujeres.”
“Ha llegado el momento…Cerrarán los jardines.”
“¿Es que no había espada, nada con que demoler aquellas murallas, esa protección, este engendrar hijos, vivir entre cortinas, devenir de día en día más y más sujeto y entregado, entre libros y pinturas? Más hubiera valido quemar la propia vida, como Louis, en el deseo de perfección, o, como Rhoda, huir de nosotros, dejarnos atrás para ir a parar a un desierto, o elegir a uno entre millones, sólo a uno, como hizo Neville; más hubiera valido ser como Susan, y amar y odiar el calor del sol o el césped mordido por las heladas, o ser como Jinny, honestos y animales.”
1,187 reviews8,737 followers
[Edited, pictures added 10/5/22]
Almost more poetry than prose, critics have called this Woolf's greatest work and also the most “difficult” one. It’s written in dreamy paragraphs creating an atmosphere but with little plot. I struggled with it, having trouble keeping the characters separate, even trying mnemonics at one point. Then I caught on. The book follows six people from when they were tots to old age; three men, three women; one of the men dies. You have to accept that five-year old kids playing on the lawn think complex philosophical thoughts.
If I were to pick a typical paragraph, I’d say one like this:
‘Yet we scarcely breathe,’ said Neville, ‘spent as we are. We are in that passive and exhausted frame of mind when we only wish to rejoin the body of our mother from whom we have been severed, All else is distasteful, forced and fatiguing. Jinny’s yellow scarf is moth-colored in this light; Susan’s eyes are quenched. We are scarcely to be distinguished from the river. One cigarette end is the only point of emphasis among us. And sadness tinges our content, that we should have left you, torn the fabric; yielded to the desire to press out, alone, some bitterer, some blacker juice, which was sweet too. But now we are worn out.’
Italicized paragraphs about nature (flowers, streams) act as chapter breaks as the characters move from one stage of life to another. The six meet periodically over the years, usually for dinner.
It’s Virginia Woolf so we expect and get great writing. Some of my favorite passages:
[a train]: "There is the very powerful, bottle-green engine without a neck, all back and thighs, breathing steam."
"Louis, glancing, tripping with the high step of a disdainful crane, picks up words as if in sugar-tongs."
"Nothing should be named lest by doing so we change it. Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I, for one instant, steeped in pleasure."
"The sun fell in sharp wedges inside the room. Whatever the light touched became dowered with a fanatical existence. A plate was like a white lake. A knife looked like a dagger of ice."
Like Nabokov, you have to have your dictionary on hand. A few I looked up were emulously (emulating); assegais (spear); guillemot (type of tern); charabanc (bus); conglobulated (just what you think – clustered); nacreous (pearly, iridescent).
I will definitely read this book again. It’s more a book that you “absorb” than read.
Top image: Painting by Peter Barker, Rolling Breakers, Pentreath Beach on mallgalleries.org.uk
The author (1882-1941) from newyorker.com
113 reviews1,991 followers
The sun rose. Its rays fell in sharp wedges inside the room. Whatever the light touched became dowered with a fanatical existence. A plate was like a white lake. A knife looked like a dagger of ice. Suddenly my copy of ‘The Waves’ became alive as the clouds on the cover page started floating in resplendent movements and the water of the ocean moved swiftly over the edges of several dog-eared pages carrying along thousands of words written upon them, to a world they rightfully belongs to. Drifting in the cradle of nature, under the roof of blue/black sky, amidst beauty they could equate with. Merging into the ubiquitous elements of the cosmos, they were finally home. The waves...finally broke out.
I’m stunned. I’m in a dire need of phrases. Right phrases. Perfect phrases. Phrases that can describe a smidgen of splendor this book contain. But I’m inadequate. Immensely inadequate. I wish I were a poet or a writer. I’m neither and I have no one to blame. Yet I’m vacillating between being angry and being envious. Angry with? Envious Of? I better avoid questions and negative words. This is not the right place when this is THE right book. I’m in awe of Virginia Woolf. That’s more like it. I’m...I, I, I, she busted this very ‘I’ with her mesmerizing sentences in The Waves. Waves that can’t exist in isolation. They need water, they need wind, and they need rhythm. They need to be the ‘sum total’ to be a ‘whole’. Likewise, Bernard, Susan, Louis, Jinny, Neville and Rhoda, who have their individual lives but they also exist to fulfill other lives. The lives of their friends, their lovers and eventually, their own.
This is my second outing with Virginia Woolf. By way of To the Lighthouse, I treaded my path towards the shore while assessing the depth of the ocean and the vastness of horizon in order to prepare myself to tackle the waves. But kindly mark my words here: nothing can prepare you for that. I have taken a vow after reading The Waves that I’ll never entitle any book as my favorite until and unless I read all the great novels the world of literature has to offer. It seems improbable but fascinating to think of because otherwise I believe it’s nothing but a folly, an unfair judgment on our part. I can say ‘never before’ though. Yes. Never before I’ve read a book like this. Its beauty is excruciating to the extent that on several occasions I had to stop reading it. It was intolerable to carry on with so much magnificence on display as if you’re witnessing the creation of the world with your naked eyes.
