This is not a review but only a record of my personal feelings and thoughts jotted down right after having finished reading this heartwarming book.
I spent most of this year’s Christmas holiday immersed in these pages and in the world that Virginia Woolf lived in. This biography takes the reader to a time and social environment that doesn’t exist any longer allowing us to glimpse at it while reading also about the many people that surrounded Woolf during her lifetime, family, friends, acquaintaces, who had a role in her life. The atmosphere is superb, and despite the author’s apologies, in the foreword, for not being a writer or a literary critic, he does wonderfully in sketching the whole milieu.
Indeed his pages are enriched by a language that captures the reader and a narrating rythm that holds one’s attention steadfast. The words that flow easily on the pages seem to come natural to Bell, it’s very clear that he is used to writing as he too lived in a time when it was still the only way to communicate with others. This is an intriguing detail that has made me think whether in the future humans will still be able to convey their thoughts, their inner worlds through such lavish language using all the nuances, subtleties and refinements that we can enjoy in writings coming to us from the past. Considering the preminent use of instant messaging I wonder if we will still be able to appreciate all of this and use it appropriately.
That is why another merit of this book is that it relates, not only conversations, but also a great quantity of correspondeces linked to everyday life along with those that outline the quality of the literary debate that Woolf and her companions took part in, the artistic outlook in general of an entire generation; it’s not only Woolf’s literary development that we are informed of, but that of many inflential writers and other personalities of the time such as E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, John Maynar Keynes, of whom, we learn about some of their personal characteristics as well.
Although Virginia Woolf is obviously the central object of Bell’s story all those who gravitated around her come through as equally interesting. The whole of the Bloomsbury group was in fact involved in the birth and proceedings of Modernism, and in open contrast to the Victorian Age literary canon which was also the rebellion of a younger generation trying to making its way in life with a new mindset and in strong opposition to their elders and not not only from an artistic point of view.
It’s an entire world and specific time frame that comes forth portraying all the personal and professional vicissitudes they went through, their achievements along with their hardships. The struggles they faced without a trace of arrogance, they behave and relate to one another as if they were common people.
Virginia Woolf, as said, is in the centre stage and this book allows us to delve deeper in the making of her writings; what inspired her, what triggered her stories and made her thrive about them, how she went about their blossoming, why it was so important for her to break with traditional novel writing while experimenting all the literary possibilities of “stream of consciousness”. The biography also describes all her qualms regarding their linguistic and stylistic quality, the physical and mental undertaking it cost her especially to publish what she wrote. The overwhelming anxiety that took hold of her everytime one of her novels came out and the deep suffering she experienced while waiting frantically for the public’s response.
Her social background is analysed, in what type of family she grew up in, childhood traumas she was forced to experience because of a troubled, and what today would, rightly be considered preposterous abuse on the part of her much older step-brothers, yet, in her time something she had to hide and live with because, had she talked, it would have turned into a much more fearful outcome. Enstrangement from her family, at the least.
Item #2477 Photograph of Virginia Woolf with Her Father. VIRGINIA WOOLF, LESLIE STEPHEN, GEORGE CHARLES BERESFORD.
Her personal and family life, her relations in general are also illustrated, her strong and lasting attachment to her husband, despite her wavering sexual identity through all her life. Her interactions with other writers, especially women authors, are also of great interest to a dedicated reader. She comes off as a round person and not only as an artist, with her weaknesses and, at times, even with her grudges, resentements, no less than her occasional pettiness.
The reader is also witness to her streneous and painstaking efforts to avoid a breakdown, which, eventually, in the end, did have the best of her.
Like all books, this is a powerful time machine!
© L. R. Capuana
