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Entre actos
Última novela de Virginia Woolf, Entre actos es la obra que la autora escribió antes de suicidarse, en 1941. Fue publicada póstumamente y enseguida se consideró una obra maestra, la quintaesencia de su carrera novelística, una de las aportaciones más brillantes y decisivas a la literatura europea del siglo XX. La historia transcurre durante el verano de 1939 en Pointz Hall, la casa de campo de la familia Oliver desde hace más de un siglo. El principal evento de la novela es la representación de la obra teatral que todos los años se organiza en el pueblo, escrita y dirigida esta vez por la vehemente señorita La Trobe, que refleja la historia de Inglaterra desde la Edad Media hasta los días previos al estallido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Presente y pasado, la historia más lejana y la historia que está a punto de ocurrir, el mundo remoto y el mundo que ya empieza a desaparecer se entrelazan en esta prodigiosa novela, el último acto de una de las representaciones literarias más poderosas, valientes y perdurables de todos los tiempos.
208 pages
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,909 books28.1k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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May 27, 2024
Fragments of life’s rich pageant
Sharp, witty, vital, brilliant. With Between the acts, Woolf sings an eudaimonic valediction to her readers, and finally, to life, as Woolf was still working on the final revisions when she walked into the Ouse and the novel was published by Leonard Woolf four months after her death. Although sometimes perceived as unfinished and jokingly referred to as her ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman’, she gave birth to a full-term child. A full-blown, proficient novel, meant to pay homage to literature and to England’s charm. While writing the novel, she says in her diary on the 24th of December 1940 she feels in the Sussex countryside ‘how England consoles & warms one’.
At the core there is a dramatic piece, the annual pageant played by the villagers upon the grounds of a fictitious English country house, Pointz Hall, attended by the local villagers and the Oliver family members living in the house, representing scenes touching on the literature and history of England, set in the Interbellum period, ‘between the acts’.
Does this sound like tedious, obsolete bluestockingish stuff to you? Well, it isn’t. The deceptively idyllic, overly traditional setting and the play are a pretext to some exquisite, vivid and playful distillation and exploration of ambivalent human moods and experiences, bristling with Woolf’s sly, derisive and subtle humor and social criticism. The eye is barely directed to the spectacle as such, but focuses on what happens before, between and after the acts, on what commonly passes by unnoticed, the thoughts, observations and emotions that come to us when we are alone and where we do not speak about. The substance of the novel is not to be found on the pageant’s stage, satirizing England’s heroic past, but in the polyphony of the fragmented inner voices dispersed in the audience attending the play.
Juxtaposing and confronting apparently trivial, everyday concerns like talks about the weather and the food with most significant moments, present and past, rationality and spirituality, art and nature, author and audience, Woolf evokes life’s rich pageant through refined psychological and suggestive depictions of her characters, handling them with great empathy and care.
The musicality of her mercurial prose and the ingenious composition reminded me of Toccata, a choreography on the music of Bach danced by Rosas , the dance company of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, a Belgian choreographer which I admire: dancers moving like counterpoint melody lines, sometimes interfering, touching each other, then drifting apart, like the scraps of conversation between Woolfs’s characters and their transient trains of thought. I imagine Woolf as the omnipresent simultaneous resonating voices of Bach, the pianist and the choreographer, conducting and directing the ephemeral movements, minds and bodies of the dancing characters:
Evidently, academic research thoroughly scrutinized the abundant themes, motives and techniques Woolf packed in this concise novel, inviting to a second and third reading. Aware it is impossible to grasp it fully at this first reading, here is what stays with me now: the wonderful evocation of the archetypical rural English landscape; the people living on the brink of war again, metaphorized by the loveliness of birds, shifting into grim bombers; the people living on the verge of transition, their world crumbling and collapsing by modernity, a world that will wither like the profuse flowers adorning the park of Pointz Hall, recalling Vita’s dazzling Sissinghurst gardens. The magnificent, radiant language:
I was enthralled by the recurrent image of a thread connecting the characters, a masterful leitmotiv, visualizing the pas de deux between the characters that will take place in the greenhouse during the interludes to the play:
Was she referring to her pending death, when she entered the legend of the drowned lady into the book? Her untimely death could easily rouse the usual hineininterpretierung. However, the joyous and playful tone seems to gainsay that morbid interpretation. Adumbrating definitely the gloom of imminent war and suffering, the novel is a hymn of praise to life, being full of pleasure, passion and imagination.
Just read this, let her take you eight miles high with her in the flight to the higher realms of celestial beauty and imagination. Listen to her symphony. A swan song and farewell performance indicating that not only Bowie could leave the stage as a genius.
Warning: you might end up a Woolfie.
![]()
'It is about people talking and the gaps between words, about violent change and continuity', Olivia Laing writes in her thoughtful piece
on ‘Between the Acts’, connecting it to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Julia Blackburn’s Time Song. And 'Continuation is a comfort; life of some sort is surely assured' - which is perhaps true.
Sharp, witty, vital, brilliant. With Between the acts, Woolf sings an eudaimonic valediction to her readers, and finally, to life, as Woolf was still working on the final revisions when she walked into the Ouse and the novel was published by Leonard Woolf four months after her death. Although sometimes perceived as unfinished and jokingly referred to as her ‘Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman’, she gave birth to a full-term child. A full-blown, proficient novel, meant to pay homage to literature and to England’s charm. While writing the novel, she says in her diary on the 24th of December 1940 she feels in the Sussex countryside ‘how England consoles & warms one’.
At the core there is a dramatic piece, the annual pageant played by the villagers upon the grounds of a fictitious English country house, Pointz Hall, attended by the local villagers and the Oliver family members living in the house, representing scenes touching on the literature and history of England, set in the Interbellum period, ‘between the acts’.
Does this sound like tedious, obsolete bluestockingish stuff to you? Well, it isn’t. The deceptively idyllic, overly traditional setting and the play are a pretext to some exquisite, vivid and playful distillation and exploration of ambivalent human moods and experiences, bristling with Woolf’s sly, derisive and subtle humor and social criticism. The eye is barely directed to the spectacle as such, but focuses on what happens before, between and after the acts, on what commonly passes by unnoticed, the thoughts, observations and emotions that come to us when we are alone and where we do not speak about. The substance of the novel is not to be found on the pageant’s stage, satirizing England’s heroic past, but in the polyphony of the fragmented inner voices dispersed in the audience attending the play.