The book follows the lives of six friends and their individual thought processes from childhood to their youth, from marriage to children, from middle age to death. The whole book is in the form of internal monologues with few initial elucidations about who is thinking what but that too is later withdrawn by Woolf with a belief in readers (I suppose!) that they’ll identify the characters through their cerebration only. This does make it sound a bit difficult and apparently boring but it’s not, it can’t be. It can be slightly demanding of your concentration but it’s sure to hook you from the very first sentence so it won’t be hard to focus except when you start ruminating about your life only. That’s where another brilliance of this novel lies. It’s so easy to relate with it. May be not with specifics but the generalities it implies.
We have chosen now, or sometimes it seems the choice was made for us—a pair of tongs pinched us between the shoulders. I chose. I took the print of life not outwardly, but inwardly upon the raw, the white, the unprotected fibre. I am clouded and bruised with the print of minds and faces and things so subtle that they have smell, colour, texture, substance, but no name.
Our lives are nothing but a multitude of moments, of choices made, of friends found and lost, of replacements, of connections made, of books read, of words written, of mistakes committed, of lessons learnt, of stories told, of finding ourselves. We know all this to some extent and probably Woolf also knew that everybody know this but still she went on to write something unique to show rather than tell. She aimed at finding a thread, a fine thread that binds us all together. She shows what makes us all different and yet makes us one. She shows the power of one single person, one single moment which is enough to act as a unifying force. There is poetry, yes. There is lyrical prose too. There is music and rhythm. There is no plot- I’m writing the waves to a rhythm not to a plot. True. There is saturation of every atom. Everything is here, everything. In the process of my reading, I was wondering if she used custom made words but no, I’ve come across them before but they never sound so enchanting to me. And that’s how it is. Sometimes we read thousands of words and not a single one of them rings true and sometimes we happen upon a book like The Waves in which every single word is conveying a truth of our being.
I’m not sure how consciously I have been able to follow the stream of thoughts of various characters but I know this much- I have read this book now and I found a part of my past in musings of Jinny and Louis, a part of my present in musings of Susan and Bernard, an appreciation and anticipation for my future in musings of Rhoda and Neville. I’ll read this book again, hoping to find a part of my then past, present and future. The equation of tenses will change but the words shall remain intact in their truth and beauty. Those of you, who haven’t read it, please do yourself a favor and read it soon. Read it coming Thursday or Saturday. Read it coming July or September. Read it in 2014 or 2025. Just read it before you die.
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and fall and rise again. I am a poet, yes.
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904 reviews
Read
I am in a fever.
Awareness is heightened.
Words have purple shadows.
Sentences gleam yellow-green
Paragraphs are lined in reddish gold
Everything shimmers, sharp as waves in sunlight.
The normal is abolished
Voices roll towards me, one upon another,
declaim their truth and roll away again, one upon another,
the arc of each voice different, the rhythm the same:
Bernard, Susan, Louis, Bernard.
Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, Bernard.
Louis, Neville, Susan, Bernard
Susan, Louis, Neville, Bernard,
Bernard, Bernard, Bernard, Bernard.
Six names, six faces, surging toward the light.
Six names, six faces, falling away, each in turn,
Until only one remains: Bernard.
And Bernard says, Sit with me, and I do.
And he describes the voices, describes them all.
And he drops phrases one upon another.
Measures out life, drop by drop,
I strike the table with a spoon.
If I could measure things with compasses I would,
but since my measure is a phrase, I make phrases.
And meantime, women shuffle past the window
And the clock ticks on.
And Bernard makes his phrases.
I conceive myself called upon to provide, some winter’s night, a meaning for all my observations, a line that runs from one to another a summing up that completes... But soliloquies in back streets soon pall. I need an audience. That is my downfall.
Bernard punctuates with repetitions,
a symphony with its concord and its discord,
and its tunes on top and its complicated bass beneath.
And meantime, women shuffle past with shopping bags
And always the chained beast stamping.
And Bernard's phrases.
I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse-dealer, or whoever it may be, says something which sets me alight. Then how lovely the smoke of my phrase is, rising and falling, flaunting and falling, upon red lobsters and yellow fruit, wreathing them into one beauty.
And meantime, women carrying baskets
And the tablecloth and its yellow stain
And the recurring drop that falls.
And time, says Bernard, lets fall its drop. The drop that has formed on the roof of the soul falls. On the roof of my mind time, forming, lets fall its drop.... This falling drop is time tapering to a point. As a drop falls from a glass heavy with some sediment, time falls.
And meantime, women carrying pitchers on their heads
And the constant naming of the days: Tuesday follows Monday: Wednesday, Tuesday. Each spreads the same ripple.
Drop upon drop, says Bernard, silence falls. It forms on the roof of the mind and falls into pools beneath. For ever alone, alone, alone - hear silence fall and sweep its rings to the farthest edges. Gorged and replete, solid with middle-aged content, I, whom loneliness destroys, let silence fall, drop by drop.
.............................................................
There is the recurring theme of the shark fin, revolving far out in the waves,
the fin of inspiration:
...leaning over this parapet I see far out a waste of water. A fin turns,
the fin that rises in the wastes of silence, and then..sinks back into the depths,
spreading around it a little ripple of satisfaction, content...
