As I pass Virginia Woolf's birthday, I remain stunned by her words about women and writing: the fear of it; the fear without it; the trick of it; the treats; the triumphs and the tragedies after those triumphs. Though not my favorite writer, per se, (that position will always remain with John Steinbeck), she is my favorite female writer.
It was the pure audacity of her work--its breadth as well as depth--which pulls me in, still. Essays, both political and personal, short fiction, autobiography, biography, history, journals, newspaper articles, criticisms, and of course, the bounty of novels which pushed the boundaries of what novels were "supposed to look like"...all the while struggling with mental illness and aware of the ravages it would wage inside her. This kind of artistic courage didn't come from outside, though she was bolstered by family and a stellar grouping of colleagues. It came from a heart of a lion who needed to roar.
Whenever I get depressed about my own life's journeys, or the irony that I am a writer who has always written and always wanted to say what I see around me, though not always a writer with a stage or a printing press from which to launch those observations, I grasp the image of Virginia, literally, and just "write on". One can realize one's limitations, be they monetary or spiritual or even simply talent, but one doesn't always realize that the way to overcome those limits is simply TO WRITE. Virginia taught me this--speaking from the hallways of her diaries, when I was in High School. Later, with guides to show me different paths through the novels, I took to heart what she was illustrating. She not only thought about what it took for a woman to write the truth (or what that woman saw as the truth),but followed her own insights. She wrote what she was experiencing, no matter how out of step, or out of line, it was for its time. Gender bending, insanity, incest, independence, a room of one's own, WWII and the corruption of politics across the globe, the pure heartstrings of pets or the loss of one's soul-mate, these were subjects she investigated through the lens of her own experience. Her bravery astonishes me, still.
The issues have not greatly changed. The world remains at war with itself. Women are still not in power or wealthy in any great numbers. Slavery and prostitution and child abuse and poverty are the biggest employers on a planet that seems as mad as she worried she was becoming. And the human heart is as easily fractured as it ever was. Today, though, we don't have the beauty of the Muse of her mind--the elegant phrasings, the watercolor exteriors. Ours is a harsher time. A time which moves too hurriedly to appreciate novels of extraordinary construction or experimental boundaries of language. Today, instead of visiting each other for lengthy conversation and tea, we text. Or Skype. Or forego physical visits, altogether, and hope we will "meet up" at those events no one can escape: funerals, parent-teacher meetings, The Holidays...
Virginia understood the constant watering needed in the garden of the human heart. She attended to those around her, as best she could, even when she shouldn't have. In the end, not wanting to take advantage of the kindness of her clan, she put rocks in her pockets and walked into a fast river, knowing yet another bout of madness was sweeping her away. Unlike many who studied the Bloomsbury Group in college, in the 1970's , Virginia Woolf''s suicide was not the clarion call I heeded. No. It was Virginia Woolf's robust external and internal life--her blending of both into her art. She remains, for me, one of my own Muses.
Unlike the past, when I would have gathered my own Group up and spent the night in toasts to the writer (and to each other, as fledgling writers to be), I am long time clean and sober, so I will, instead, let Virginia's own words stand in as a toast, shared among friends across this planet, tonight. Happy Birthday, belatedly, Ms. Woolf, wherever you are!
"If a woman is to write,she has to have 500 a year and a room with a lock on the door, a sacred space where Shakespeare's sister, Judith, might have equaled his prodigious gift or not. She might have simply floated there, set loose in the privilege of privacy, her self unwritten, under no one else's eyes..."
Virginia Woolf, "A Room Of One's Own"
It was the pure audacity of her work--its breadth as well as depth--which pulls me in, still. Essays, both political and personal, short fiction, autobiography, biography, history, journals, newspaper articles, criticisms, and of course, the bounty of novels which pushed the boundaries of what novels were "supposed to look like"...all the while struggling with mental illness and aware of the ravages it would wage inside her. This kind of artistic courage didn't come from outside, though she was bolstered by family and a stellar grouping of colleagues. It came from a heart of a lion who needed to roar.
Whenever I get depressed about my own life's journeys, or the irony that I am a writer who has always written and always wanted to say what I see around me, though not always a writer with a stage or a printing press from which to launch those observations, I grasp the image of Virginia, literally, and just "write on". One can realize one's limitations, be they monetary or spiritual or even simply talent, but one doesn't always realize that the way to overcome those limits is simply TO WRITE. Virginia taught me this--speaking from the hallways of her diaries, when I was in High School. Later, with guides to show me different paths through the novels, I took to heart what she was illustrating. She not only thought about what it took for a woman to write the truth (or what that woman saw as the truth),but followed her own insights. She wrote what she was experiencing, no matter how out of step, or out of line, it was for its time. Gender bending, insanity, incest, independence, a room of one's own, WWII and the corruption of politics across the globe, the pure heartstrings of pets or the loss of one's soul-mate, these were subjects she investigated through the lens of her own experience. Her bravery astonishes me, still.
The issues have not greatly changed. The world remains at war with itself. Women are still not in power or wealthy in any great numbers. Slavery and prostitution and child abuse and poverty are the biggest employers on a planet that seems as mad as she worried she was becoming. And the human heart is as easily fractured as it ever was. Today, though, we don't have the beauty of the Muse of her mind--the elegant phrasings, the watercolor exteriors. Ours is a harsher time. A time which moves too hurriedly to appreciate novels of extraordinary construction or experimental boundaries of language. Today, instead of visiting each other for lengthy conversation and tea, we text. Or Skype. Or forego physical visits, altogether, and hope we will "meet up" at those events no one can escape: funerals, parent-teacher meetings, The Holidays...
Virginia understood the constant watering needed in the garden of the human heart. She attended to those around her, as best she could, even when she shouldn't have. In the end, not wanting to take advantage of the kindness of her clan, she put rocks in her pockets and walked into a fast river, knowing yet another bout of madness was sweeping her away. Unlike many who studied the Bloomsbury Group in college, in the 1970's , Virginia Woolf''s suicide was not the clarion call I heeded. No. It was Virginia Woolf's robust external and internal life--her blending of both into her art. She remains, for me, one of my own Muses.
Unlike the past, when I would have gathered my own Group up and spent the night in toasts to the writer (and to each other, as fledgling writers to be), I am long time clean and sober, so I will, instead, let Virginia's own words stand in as a toast, shared among friends across this planet, tonight. Happy Birthday, belatedly, Ms. Woolf, wherever you are!
"If a woman is to write,she has to have 500 a year and a room with a lock on the door, a sacred space where Shakespeare's sister, Judith, might have equaled his prodigious gift or not. She might have simply floated there, set loose in the privilege of privacy, her self unwritten, under no one else's eyes..."
Virginia Woolf, "A Room Of One's Own"
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