Juxtaposing and confronting apparently trivial, everyday concerns like talks about the weather and the food with most significant moments, present and past, rationality and spirituality, art and nature, author and audience, Woolf evokes life’s rich pageant through refined psychological and suggestive depictions of her characters, handling them with great empathy and care.
The musicality of her mercurial prose and the ingenious composition reminded me of Toccata, a choreography on the music of Bach danced by Rosas , the dance company of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, a Belgian choreographer which I admire: dancers moving like counterpoint melody lines, sometimes interfering, touching each other, then drifting apart, like the scraps of conversation between Woolfs’s characters and their transient trains of thought. I imagine Woolf as the omnipresent simultaneous resonating voices of Bach, the pianist and the choreographer, conducting and directing the ephemeral movements, minds and bodies of the dancing characters:
"For I hear music, they were saying. Music wakes us. Music makes us see the hidden, join the broken. Look and listen. See the flowers, how they ray their redness, whiteness, silverness and blue. And the trees with their many-tongued much syllabling, their green and yellow leaves hustle us and shuffle us, and bid us, like the starlings, and the rooks, come together, crowd together, to chatter and make merry while the red cow moves forward and the black cow stands still."
Evidently, academic research thoroughly scrutinized the abundant themes, motives and techniques Woolf packed in this concise novel, inviting to a second and third reading. Aware it is impossible to grasp it fully at this first reading, here is what stays with me now: the wonderful evocation of the archetypical rural English landscape; the people living on the brink of war again, metaphorized by the loveliness of birds, shifting into grim bombers; the people living on the verge of transition, their world crumbling and collapsing by modernity, a world that will wither like the profuse flowers adorning the park of Pointz Hall, recalling Vita’s dazzling Sissinghurst gardens. The magnificent, radiant language:
"Beyond the lily pool the ground sank again, and in that dip of the ground, bushes and brambles had mobbed themselves together. It was always shady; sun-flecked in the summer, dark and damp in winter. In the summer there were always butterflies; fritillaries darting through; Red Admirals feasting and floating; cabbage whites, unambitiously fluttering round a bush, like muslin milkmaids, content to spend a life there."And the characters of course, of which the women are the most appealing and intriguing, (according to a feminist study, the men in the novel belong to ‘exhausted patriarchy’) showing resembling traits to real women we ostensibly all know: the blatant, in-your-face voluptuousness of the buoyant Mrs. Manresa, turning on the old and the young men with her frivolous airs and graces; beautifully contrasted with the lyrical, melancholic sensuality of Isa Oliver, the daughter-in-law, jealous, “a captive balloon, pegged down on a chair arm by a myriad of hair-thin ties into domesticity”; Isa’s cynical, restless, frustrated, grumpy husband, Giles Oliver, the only person aware of the impending war; his rationalist father Bartholomew Oliver and his widowed sibling Lucy Swithin, a moving ageing woman, intensely spiritual, sensitive to natural mystic; William Dodge, the nervous companion of Mrs. Manresa, with “artistic leanings”; Miss la Trobe, the outcast artist and director of the play.
I was enthralled by the recurrent image of a thread connecting the characters, a masterful leitmotiv, visualizing the pas de deux between the characters that will take place in the greenhouse during the interludes to the play:
”The wild child, afloat once more on the tide of the old man's benignity, looked over her coffee cup at Giles, with whom she felt in conspiracy. A thread united them--visible, invisible, like those threads, now seen, now not, that unite trembling grass blades in autumn before the sun rises. She had met him once only, at a cricket match. And then had been spun between them an early morning thread before the twigs and leaves of real friendship emerge.”
Was she referring to her pending death, when she entered the legend of the drowned lady into the book? Her untimely death could easily rouse the usual hineininterpretierung. However, the joyous and playful tone seems to gainsay that morbid interpretation. Adumbrating definitely the gloom of imminent war and suffering, the novel is a hymn of praise to life, being full of pleasure, passion and imagination.
Just read this, let her take you eight miles high with her in the flight to the higher realms of celestial beauty and imagination. Listen to her symphony. A swan song and farewell performance indicating that not only Bowie could leave the stage as a genius.
Warning: you might end up a Woolfie.
'It is about people talking and the gaps between words, about violent change and continuity', Olivia Laing writes in her thoughtful piece
on ‘Between the Acts’, connecting it to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Julia Blackburn’s Time Song. And 'Continuation is a comfort; life of some sort is surely assured' - which is perhaps true.
Read
December 6, 2015The last act.
This is the tenth and last of Virginia Woolf’s novels. Of the other nine, I read the two most famous ones some years ago; the rest I’ve read in the last three months, which makes eight in a row, non-stop.
I feel as if I’ve attended a series of plays, each with a differently decorated set and its own cast of characters but each sharing themes, locations and character types with the others. There are even characters who appear in more than one of the works: Clarissa Dalloway and her husband Richard have roles in the very first book, The Voyage Out, as well as being central to Mrs. Dalloway. I mention them because there is a character in Between the Acts called Giles who resembles Richard Dalloway and who highlights a theme that occurs in the first book, the middle book, Orlando, and the last book. It is a theme that is more or less absent from all of the other books, but in this final book, written just before Woolf gave in to the powerful death drive she'd struggled against all her life, she makes the most direct references to the theme that is death’s shadow partner: the sex drive. Sex pervades all the crucial scenes in Between the Acts.
Between the Acts is an enormous pageant: the reader watches a play in which the characters watch a pageant in which the players watch a play about the death of the bawdy Restoration Period.
But the characters watching the pageant are themselves engaged in a titillating drama behind the scenes, and are themselves facing the death of an age: the summer day on which the pageant takes place is in 1939 not long before the outbreak of the war.
On that day, an uninvited guest arrives at Pointz Hall where the pageant is about to take place, a guest who might well be Lady Wishfort from William Congreve’s Restoration comedy, The Way of the World vulgar as she was, in her gestures, in her whole person, over-sexed, over-dressed for a pageant.