There are the sheep, advancing remorselessly through the narrative in that wooden way of theirs, step by step on stiff, pointed legs
There is the grindstone, the rush of the great grindstone within an inch of my head.
There are moths, which sailing through the room had shadowed the immense solidity of chairs and tables with floating wings
And Jinny’s yellow scarf is moth coloured in the light
There is love and hate.
There is the colour purple.
There is a red carnation in a vase
There are stoats nailed to stable doors.
There are white petal ships floating in brown oceans.
And Bernard's voice, no longer making phrases:
Nothing, nothing, nothing broke with its fin that leaden waste of waters
But always the waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.
a-joy-to-review treasured-reading-experience verse-reviews
312 reviews159 followers
> The sun fell in sharp wedges inside the room. Whatever the light touched became dowered with a fanatical existence. A plate was like a white lake. A knife looked like a dagger of ice. Suddenly tumblers revealed themselves upheld by streaks of light.
As I turn the pages of The Waves, Virginia Woolf talks to me, to my heart, my spirit and my soul, like I could not have imagined. Such splendor and beauty come to me through her words, and I feel like singing with her. She sings life, a life that begins and goes on and on. So I keep reading and hope to get lost, to blend with the pages whose sounds are just like the very waves that come and go inexorably.
> The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.
If only I could write, if only I were a poet. If only I knew who I was, but I feel the six of them as if they shared my soul. Yes, there are six, and I am only one. But each talks to a part of me. A part that I recognize or a part that I try to hide. As a woman, I am Jinny, Susan, and Rhoda and at the same time, I am not. But I am also Bernard, Neville, and Louis in their daily struggles, despite sometimes feeling so foreign to them. But I am all of them, and they are me. ‘I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.’ We play on along, and we live, we are human in our frailty and our imperfections. We live in our different scenarios, but all in the same planet. And I weep and smile with them for what they fought and are loved for, for their fears and for their insecurities, and their lovers.
The activity is endless. And tomorrow it begins again; tomorrow we make Saturday. Some take train for France; others ship for India. Some will never come into this room again. One may die tonight. Another will beget a child. From us every sort of building, policy, venture, picture, poem, child, factory, will spring. Life comes; life goes; we make life. So you say.
I that had for long forgotten to look inside myself, now crave to know why I lost so many friends or was lost by them. I am jealous of their friendship, as I sometimes feel so solitary and desperate for that human connection that seems some days so far away. I am a chameleon, for I am all six at the same time. Even Percival, for I have died even having survived. ‘How curious one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend.’ And I still feel the sorrow of those friends that I do not see anymore, and so seem dead to me. He is all the friends I lost, their long gone memories, and all the friends I gave up. He is the isolation that I built for myself. Was it pride or simply forgetfulness? I grieve and want to yell for help. Is there still time? Could we meet for dinner and perhaps share all our happiness, our misgivings, and our sufferings?
I have had one moment of enormous peace. This perhaps is happiness. Now I am drawn back by pricking sensations; by curiosity, greed (I am hungry) and the irresistible desire to be myself. I think of people to whom I could say things: Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny and Rhoda. With them I am many-sided. They retrieve me from darkness. We shall meet tonight, thank Heaven. Thank Heaven, I need not be alone.
Despite all that I imagine I have in common with all six of them, I feel a special connection with Bernard. Why is that so? Should it not have been with Susan, a female with her family life and her children? I that am also a mother. But no, it is Bernard that talks most to me. Maybe that is because he is the storyteller of the group of friends, what keeps them together. Or perhaps he is one but is at the same time all six of them.
> Light almost pierced the thin swift waves as they raced fan-shaped over the beach. The girl who had shaken her head and made all the jewels, the topaz, the aquamarine, the water-coloured jewels with sparks of fire in them, dance, now bared her brows and with wide-opened eyes drove a straight pathway over the waves.
I watch as the waves break close to my feet and I cannot devise how it feels to be confronted with such force and immensity, to hear its deafening bellows as it crashes and almost kills me. ‘The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.’ And I feel I am always eavesdropping on Bernard, Neville, Louis, Jinny, Susan and Rhoda, and I listen to them and journey with them from day to day. I now can say that I met the grave and quiet Neville and understood his love for another part of himself – ‘The leaves now are thick in country lanes, sheep cough in the damp fields; but here in your room we are dry. We talk privately.’ I encountered the ambitious and insecure outsider Louis – ‘I repeat, “I am an average Englishman; I am an average clerk”, yet I look at the little men at the next table to be sure that I do what they do.’ I shared experiences with Susan, her idyllic visions of family and rustic life – ‘At this hour, this still early hour, I am the field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and the young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost on him.’ Yes, I have felt for Rhoda’s fear of life, her terror of always being lost and unheard – ‘Identity failed me. We are nothing. I said, and fell.’ I encountered the passionate Jinny and her volatility and her need to feel loved – ‘Now with a little jerk, like a limpet broken from a rock, I am broken off: I fall with him; I am carried off. We yield to this slow flood. We go in and out of this hesitating music.’ And I know Bernard, the eternal storyteller who failed in his first love but unites the friends not only with words – ‘Who am I thinking of? Byron of course. I am, in some ways, like Byron. Perhaps a sip of Byron will help put me in the vein. Let me read a page.’