And so Mrs Manresa ogles her way though the household at Pointz Hall, from Candish, the butler, to Giles, the man of the house, to his elderly father, Bartholomew. And the reader is not passive either in the face of her pageantry:
She took the little silver cream jug and let the smooth fluid curl luxuriously into her coffee, to which she added a shovelful of brown sugar candy. Sensuously, rhythmically, she stirred the mixture round and round….she looked over her coffee cup at Giles. She looked before she drank. Looking was part of drinking. Why waste sensation, she seemed to ask, why waste a single drop that can be pressed out of this ripe, this melting adorable world? Then she drank. And the air around her became threaded with sensation. Bartholomew felt it; Giles felt it. Had he been a horse, the thin brown skin would have twitched, as if a fly had settled. Isabella twitched too. Jealousy, anger, pierced her skin.
“And now”, said Mrs Manresa, putting down her cup, “about this entertainment—this pageant, into which we’ve gone and butted”—she made it, too, seem ripe like the apricot into which the wasps were burrowing—“Tell me, what’s it to be?”
Later, Giles tries to reconnect with his wife Isabel over the dinner table: With its sheaf sliced in four, exposing a white cone, Giles offered his wife a banana. She refused it. He stubbed his match on the plate. Out it went with a little fizz in the raspberry juice.
However Isabel is far more than a temporarily jealous wife who wonders what went on in the greenhouse between the acts. She herself is a very sexual being and carries all the oppositions of this contradictory work within her. She hears her father-in-law talk constantly of the weather, will it rain on the day of the pageant or will it not, the refrain she’s heard now for years, and she thinks about man and nature, about sex and death, about the cycle of the seasons, the trees and fields, the things of the earth that will endure long after she and her kind are gone. The mainspring of the entire work is buried inside Isabel; she, not Giles, not Bartholomew, not Mrs Manresa, is at the centre of this very clever book.
..........................................................................
In June 1940 when she was half way through writing this book, Woolf wondered if Europe would ever see June '41. She sent the book to the publisher in March 1941. A few days later, she requested they send it back again as she felt it needed more changes. But she couldn't stay around long enough to make those changes; she was not to see June '41.
The fire greyed, then glowed, and the tortoiseshell butterfly beat on the lower pane of the window; beat, beat, beat; repeating that if no human being ever came, never, never, never, the books would be mouldy, the fire out and the tortoiseshell butterfly dead on the pane.
This is the tenth and last of Virginia Woolf’s novels. Of the other nine, I read the two most famous ones some years ago; the rest I’ve read in the last three months, which makes eight in a row, non-stop.
I feel as if I’ve attended a series of plays, each with a differently decorated set and its own cast of characters but each sharing themes, locations and character types with the others. There are even characters who appear in more than one of the works: Clarissa Dalloway and her husband Richard have roles in the very first book, The Voyage Out, as well as being central to Mrs. Dalloway. I mention them because there is a character in Between the Acts called Giles who resembles Richard Dalloway and who highlights a theme that occurs in the first book, the middle book, Orlando, and the last book. It is a theme that is more or less absent from all of the other books, but in this final book, written just before Woolf gave in to the powerful death drive she'd struggled against all her life, she makes the most direct references to the theme that is death’s shadow partner: the sex drive. Sex pervades all the crucial scenes in Between the Acts.
Between the Acts is an enormous pageant: the reader watches a play in which the characters watch a pageant in which the players watch a play about the death of the bawdy Restoration Period.
But the characters watching the pageant are themselves engaged in a titillating drama behind the scenes, and are themselves facing the death of an age: the summer day on which the pageant takes place is in 1939 not long before the outbreak of the war.
On that day, an uninvited guest arrives at Pointz Hall where the pageant is about to take place, a guest who might well be Lady Wishfort from William Congreve’s Restoration comedy, The Way of the World vulgar as she was, in her gestures, in her whole person, over-sexed, over-dressed for a pageant.
And so Mrs Manresa ogles her way though the household at Pointz Hall, from Candish, the butler, to Giles, the man of the house, to his elderly father, Bartholomew. And the reader is not passive either in the face of her pageantry:
She took the little silver cream jug and let the smooth fluid curl luxuriously into her coffee, to which she added a shovelful of brown sugar candy. Sensuously, rhythmically, she stirred the mixture round and round….she looked over her coffee cup at Giles. She looked before she drank. Looking was part of drinking. Why waste sensation, she seemed to ask, why waste a single drop that can be pressed out of this ripe, this melting adorable world? Then she drank. And the air around her became threaded with sensation. Bartholomew felt it; Giles felt it. Had he been a horse, the thin brown skin would have twitched, as if a fly had settled. Isabella twitched too. Jealousy, anger, pierced her skin.
“And now”, said Mrs Manresa, putting down her cup, “about this entertainment—this pageant, into which we’ve gone and butted”—she made it, too, seem ripe like the apricot into which the wasps were burrowing—“Tell me, what’s it to be?”
Later, Giles tries to reconnect with his wife Isabel over the dinner table: With its sheaf sliced in four, exposing a white cone, Giles offered his wife a banana. She refused it. He stubbed his match on the plate. Out it went with a little fizz in the raspberry juice.
However Isabel is far more than a temporarily jealous wife who wonders what went on in the greenhouse between the acts. She herself is a very sexual being and carries all the oppositions of this contradictory work within her. She hears her father-in-law talk constantly of the weather, will it rain on the day of the pageant or will it not, the refrain she’s heard now for years, and she thinks about man and nature, about sex and death, about the cycle of the seasons, the trees and fields, the things of the earth that will endure long after she and her kind are gone. The mainspring of the entire work is buried inside Isabel; she, not Giles, not Bartholomew, not Mrs Manresa, is at the centre of this very clever book.
..........................................................................
In June 1940 when she was half way through writing this book, Woolf wondered if Europe would ever see June '41. She sent the book to the publisher in March 1941. A few days later, she requested they send it back again as she felt it needed more changes. But she couldn't stay around long enough to make those changes; she was not to see June '41.
The fire greyed, then glowed, and the tortoiseshell butterfly beat on the lower pane of the window; beat, beat, beat; repeating that if no human being ever came, never, never, never, the books would be mouldy, the fire out and the tortoiseshell butterfly dead on the pane.
December 18, 2017
The last book that Woolf wrote before she entered the Ouse, never to return. There is a sense of premonition in this hybrid work; a play within a play like in “The Tempest” and a novel of manners with the most British of pedigrees; a presage that the world is never going to be the same, even if people keep acting as if nothing were the matter. The feeling is mostly portrayed in a global scale because the characters are not ready to acknowledge it and make it personal, but it can be perceived in the changing dynamics between members of the same family, neighbors and acquaintances.