I am in love with their names and their destinies, I am always with them and outside of it all, but present in spirit.
‘Words and words and words, how they gallop—how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them, scattering women and string bags. There is some flaw in me—some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity. Yet it is incredible that I should not be a great poet.’
I read each word, Virginia Woolf’s words, and her lyricism makes me feel very luxurious inside. She uses words that are metaphors for our everyday life, such as waves and storms. Words that are each and every one a treasure to our intellect and our souls. She is a poet and reminds me of Fernando Pessoa and The Book of Disquiet. She has led me through an ephemeral life, or better, six lives, and I feel replete and indulged. And I feel alive despite dying in the end.
And now I ask, “Who am I?” I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know.
classics-literay-fiction favorites-of-all-times read-2017
201 reviews1,807 followers
Hi. || Hi. || Is it you? || Yes, I am. || You look different. || Should I have been same? || Mmm... I don’t know. But you have my color. || In setting auburn, yes. || But it still looks content on your skin; that color – like a sheet of fine, wet porcelain covering a tired, antique statue. || And you look dazed, as if an army of nebulous thoughts have held you captive. || Is it so evident? || Yes. || I met a few people – Bernard, Susan, Louis… || …Jinny, Neville and Rhoda. I know. || Do you remember them? || They never left me. || Even after so many years? || Time has shuffled what was detached from me; what was within me, was always out of its reach. || So it all begun from where I stand. || And it walked with you till where I stand. || In the same form? || In what form you say? || I don’t know. But it feels like my mind and body dissolved its hinges and fused into that of those six people who combed through life with the precision of a surgeon… || …and the flamboyance of an artist. They let their vial overflow and got injected into your veins, sprucing your limp persona to rise like a volcanic sapling, splashing your vision with hues, bunched and scattered. You became them and you permitted it. || How could I not? Were you not present when we picked abandoned pebbles of insecurities on the way and held them hidden in our clothes of opaque vanity? Were you not a witness to the swinging that erupted from our trees of longing, long enough to allow crystallization with birches of affection in our hair? Would you deny the scene where we luxuriated at the thought of being serenaded by that young traveler, eventually kissing the rutted soil that he kicked with his indifferent boots on his voyage away from us? Were you not a secret enthusiast when we paused to bite into the luscious fruits of solitude only to experience a lonely taste hijacking our mouths in the most nauseous of sensations? Did you not skip a beat at the sight of us, lain ambushed behind the currant trees of ambition that were trimmed by parental legacy exposing our being to a twisted life bearing resemblance to an encumbered ball of alien proclivity? Did you not? || I did. With apprehension. And with h… || Then why did you not stop us? Stop ME? || Because amid everything, I saw you with hope. And revitalizing continuity. I am not surprised you let the streams of incredulity flow into the six, for they made the river that I am today. || But the streams were fledgling! Didn’t you see? In the vast ocean of my life, our pulses flickered like inconsolable dreams; now made and now thrashed. We were young, confused, hopeful, repulsive, always standing by the window of expectation, ready to be swept away even under the winds of anonymity and recklessness. We could not say the good from the bad. If only a wedge named Percival could have stood on our fertile surfaces, we could have perhaps…. || …not lived the life that you did. But who is to say what life we have to make? Isn’t life what we can capture in a diary and sing as a song? Isn’t it the crisp bed we lie on after a day of hard work? Why else should…. || …Life is not the view from the perch of simplicity that you elucidate in eloquence. The rules of the society are painted in huge, black letters on the wall that envelop our breathing. And they are not erasable. || But interpretable. || Perhaps. Did I do a good job interpreting it? Did I read the rules and still make mine? Inserting a letter here and recoloring a word there? Have I ever come close to understanding life? Ever? || Well, in the suns that rise and moons that melt, we found meaning of life. In the rains that drench and frost that shrivels, we found meaning of life. I have bathed in the sun-kissed day that danced in your bright eyes and you have shivered in the wintriness of my hunched shoulders. I have collected the shells you shed in the corners of your bed when no one was looking and you have swung the lilies from the roof I lay prostrate on to lull the world beneath. I have stood witness when you opened the doors to stray dogs and cats and learnt the art to welcome a stranger when it was time. You have shared my marks of jealousy like an unhealed wound that acts as the reminder of impending tests spurting from the corners of our aspirations. I walked along with you on the path of love and loss, family and friends, victory and failures, reality and drama and never lost sense of the road. The road, this road, that you have been asked to traverse, that I have traversed in its unevenness, coarseness, unpredictability and lengthiness, is a lullaby that tampers with our sensory beams and evokes reactions not written in our palms. You say I stand like an antique statue? Well, I have learnt over my dainty walks and strained tapping that empty eyes speak the loudest. And the stoic porcelain continues to draw figures on my body that no one, but my silent eyes, can decipher. When the sun hides behind the restless waves and the white foam strips its light into shadows, I can still make a drawing in the sand and not be worried of its fate. || Even in its transience, there is meaning? || Yes. In its transience, there is meaning. Because there are memories. I am afraid if I were to render form to memories, I would view it as a long vestibuled train which rearranges its compartments to derive a faster, nimbler run but never coughs enough steam to disengage any one of them. You see, memories are creations. And there is no better role to acquire than that of a creator. The very best. || But being a creator is also a bane; sometimes he has to let fall the axe on what is unacceptable. || But what pride would you have if you never created anything on your own? You love your warm coffee in the morning and the soft pillow at night. But try giving space to a fading rose in your vase; or a rumpled shawl on your shoulders. Perhaps, you can draw a familiar aroma or feel an acquainted warmth. And if you get neither, don’t fret; they get magically synthesized into memory pearls that keep dotting the steady and sinking steps you take on the shore of life, much like navigators to lead you where you truly belong. || Would they be illuminating forever? || Indeed. || That is a resuscitating relief. But… You look different. || Do I? || Yes. Wait! Is it you? || Yes, I am you.
bildungsroman conversations cult
933 reviews1,087 followers
"Best book ever," I said when I finished before returning to the first non-italicized page to re-read phrases that this time around didn't baffle (as much). A quarter through, as I started saying "wow" aloud at perfectly phrased phrases (that "land on two feet"), it was clear that this is and has always been an obvious canonical MVP. Tried reading it maybe ten years ago sitting in a Jiffy Lube waiting room, got to page 21 (dog-eared it), reading without retention, turning pages but not much else, and so didn't return to it after the oil change. Loved All That Man Is recently and recognized that it shared (or stole) its structure somewhat from this one; they both trace the long curve of life and are about life itself rather than some aspect of it. I'll have to adjust my rating for "All That Man Is" since this is about as good as it gets. Impressionistic, absolutely individuated, unpredictable, supremely insightful, and carefully crafted elevated language (phrases). No reference to Wittgenstein (as they do nowadays, creating an easy impression of intelligence). This is the real deal: original insight into the rhythms and texture of life. Essential: life and language reduced to their essence, which elevates everything. Ordinarily I'd rail against Disembodied Proper Noun Syndrome but disembodiment is part of the point; it emphasizes the voices, like a chorus of angels intoning perfectly weighted incantations to evoke what had been their corresponding bodies' lives. An exaggeratedly written text, self-consciously a compilation of phrases, the author's presence always benignly hovering over the words, and yet there's Bernard, Neville, Percival, Jinny, Rhoda, Susan, all of them I know now, all of them I see. Interesting to imagine what a contemporary version of this would be like, with childhood imaginations branded by Disney and Pixar (Lego Ninjas seem to occupy my daughter's imagination these days, usurping Paw Patrol, which vanquished Transformers) and young adult consciousnesses infiltrated by Instagram activity. But this, although ~85 years old at this point, is timeless, since it's abstracted; the grains in the wood of the door, the path through the sand, the red carnation, the textures, the rhythms, and the curve of time, the "sex scene" on page 103, and of course the bands of onrushing waves are timeless. Most semi-colons ever in a novel maybe? Ideal example of a novel that teaches you how to read it. "Immeasurably receptive, holding everything, trembling with fulness, yet clear, contained . . ." Will need to re-read multiple times of course. And now might re-read "The Sound and the Fury," which seems like it was influenced by this too.
739 reviews285 followers
You know you are in the grasp of a powerful author when you have to be snapped out of a reverie at lunch, because you are thinking back to how old you were yesterday, and how all of your troubles amounted to a lot of headaches. Growth of character occurred, but you’re still in flux. The goals you had set five years ago… some of them materialized, some didn’t, and you are on a hedonic treadmill. You are thinking of the time you shared with a few close friends, those days after school where you ran outside onto the field with abandon, running because you could, no one was chasing you. There was laughter and helter-skelter. That field was where you confessed the truth, allowed yourself to believe for the first time. That field was where you fought, tears of shame and tears of bitter anger. Life happened, two to three hours a day, at least when the weather permitted it. There was one single day where you all sat down together after a kickabout, thinking about the next day, relishing the fatigue in your muscles, cherishing the dying rays of the sun; that was the last day that you were all gathered together on that field. You had no idea. You couldn’t even pinpoint that day if you were asked, but it must have happened. Lunch is still happening.
The depressive waves of heat that come off Woolf’s writing are very vivid to me. Perhaps because I know how it all ended, yes, I have spoken of that before. But it drags me down, deliciously, wonderfully. I have no qualms with letting myself go to that place in which I know she wants to reside. The same patterns are apparent in her works that I have had the pleasure of reading so far – identity, loss of youth, becoming, goals, reconciliation. Hers is a prose of pathos, of one looking back with a tinge of regret. She sneers at surface success, as she knows that the most successful and pain-free among all of us have moments we would give our entire net worth to change. This book is no different, and like To the Lighthouse, it’s a timeless story and a sharp reminder to make something of the day. I will need the benefit of time and hindsight to see which has stuck with me more – The Waves or To the Lighthouse. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the latter’s peak, Time Passes. That peak is not crystallized here, but spreads itself across the deceptively thin book.