The year is 1939, and the setting is rural Southern-England on a summer day when the Olivers organize the yearly pageant in their cottage, where all the villagers are invited to attend or to participate. The performance this year takes the form of a journey through the history of England by means of fragmented scenes with symbolical meaning, not short of sharp-tongued satire, which transport the audience back to the time of kings and knights, to Chaucer, the Elizabethan era, the Restoration period, the age of reason, the decorum of the Victorian time, and finally, to the present time.
An act between two momentous historical events, WWI and WWII, that symbolizes the continuous farce, the imposed roles that we perform daily for the sake of others. But what is it that really moves and motivates us?
Similarly, it is during the intermissions of the play, that we get access into the inner worlds of the Olivers, where they survive in constant contradiction, while they pretend that everything is as pleasant as it should be.
Isa and Giles Oliver’s marital struggles, the old Mr. Oliver’s rational understanding of the escalating tension that unfolds in front of his alert eyes, his sister’s romantic soul that responds to music and poetry, the unbridgeable gap between the safety of individual consciousness and the tortuous paths of love, desire, temptation and jealousy. The complexities of human beings, with their insecurities and weaknesses, and their inability to communicate with each other, fluctuate in still movements towards a flowing stream of scenes that compose the physical and psychical landscape the characters inhabit.
By defining the familiar movements of the Olivers, blended with their sensations and expectations and their brief snapshots of life and voices barely delineated, while the fertility of the natural world at the backstage stares impassibly, facts are brought about without continuity, shaping a vibrant tableau vivant that is painted with the impressionistic strokes of a language that pulsates with the color of emotions present and past.
Woolf exposes her characters to their naked reflections, bared of pretense, and by doing so, she forces the reader to participate actively in their struggles, to feel the pull of desire against their moral standards, to acknowledge a broken reality that is sterile and shattered, whose pieces sparkle under the sunbeams of an indifferent sun, which continues to rise regardless of the countless trauma that the human soul deals with every new day. But still, they keep looking up, hoping to find their lonesome star, which might shine down upon them.
Let’s keep looking up, then.
The year is 1939, and the setting is rural Southern-England on a summer day when the Olivers organize the yearly pageant in their cottage, where all the villagers are invited to attend or to participate. The performance this year takes the form of a journey through the history of England by means of fragmented scenes with symbolical meaning, not short of sharp-tongued satire, which transport the audience back to the time of kings and knights, to Chaucer, the Elizabethan era, the Restoration period, the age of reason, the decorum of the Victorian time, and finally, to the present time.
An act between two momentous historical events, WWI and WWII, that symbolizes the continuous farce, the imposed roles that we perform daily for the sake of others. But what is it that really moves and motivates us?
Similarly, it is during the intermissions of the play, that we get access into the inner worlds of the Olivers, where they survive in constant contradiction, while they pretend that everything is as pleasant as it should be.
Isa and Giles Oliver’s marital struggles, the old Mr. Oliver’s rational understanding of the escalating tension that unfolds in front of his alert eyes, his sister’s romantic soul that responds to music and poetry, the unbridgeable gap between the safety of individual consciousness and the tortuous paths of love, desire, temptation and jealousy. The complexities of human beings, with their insecurities and weaknesses, and their inability to communicate with each other, fluctuate in still movements towards a flowing stream of scenes that compose the physical and psychical landscape the characters inhabit.
By defining the familiar movements of the Olivers, blended with their sensations and expectations and their brief snapshots of life and voices barely delineated, while the fertility of the natural world at the backstage stares impassibly, facts are brought about without continuity, shaping a vibrant tableau vivant that is painted with the impressionistic strokes of a language that pulsates with the color of emotions present and past.
Woolf exposes her characters to their naked reflections, bared of pretense, and by doing so, she forces the reader to participate actively in their struggles, to feel the pull of desire against their moral standards, to acknowledge a broken reality that is sterile and shattered, whose pieces sparkle under the sunbeams of an indifferent sun, which continues to rise regardless of the countless trauma that the human soul deals with every new day. But still, they keep looking up, hoping to find their lonesome star, which might shine down upon them.
Let’s keep looking up, then.
January 2, 2018
Virginia Woolf inserts her gaze into the lives of her characters; there are no introductions, no preambles: we are simply there.
And her gaze is microscopic. She narrates every last detail about her characters; everything is brought to life in all its shades of grey and ordinariness. She does not comment on her descriptions, but simply provides thorough detail. As such, Between the Acts does not have a beginning per say or any usual sense of narrative progression. The novel feels more like an interlude, an interruption into the lives of her characters and their preparation for a pageant that would be happening irrespective of the reader’s obtrusive presence.
In this sense her fiction feels very real. It feels like it is actually happening. Outside the realms of fiction (hard to believe such a place actually exists I know) we don’t have introductions or kindly narrators to give us information. Things simply happen. We are not pre-programmed with a device that allows us to understand this information in its most desirable form. We don’t know who everybody we meet is or what they are doing. We are bombarded with information every second. And here, at least in part, the novel captured this feeling of reality.
There are many, many, characters involved in the scenes. For such a short piece of writing, it boasts a large cast. But is that a good thing? I found it extremely difficult to remember who was who. Again, none of them are introduced so none of them have any real substance. This is part of Woolf’s aim here, and I do appreciate what she was trying to do, though it meant that the novel was rather hard to read and even harder to actually enjoy with its emphasis on descriptive information dumps.
It’s experimental writing, and the experiment is just not to my taste. On the surface, Woolf’s prose is artistic, eloquent and perhaps even beautiful. Here though, it is mere description (although wonderfully written) with little to no substance. I will keep reading Woolf’s novels because I know there will be one I adore. I just need to find it.
And her gaze is microscopic. She narrates every last detail about her characters; everything is brought to life in all its shades of grey and ordinariness. She does not comment on her descriptions, but simply provides thorough detail. As such, Between the Acts does not have a beginning per say or any usual sense of narrative progression. The novel feels more like an interlude, an interruption into the lives of her characters and their preparation for a pageant that would be happening irrespective of the reader’s obtrusive presence.
In this sense her fiction feels very real. It feels like it is actually happening. Outside the realms of fiction (hard to believe such a place actually exists I know) we don’t have introductions or kindly narrators to give us information. Things simply happen. We are not pre-programmed with a device that allows us to understand this information in its most desirable form. We don’t know who everybody we meet is or what they are doing. We are bombarded with information every second. And here, at least in part, the novel captured this feeling of reality.