Finally, Bernard and I got along swimmingly – so much so that his doubts about life were making my breathing short, sharp, and raspy. This needs a second read immediately, but for now, I will wait a couple of years to see how it incubates.
721 reviews1,048 followers
“Pienso en personas a quienes podría decir cosas: Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny y Rhoda. Con ellos soy polifacético. Me sacan de la oscuridad. Gracias a Dios, nos reuniremos esta noche. Gracias a Dios, no tendré que estar solo. Cenaremos juntos. Diré adiós a Percival, que se va a la India. Esta noche cenaré con mis amigos. Soy Bernard, soy yo.”
“Las olas” es una novela experimental de esta inolvidable escritora que se llamó Virginia Woolf.
Digo experimental porque lógicamente rompe con las normas de lo estándar en la literatura, principalmente porque apuesta a ser una novela que carece de argumento.
En realidad lo tiene, pero es como un esbozo, un planteo narrativo que se compone de soliloquios, monólogos, de sus seis personajes principales, Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny y Louis que hacen referencia a un séptimo, Percival, aunque este nunca se expresa durante la lectura del libro.
No es la primera vez que nos encontramos con novelas sin trama argumental. Podemos citar otros casos como pueden ser “La caída” de Albert Camus, “El innombrable” de Samuel Beckett y especialmente otra novela altamente experimental y de vanguardia que se llamó “Finnegans Wake”, escrito por el increíble James Joyce.
Para el caso puntual de “Las olas”, Woolf vuelve a poner en práctica un método de narración similar al que utilizó para su otra novela, “El faro”, que consiste también en personajes monologando prácticamente durante todo el libro con menos cantidad de diálogos entre sí.
Los monólogos en esta novela son separados por nueve interludios introducidos por la autora y que aparecen en letras itálicas.
En estos interludios transcurre todo un día, desde que sale el sol y se divisan las primeras olas hasta que éste se pone en el ocaso y las olas comienzan a ocultarse y así, Woolf establece el modo en que cuenta la vida de sus personajes, desde que son jóvenes hasta el final de sus días y es la forma que tiene la autora de darle cohesión y continuidad para que se asemeje a un argumento estructurado.
A su vez, todos los soliloquios de los personajes están escrito en el estilo del “flujo de conciencia” o “monólogo interior” en el que las ideas tal como aparecen en la mente del personaje son volcadas en el libro, recurso que instaurara James Joyce en su “Ulises” y que fuera desarrollada posteriormente por otros autores como William Faulkner en “El ruido y la furia” o Samuel Beckett en “El innombrable”. Existen muchos casos más, pero considero a estos como los más emblemáticos para explicarlos.
Los seis personajes de “Las olas” tienen personalidades bien marcadas y distintas, pero cada una de ellas construye la novela a la par y en conjunto.
Es verdaderamente digno de destacar el altísimo vuelo poético de Virginia Woolf, una escritora que escribe de una manera exquisita e inigualable, y que a su vez nunca deja de homenajear a algunos de sus héroes literarios como William Shakespeare, Lord Byron y Fiódor Dostoievski.
Cabe destacar también el monólogo interior final de Bernard que cierra el libro en las últimas cincuenta páginas y que es equiparable al de Molly Bloom en el final del “Ulises” de Joyce, pero sin el ahogo que propone el del autor irlandés que no utiliza ni puntos seguidos ni comas, acorralando al lector a leerlo hasta el final.
“Hay que romper la belleza todos los días para que siga siendo bella” leemos en un pasaje de “Las olas”.
Creo que no existe mejor frase para explicar cómo es la literatura de esta escritora maravillosa que se llamó Virginia Woolf.
283 reviews455 followers
A review of second reading coming.
Initial Review:
We know so little of others. Barely we capture pieces of ourselves which can be cobbled together into what we believe ourselves to be; the unified presence necessary to calculate and cope with with the underside of the unfurling wave of life's chaos.
The book opens upon a group of innocents, small sensitive children at a private school in the country. They take turns, perhaps in a game, naming what is happening around them. Would children speak in the perceptive elevation of poetics? The sentences are couched in, she said, or he said. Plain as...It could be what is in their minds; their unspoken thoughts. The group has been like a primordial cluster with the slight beginnings of tentative separations.
"Up here Bernard, Neville, Jinny and Susan (but not Rhoda) skim the flower beds with their nets. They skim the butterflies from the nodding tops of the flowers. They brush the surface of the world. Their nets are full of fluttering wings.'Louis! Louis! Louis!' they shout. But they cannot see me. I am on the other side of the hedge. There are only little eyeholes among the leaves..."
Their staid and structured lives parceled in prepared segments is disrupted as life seeps in.
Louis, surprised, is kissed by Jinny,while making himself invisible within the bushes.
The maid is kissed by a kitchen worker in the full dazzle of kitchen garden sunlight, "I saw Florrie in the garden," said Susan, as we came back from our walk, with the washing blown out around her, the pajamas, the drawers, the night-gowns blown tight.And Earnest kissed her. He was in his green baize apron cleaning silver; and his mouth was sucked like a purse in wrinkles and he seized her with the pajamas blown out hard between them. He was blind as a bull, and she swooned in anguish, only little veins streaking her white cheeks red. Now though they pass plates of bread and butter and cups of milk at tea-time I see a crack in the earth and hot steam hisses up; and the urn roars as Ernest roared, and I am blown out hard like the pajamas,even while my teeth meet in the soft bread and butter, and I lap the sweet milk..."