There are many, many, characters involved in the scenes. For such a short piece of writing, it boasts a large cast. But is that a good thing? I found it extremely difficult to remember who was who. Again, none of them are introduced so none of them have any real substance. This is part of Woolf’s aim here, and I do appreciate what she was trying to do, though it meant that the novel was rather hard to read and even harder to actually enjoy with its emphasis on descriptive information dumps.
It’s experimental writing, and the experiment is just not to my taste. On the surface, Woolf’s prose is artistic, eloquent and perhaps even beautiful. Here though, it is mere description (although wonderfully written) with little to no substance. I will keep reading Woolf’s novels because I know there will be one I adore. I just need to find it.
May 21, 2025
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
-Mary Oliver
Lyrical, poetic and introspective, the story of Woolf’s final novel takes place over the course of one summer day and explores the themes of family, identity, life, history and art.
The story revolves around the Oliver family and their annual pageant performed by the villagers.
The pageant itself is of historical nature, but between the acts we get to know each character intimately; how they feel and what they think.
Where we know not, where we go not, neither know nor care… Flying, rushing through the ambient, incandescent, summer silent …
Woolf’s prose is a mixture of poems, dramatic dialogues and internal soliloquies; an assortment of reminiscences about the past and resolutions for the future.
Written in the final years of her life, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style in this story is at the highest level, while her tone is nostalgic and often bleak and desolate.
Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence.
-Mary Oliver
Lyrical, poetic and introspective, the story of Woolf’s final novel takes place over the course of one summer day and explores the themes of family, identity, life, history and art.
The story revolves around the Oliver family and their annual pageant performed by the villagers.
The pageant itself is of historical nature, but between the acts we get to know each character intimately; how they feel and what they think.
Where we know not, where we go not, neither know nor care… Flying, rushing through the ambient, incandescent, summer silent …
Woolf’s prose is a mixture of poems, dramatic dialogues and internal soliloquies; an assortment of reminiscences about the past and resolutions for the future.
Written in the final years of her life, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness style in this story is at the highest level, while her tone is nostalgic and often bleak and desolate.
Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence.
January 28, 2021
Honestly more of a 1.5 star, but I rounded up out of respect for the great Virginia Woolf. This novel was simply BORING. Sadly and unbearably boring. It takes place during a luncheon held at an estate, most of the book being a play that was put on, but I couldn't force any interest for what was going on, neither in the actual book or the play. I will still read more by her and hope that this was just a one-off.
April 21, 2018
il romanzo che virginia woolf lasciò sulla sua scrivania insieme alle lettere per il marito leonard e la sorella nessa, quando uscì di casa per entrare in un fiume, quello di cui disse che era troppo sciocco e frivolo per essere pubblicato, è in realtà la cosa più struggente che io abbia letto di suo finora.
l’impalpabilità della trama, l’esperimento con una scrittura centripeta che cambia continuamente asse e lo spunto lieve - una compagnia di attori dilettanti che imbastisce uno spettacolino teatrale in una casa di campagna - sembrarono a woolf inadatti al momento storico drammatico. e al suo drammatico momento interiore, poi. ma è una frivolezza che increspa solo la superficie, e quello scollamento finale tra l’autrice e l’opera arriva per cause altre, e dopo più di due anni di lavoro entusiasta testimoniato da lettere e diari. tanto che, credo, a fargli da contraltare basta la frase pronunciata da uno dei personaggi a proposito della recita che stanno tirando su, e applicabile pari pari al romanzo e alla sua mise en abîme (o abyme che dir si voglia): «la trama c’era solo per suscitare emozioni».
così è qui, in un’opera colta e fitta di ambivalenze e simbolismi. oltre che di riferimenti nei quali, alla luce di quel che sarebbe successo di lì a poco, è difficile non cogliere cupezza di presagio. un’opera in cui, come dice il titolo, la materia da indagare va cercata tra un atto e l’altro, negli interstizi in cui si infila la vita vera. come la luce nella crepa in quella famosa frase di leonard cohen.
l’impalpabilità della trama, l’esperimento con una scrittura centripeta che cambia continuamente asse e lo spunto lieve - una compagnia di attori dilettanti che imbastisce uno spettacolino teatrale in una casa di campagna - sembrarono a woolf inadatti al momento storico drammatico. e al suo drammatico momento interiore, poi. ma è una frivolezza che increspa solo la superficie, e quello scollamento finale tra l’autrice e l’opera arriva per cause altre, e dopo più di due anni di lavoro entusiasta testimoniato da lettere e diari. tanto che, credo, a fargli da contraltare basta la frase pronunciata da uno dei personaggi a proposito della recita che stanno tirando su, e applicabile pari pari al romanzo e alla sua mise en abîme (o abyme che dir si voglia): «la trama c’era solo per suscitare emozioni».
così è qui, in un’opera colta e fitta di ambivalenze e simbolismi. oltre che di riferimenti nei quali, alla luce di quel che sarebbe successo di lì a poco, è difficile non cogliere cupezza di presagio. un’opera in cui, come dice il titolo, la materia da indagare va cercata tra un atto e l’altro, negli interstizi in cui si infila la vita vera. come la luce nella crepa in quella famosa frase di leonard cohen.
February 22, 2022
[V. W.'s diary, Saturday 23 November] "I am a little triumphant about the book. I think its an interesting attempt in a new method. I think it's more quintessential than the others. More milk skimmed off. A richer pat, certainly fresher than that misery The Years. I've enjoyed writing almost every page."
I don't think I've ever described a book as fluttering, but this one absolutely does. Like a gorgeous goddamn butterfly. It's effervescent. Effortlessly bobbing from one scene to the next without ever quite settling, like the starlings in the tree behind which Miss La Trobe spends most of the novel. Plight of the artist, or portrait of a marriage, it was an absolute joy to read. And to write, apparently--as in Henry Green's Loving WWII stalks only the periphery--even if Virginia Woolf ultimately found it too "silly and trivial," committing suicide the following day before this letter (to John Lehmann, managing editor of the Hogarth Press) was even delivered. Sigh. Rest assured it is neither silly nor trivial, and as a swan song it is nothing short of magnificent. The 'lesser' Woolf novels seems to be my favorites. Now on to the ethics of publishing a writer's work posthumously...