"Since I am supposed," said Neville, "to be too delicate to go with them, since I get so easily tired then am sick, I will use this hour of solitude, this reprieve from conversation, to coast round the purlieus of the house and recover, if I can, by standing on the same stair half-way up the landing, what I felt what when I heard about the dead man through the swing-door last night when cook was shoving in and out the dampers. He was found with his throat cut. The apple tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared; I was unable to lift my foot up the stair. He was found in the gutter. His blood gurgled down the gutter. His jowl was white as a dead cod-fish. I shall call this stricture, this rigidity, 'death among the apple trees,' forever...But we are doomed, all of us by the apple trees, by the immitigable tree which we cannot pass."
Their reprieve is too watch Percival, this savior figure, a student muscular, carefree, not wounded by the burden of self-consciousness. He is watched but not joined. The group watches but does not join. Each remains within their precious starlit moments, perceptions, remarks. The, he saids, she saids, take place only within their minds. We are not invited. We are thrust in and reside there. We hear character's reflections upon themselves, others, as well as events we have heard within another's mind. This is not a book about the inner consciousness of characters-which I love-but a book where the reader lives within another's consciousness. This is where the genius of Woolf takes realism to new heights. Science cannot take us within the experience of another person, the uncountable experiences of the progression of moments through the hours of a day, a night. Woolf has. I believe she meant this poetic prose to be read a sentence a day. Each day giving it time to settle and surface within a spectered prism to cup within one's hands and cherish.
Time passes easily within this book that is not a book when reading, which does not exist in any palpable form. As each get older and goes off, though only able to countenance the world through their mental existence as part of the primordial group, they become staid in their performance allotted to them of, philosophy, culture, attachment to nature, reason, love of the continuous flow of apt phrases, the crumbling of boundaries bringing about both fearsome and beatific images. They ride above life in a rarified atmosphere. Then news is received. The savior is dead. He has not risen. There had been a party to see him off to India. The trembles of fear of entering the world as adults haunts the party, their final separations. In India he died in a riding accident. Life, this world so inane in its appearances has flooded in with the concreteness, not of the remarkable-remark but the flow of guts and blood and...death.
This is not an event that can be assimilated within their scope of existence. As when life earlier interceded their thoughts and diction, it prevented them from taking any further step up. They settled into lives incongruent with natures never found, perhaps never sought, though congruent with who they seemed. The desperate awkward reunion arranged by Bernard in mid-life is a painful listening to all that is not in their lives and now will never be. The high and mighty, who disdained those all-to-ready to sacrifice the anxieties of philosophical searchings for the existence of hum-drum survival, found themselves trapped within the trophies of their once heralded self-heard speeches. Compromises quieted and unnoticed pass in isolation. Poor Bernard seeks himself, not the parts that respond to who he is visiting or to a particular situation. When alone all he can do is come up with phrases to label feelings, others, events which have or are unfolding, as Neville, sitting alone will pull another book down off the shelf. None, are able to see things as they are and therefore cannot see what is beneath or is waiting. They are removed by a layer of film of their own making. What they thought brilliance was defense. What they lacked was the strength to face the onslaught. Bernard sees the next morning the city awakening as a resurrection. Woolf goes on to show us what follows. What life is. What we are called to and why. In her precise, poetic prose she does not hesitate, she does not falter.
If allotted only enough time to read one last book this is the one I would choose. It is the only book I have read which so completely does not write but experiences the totality of life. All novels henceforth flowed and flows from this book. Each wittingly or unwittingly tries to gain its reach, its complexity, completion.
501 reviews2,824 followers
“No, but I wish to go under; to visit the profound depths; once in a while to exercise my prerogative not always to act, but to explore; to hear vague, ancestral sounds of boughs creaking, of mammoths, to indulge impossible desires to embrace the whole world with the arms of understanding, impossible to those who act.” - Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf never ceases to amaze me. If someone had told me a couple of years ago that I would actually enjoy books written in the stream-of-consciousness style, I would probably have laughed. I was definitely not a fan of this writing style and initially felt that it was one of the most difficult writing styles to follow; it actually infuriated me at times. However, I am now a convert and I see the beauty of that style. And Virginia Woolf is probably the most adept and poetic writer of this sort of writing.
There’s no easy way for me to summarize this book. It follows the lives of a group of friends; Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, Louis and Percival, from childhood through adulthood. We hear, in turn, the internal monologues of each of these characters and they help piece the story together, as well as inform us of the characters' personalities.
Out of all the characters, I liked Bernard the most. I found him to be truly perceptive and sensitive to things around him, his relationship with others, and his own feelings. He sees the importance of language and is obsessed with words:
“Words and words and words, how they gallop- how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them.”
Woolf’s writing is truly brilliant, lyrical and poetic. It is also very sad, especially the philosophical musings written when the group members are older, the musings of people who are grappling with different desires in life and who are wondering whether they are happy with their lives, especially when they encounter death.