Read
December 3, 2016I have a real sense of regret here with this final book of Virginia Woolf. I personally feel that it should not have been published. The poor woman was mentally unwell, perhaps due to the strain of writing this final work? Who knows. Her permisson had not been given to publish it either. Still many other people love this book and that's the main thing.
This is a fascinating individual who wrote the most superb Diaries and Letters. I love them and they are a great source of joy to me.
In conclusion I would add that I'm surprised that a film has not been made (perhaps it has and I am unaware of it) of the final years of Woolf's life. It would be fascinating. Such remarkable characters as her sister Vanessa, other members of the Bloomsbury Group...
This is a fascinating individual who wrote the most superb Diaries and Letters. I love them and they are a great source of joy to me.
In conclusion I would add that I'm surprised that a film has not been made (perhaps it has and I am unaware of it) of the final years of Woolf's life. It would be fascinating. Such remarkable characters as her sister Vanessa, other members of the Bloomsbury Group...
March 8, 2024
The hardest thing about Virginia Woolf is getting into her text. After this initial ordeal, we let ourselves be carried away by his style – particular and very personal, it is true – made of a particularly addictive melancholic charm. When you love beautiful writing, you can't help but seduced.
The novel is in two mixed parts: the play and the text said by the actors, and the words exchanged by the inhabitants of the manor, snatches of conversations, words caught in the air, fleeting thoughts; the reader is like a guest at a reception where he knows no one, moving from group to group, picking up bits of conversation here and there. It scares you like that, and that's quite normal, but it's intriguing when you accept the situation. I use this term in each of my posts concerning Virginia Woolf because it is the one that seems most appropriate to me, corresponding to the effect that I feel is an irresistible attraction.
It's hard to read between the lines, but I try it. It is a question of England, that of a bygone era in opposition to the one which is opening and of a world between two wars, but for a short time yet, "Europe clad in cannons, flown over by planes"; duality has found in the characters, their characters are opposites (Bart Oliver and his sister), their desires diverge (Giles finds Mrs. Manresa attractive, Isa has a crush on a "man in gray" seen in the crowd), Mrs. Manresa decides by his character and his manners very accessible with the uptight British type of the local nobility. Between these situations or these acts, Virginia Woolf traces her furrow.
The day ends, and the novel continues, with a promise of a shouting match between Giles and Isa before a planned reconciliation on the pillow, perhaps a source of an additional offspring for a future England.
It's stunning; it's Virginia Woolf. But it's also a well-deserved read.
The novel is in two mixed parts: the play and the text said by the actors, and the words exchanged by the inhabitants of the manor, snatches of conversations, words caught in the air, fleeting thoughts; the reader is like a guest at a reception where he knows no one, moving from group to group, picking up bits of conversation here and there. It scares you like that, and that's quite normal, but it's intriguing when you accept the situation. I use this term in each of my posts concerning Virginia Woolf because it is the one that seems most appropriate to me, corresponding to the effect that I feel is an irresistible attraction.
It's hard to read between the lines, but I try it. It is a question of England, that of a bygone era in opposition to the one which is opening and of a world between two wars, but for a short time yet, "Europe clad in cannons, flown over by planes"; duality has found in the characters, their characters are opposites (Bart Oliver and his sister), their desires diverge (Giles finds Mrs. Manresa attractive, Isa has a crush on a "man in gray" seen in the crowd), Mrs. Manresa decides by his character and his manners very accessible with the uptight British type of the local nobility. Between these situations or these acts, Virginia Woolf traces her furrow.
The day ends, and the novel continues, with a promise of a shouting match between Giles and Isa before a planned reconciliation on the pillow, perhaps a source of an additional offspring for a future England.
It's stunning; it's Virginia Woolf. But it's also a well-deserved read.
January 15, 2024
Jan Struthers’s Mrs Miniver was a bestseller just before, and during, WW2 both in England and America. Set in the period leading up to WW2, its portrait of a middle-class woman, her family, and their village community presented an idyllic, ordered society about to be shattered by war. An England in which everyone knows their place, happy to play their part from vicar to lady of the manor to gardener. Tensions are high but the prospect of disaster serves to bring people together reinforcing their identities, tight-knit, stoical and mutually supportive. Churchill apparently regarded it as a perfect, propaganda tool. Virginia Woolf’s final novel also represents rural England, here war is mere months away. As with Struthers, a family and a local village are at the heart of the narrative, but these are neither content nor unified, and Woolf’s vision of England seems set to shatter any sense of the idyllic.
Woolf focuses on the Olivers, at their centre a typical, nuclear family, Giles Oliver who works in the city, his wife Isa, and their two children George and baby Charlotte. They live at Pointz Hall, a large country house owned by Giles’s father Bart who’s retired from serving with the army in India, his widowed sister Lucy Swithin also spends much of her time there. It’s summer and they’re about to host the annual village fete and pageant in the house’s grounds, as they have for many years. They also entertain a succession of family guests, chiefly Mrs Manresa a wealthy, flirtatious neighbour and her friend William Dodge. It’s quickly obvious the overwhelming majority of Woolf’s main characters are chafing against the roles they’ve been assigned, Isa feels trapped by her marriage to restless Giles, who in turn hates his responsibility as head of their family. Bart longs for the world he grew up in, and his position of authority in colonial India while the tentative, daydreaming Lucy is more invested in bonds of nature and history than her relatives.
Woolf’s story is overshadowed by a sense of impending chaos, and riddled with conflict internal and external. Something that’s underlined by a newspaper article that haunts Isa’s thoughts throughout, an account of a young woman lured to a barrack room and gang-raped by Whitehall guardsmen - the guardsmen so often used to symbolise British tradition, and whose ceremonies attract flocks of tourists. Violent masculinity and suffocating gender roles are key themes here, highlighted by two explicitly queer characters, Dodge who is gay but forces himself to act out the part of heterosexual, and the organiser of the pageant Miss La Trobe who refuses to conceal her identity as a lesbian. The pageant itself which is meant to reinforce pride in English history - progression, achievement and unity - instead highlights generational strife and fractures notions of linearity. It’s frenetic and cacophonous, its intentions obscure to the majority of La Trobe’s audience. Although La Trobe the writer refuses to relinquish her faith in her art.