I liked the descriptions of nature, waves in particular. They were many such references throughout the book, it was almost as if the whole story was saturated with water, giving it a bleak atmosphere:
“But wait- I sat all night waiting- an impulse again runs through us; we rise, we toss back a mane of white spray; we pound on the shore; we are not to be confined.”
I must admit, I wasn’t always 100% sure who was speaking but somehow I never lost track of the story. I’m sure that with a second reading, things will become clearer and I’ll be able to get more out of it.
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1,528 reviews2,199 followers
This is a wonderful novel; Woolf herself referred to it as a play-poem. Often when I’m thinking about a review I will read what others have written, do a bit of research about the context or author. In this case, that approach is not really possible because there is a whole industry around Woolf and her novels and people spend academic lifetimes on all this!
Woolf said she was writing to a rhythm and not to a plot and the novel is a series of interludes and episodes revolving around six characters Susan, Jinny, Rhoda, Bernard, Louis and Neville. There is also Percival who does not feature in the novel, but is a focus for the others and whose early death in India has a significant effect on the others. Each character speaks over nine parallel episodes from childhood to late middle age. The wave metaphor appears and reappears and gives structure. Woolf tends to base her characters on people she knew and The Waves is no exception. Susan is Woolf’s sister Vanessa; Louis is most likely part Leonard Woolf and part T S Eliot; Neville is Lytton Strachey and possibly part Duncan Grant; Bernard creates some disagreement amongst critics who are split between Desmond McCarthy and E M Forster; Jinny is clearly part Woolf herself (Jinny was her father’s nickname for her), but also may be Kitty Maxse or Mary Hutchinson); Rhoda is also partly based on Woolf herself. The elusive and charismatic Percival around whom the group revolves is probably based on Thoby Stephen, Virginia’s brother, around whose memory the Bloomsbury group formed. Of course, this being Woolf, there are other views and some have argued that each of the voices/characters are actually part of Woolf herself and she is holding them in tension throughout, examining different parts of herself. She is certainly looking at the collective aspects of identity and the way the boundaries of identity merge and coalesce with that of the wider world.
I think Woolf is in some ways thinking in a more musical or even symphonic way; as though each character were a different musical instrument, all combining to produce a greater whole. This fluidity and movement is also reflected in the descriptions of the waves, which are italicised and separate the nine parts of the novel. The sections relating to the waves cover one day, which is the whole lifetime of the characters. Percival represents solidity and reliability. The sort of certainty that the Empire, the upper middle classes and the Victorian and Edwardian era represented. It is no coincidence that Percival goes to India. His death represents the whole edifice crumbling and the innate uncertainty of life itself. It may represent Woolf’s feelings about the loss of her brother, her own distress at the abuse she endured at the hands of her step-brother, the cataclysm of the war, her own mental illness; nothing is sure. There have been critics who have argued that Woolf is being over mystical and visionary; but close reading does indicate that Woolf is making some political points as well; this is not far in time from A Room of One’s Own. She mocks the all-male public school system, particularly as it produces figures like Percival and is critiquing colonialism at the same time.
The Waves is also Woolf’s reflection on the inexorable nature of death as Bernard sums up the whole thing in the closing pages. The end reminded me of Don Quixote astride Rocinante tilting at a windmill; the windmill being death. We all fling ourselves against “unvanquished and unyielding” Death; Woolf eventually chose how rather than wait for it.
In “A Sketch of the Past” Woolf said “that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art … we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.” In The Waves Woolf expresses these ideas in her play-poem in a beautiful and lyrical novel laden with images and reflections that dazzle, stretch the mind and ask difficult questions. I loved this; as broad in scope as the sea and intensely personal; written with great craft and style.
2,806 reviews3,520 followers
'Red and gold shot through the waves, in rapid running arrows, feathered with darkness. Erratically rays of light flashed and wandered, like signals from sunken islands, or darts shot through laurel groves by shameless, laughing boys. But the waves, as they neared the shore, were robbed of light, and fell in one long concussion, like a wall falling, a wall of grey stone, unpierced by any chink of light.'
Firstly, it is clearly evident as to why The Waves is not close to being Virginia Woolf's most popular work. It is, simply put, not a novel in the traditional sense. Stream of consciousness style writing is nothing new to me—Woolf's To The Lighthouse, of course; Lispector; Faulkner; Proust & others. But I have to say, this probably goes down as the hardest and most experimental of them all. I found the best way to read it was looking at it as a long poem with multiple interior voices. If I wanted a story, then in no way would I have got through it. This is a work where Woolf is more interested in the poetic symbols of life and its surroundings than in the lives of actual characters. There are formal hints only—school; work; love & friendship; that of aging, to name a few things. Having now had time to think about it; digest it, after breathing in its air; diving into its waters, I believe The Waves to be a richly textured, symphonic work of staggering beauty. The most genius thing I found was just how smoothly—and I really mean smoothly; like silk moving across a mirror, Woolf controls the moving forward of time.
I am now starting to believe that she really was the greatest of all the modernist writers. Certainly when it comes to the British contingent anyway.