Between the Acts was a fascinating, unsettling read but not always a satisfying one, the intricate, fragmented text is broken up by episodes taken directly from the pageant which could be heavy-going at times – Woolf is deliberately reproducing the kind of historical pastiche these events often featured. It’s also hard not to superimpose facts from Woolf’s own life onto its events and preoccupations, mainly because she died so soon after finishing it. But it’s also an impressive riposte to the many stories like Mrs Miniver which even now perpetuate a false vision of England preparing for wartime.
Woolf focuses on the Olivers, at their centre a typical, nuclear family, Giles Oliver who works in the city, his wife Isa, and their two children George and baby Charlotte. They live at Pointz Hall, a large country house owned by Giles’s father Bart who’s retired from serving with the army in India, his widowed sister Lucy Swithin also spends much of her time there. It’s summer and they’re about to host the annual village fete and pageant in the house’s grounds, as they have for many years. They also entertain a succession of family guests, chiefly Mrs Manresa a wealthy, flirtatious neighbour and her friend William Dodge. It’s quickly obvious the overwhelming majority of Woolf’s main characters are chafing against the roles they’ve been assigned, Isa feels trapped by her marriage to restless Giles, who in turn hates his responsibility as head of their family. Bart longs for the world he grew up in, and his position of authority in colonial India while the tentative, daydreaming Lucy is more invested in bonds of nature and history than her relatives.
Woolf’s story is overshadowed by a sense of impending chaos, and riddled with conflict internal and external. Something that’s underlined by a newspaper article that haunts Isa’s thoughts throughout, an account of a young woman lured to a barrack room and gang-raped by Whitehall guardsmen - the guardsmen so often used to symbolise British tradition, and whose ceremonies attract flocks of tourists. Violent masculinity and suffocating gender roles are key themes here, highlighted by two explicitly queer characters, Dodge who is gay but forces himself to act out the part of heterosexual, and the organiser of the pageant Miss La Trobe who refuses to conceal her identity as a lesbian. The pageant itself which is meant to reinforce pride in English history - progression, achievement and unity - instead highlights generational strife and fractures notions of linearity. It’s frenetic and cacophonous, its intentions obscure to the majority of La Trobe’s audience. Although La Trobe the writer refuses to relinquish her faith in her art.
Between the Acts was a fascinating, unsettling read but not always a satisfying one, the intricate, fragmented text is broken up by episodes taken directly from the pageant which could be heavy-going at times – Woolf is deliberately reproducing the kind of historical pastiche these events often featured. It’s also hard not to superimpose facts from Woolf’s own life onto its events and preoccupations, mainly because she died so soon after finishing it. But it’s also an impressive riposte to the many stories like Mrs Miniver which even now perpetuate a false vision of England preparing for wartime.
June 28, 2022
The day before she took her life, Virginia Woolf wrote to her publisher that this book, which would end up being her last, needed a major revision because it was too silly and trivial.
What a liar depression is.
Between the Acts is set in June, 1939, just before World War II. An English village is having their annual pageant on the grounds of Pointz Hall, a sort of mid-level country estate. We are dropped in with the Oliver family as they prepare to host the pageant. The villagers arrive and, between the acts of the pageant play, we observe through the eyes of everyone: “gentles and simples,” the old and the young, and nature itself, as animals have their say too, including a cow and bird that begin the story by appearing to laugh at the goings on.
We slip in and out of different points of view, and as you might expect, Woolf takes us deep into their varying psyches. Old age, marital disappointment, and outsider status are explored. Through the writer and director of the play, Miss La Trobe (also known as “Bossy”), Virginia vents possibly her own frustrations around creative responsibility.
The play chronicles the history of England, and while the meaning remains obscure--to the audience and the reader--we do get the impression that it focuses on our relationship to history.
"'The Victorians,’ Mrs. Swithin mused. 'I don’t believe,’ she said with her odd little smile, ‘that there ever were such people. Only you and me and William dressed differently.’”
As Virginia wrote this, between 1938 and 1941, danger was brewing in England. In her beautiful prose, she seemed to be reflecting on her country and on community, and noting the way things both change and stay the same. Reading it now, during this present time of tyranny and violence and hate, I found it, though melancholy, ultimately uplifting and consoling.
“'That’s what makes a view so sad,’ said Mrs. Swithin, lowering herself into the deck chair which Giles had brought her. ‘And so beautiful. It’ll be there,’ she nodded at the strip of gauze laid upon the distant fields, ‘when we’re not.’”
What a liar depression is.
Between the Acts is set in June, 1939, just before World War II. An English village is having their annual pageant on the grounds of Pointz Hall, a sort of mid-level country estate. We are dropped in with the Oliver family as they prepare to host the pageant. The villagers arrive and, between the acts of the pageant play, we observe through the eyes of everyone: “gentles and simples,” the old and the young, and nature itself, as animals have their say too, including a cow and bird that begin the story by appearing to laugh at the goings on.
We slip in and out of different points of view, and as you might expect, Woolf takes us deep into their varying psyches. Old age, marital disappointment, and outsider status are explored. Through the writer and director of the play, Miss La Trobe (also known as “Bossy”), Virginia vents possibly her own frustrations around creative responsibility.
The play chronicles the history of England, and while the meaning remains obscure--to the audience and the reader--we do get the impression that it focuses on our relationship to history.
"'The Victorians,’ Mrs. Swithin mused. 'I don’t believe,’ she said with her odd little smile, ‘that there ever were such people. Only you and me and William dressed differently.’”
As Virginia wrote this, between 1938 and 1941, danger was brewing in England. In her beautiful prose, she seemed to be reflecting on her country and on community, and noting the way things both change and stay the same. Reading it now, during this present time of tyranny and violence and hate, I found it, though melancholy, ultimately uplifting and consoling.
“'That’s what makes a view so sad,’ said Mrs. Swithin, lowering herself into the deck chair which Giles had brought her. ‘And so beautiful. It’ll be there,’ she nodded at the strip of gauze laid upon the distant fields, ‘when we’re not.’”
January 20, 2014
Maybe it's because this is technically unfinished (a forward from Leonard Woolf states that although the draft was completed, Virginia Woolf died before she was able to make final corrections and revisions, so it was sent to the printers as is), but this one didn't strike me quite in the way Woolf's other books have. But that's not to suggest that it isn't good - remember, this is Virginia Woolf, so when I say that it didn't strike me as much as her other ones, I only mean that this book felt like a minor blow to the head, rather than feeling like I was being remade from the inside out.
That being said, this book is an almost perfect example of what makes Virginia Woolf such a unique writer. Like her more famous Mrs. Dalloway, the action takes place over a short span of time (two days) and is concerned primarily with the actions of one small family, although the narration takes us into other characters' heads occasionally. The main action of the story takes place during the annual village pageant, a history of England. We see the pageant in detail (Woolf even includes stage directions) and, as the title suggests, get to also witness the spectators during the act breaks.
Reading this, I felt like there was something else hiding under the surface of the text - something I wasn't fully able to grasp or understand. There's an undercurrent of longing and sadness and frustration running through all the characters, and I felt like there was a whole other story happening just in the margins and the line breaks. I think I could read this book ten times and still not find everything Woolf wants me to find.
Halfway through writing this review I decided to change my rating from three to four stars, because I started flipping through the book to find passages to quote and kept remembering what is so extraordinary about Virginia Woolf's writing: she had, I believe, an incredible capacity for empathy. Everyone in her stories gets treated, however briefly, like they're the most important character in the story. Every single character in her books, from the educated landowner to the flighty kitchen maid, has a deep inner life and complex thoughts and emotions, and she makes us see this complexity. No one is ordinary in Virginia Woolf's books.
Plus, the writing is, as always, killer. It's not just the people - something as simple as a lily pond suddenly becomes full of deeper meaning and significance when Woolf is describing it:
"There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centered world, fish swam - gold, splashed with white, streaked with black or silver. Silently they manoeuvred in their water world, poised in the blue patch made by the sky, or shot silently to the edge where the grass, trembling, made a fringe of nodding shadow. On the water-pavement spiders printed their delicate feet. A grain fell and spiralled down; a petal fell, filled and sank. At that the fleet of boat-shaped bodies paused; poised; equipped; mailed; then with a waver of undulation off they flashed.
It was in that deep centre, in that black heart, that the lady had drowned herself. Ten years since the pool had been dredged and a thigh bone recovered. Alas, it was a sheep’s, not a lady’s. And sheep have no ghosts, for sheep have no souls. But the servants insisted, they must have a ghost; the ghost must be a lady’s; who had drowned herself for love. So none of them would walk by the lily pool at night, only now when the sun shone and the gentry still sat at table."
That being said, this book is an almost perfect example of what makes Virginia Woolf such a unique writer. Like her more famous Mrs. Dalloway, the action takes place over a short span of time (two days) and is concerned primarily with the actions of one small family, although the narration takes us into other characters' heads occasionally. The main action of the story takes place during the annual village pageant, a history of England. We see the pageant in detail (Woolf even includes stage directions) and, as the title suggests, get to also witness the spectators during the act breaks.
Reading this, I felt like there was something else hiding under the surface of the text - something I wasn't fully able to grasp or understand. There's an undercurrent of longing and sadness and frustration running through all the characters, and I felt like there was a whole other story happening just in the margins and the line breaks. I think I could read this book ten times and still not find everything Woolf wants me to find.
Halfway through writing this review I decided to change my rating from three to four stars, because I started flipping through the book to find passages to quote and kept remembering what is so extraordinary about Virginia Woolf's writing: she had, I believe, an incredible capacity for empathy. Everyone in her stories gets treated, however briefly, like they're the most important character in the story. Every single character in her books, from the educated landowner to the flighty kitchen maid, has a deep inner life and complex thoughts and emotions, and she makes us see this complexity. No one is ordinary in Virginia Woolf's books.
Plus, the writing is, as always, killer. It's not just the people - something as simple as a lily pond suddenly becomes full of deeper meaning and significance when Woolf is describing it:
"There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centered world, fish swam - gold, splashed with white, streaked with black or silver. Silently they manoeuvred in their water world, poised in the blue patch made by the sky, or shot silently to the edge where the grass, trembling, made a fringe of nodding shadow. On the water-pavement spiders printed their delicate feet. A grain fell and spiralled down; a petal fell, filled and sank. At that the fleet of boat-shaped bodies paused; poised; equipped; mailed; then with a waver of undulation off they flashed.
It was in that deep centre, in that black heart, that the lady had drowned herself. Ten years since the pool had been dredged and a thigh bone recovered. Alas, it was a sheep’s, not a lady’s. And sheep have no ghosts, for sheep have no souls. But the servants insisted, they must have a ghost; the ghost must be a lady’s; who had drowned herself for love. So none of them would walk by the lily pool at night, only now when the sun shone and the gentry still sat at table."
June 4, 2024
It's a pity that someone of Woolf's stature as one of the modernist greats didn't bow out on a real high, with this, her last novel. But at this time of her life, not far off her suicide, who knows what state of mind she might have been in. Whilst the prose here is unmistakably Woolf; with moments of divine, profound and emotional beauty, striking a rich balance between the more pedestrian novels earlier in her career and the experimental style from what I'd call her peak years, I would be lying if I said I loved it: I just wasn't blown away like I was by other works: most noticeably, The Waves. Having said that, not many writers could have done what Woolf has done here: Take a rather short novel; only a brief glimpse, covering the time from morning to evening at an annual village pageant, and give us such insightful and lyrical depth in regards the complex relationships of her characters. It feels like the whole spectrum of what it is to be human is flowing through these pages. It's also clever in the way Woolf gives us a deft analysis on the swift changes taking place within the British way of life at the time. Torn between 3 and 4 stars, so I guess it's somewhere in between.
August 25, 2024
Met 'Between the acts' sluit ik deze Woolf-zomervakantie af. In juni las ik nl. Schrijversdagboek: Een keuze uit het dagboek van Virginia Woolf, in juli (eindelijk) haar The Years en bracht ik tijdens ons verblijf in Kent en East-Sussex een onvergetelijk en ontroerend bezoek aan Monk's House. Hoe meer ik (over) haar lees, hoe dieper ik geboeid raak door haar unieke stijl.
Daarbij moest ik denken aan een citaat van de begenadigde luitist Hopkinson Smith: 'A musician can spend some of the most beautiful hours of his life with Bach's solo Sonatas & Partitas. This is music which nourishes the soul directly and constantly stimulates the mind.' Vervang 'musician' door 'reader', 'Bach's solo Sonatas & Partitas' door 'Woolf's novels' en 'music' door 'literature' en je hebt de juiste omschrijving van wat ik bedoel.
Virginia Woolfs laatste roman is voor mij haar meest bruisende, frivole en lichtvoetige. Weinig of niets verraadt de schaduw van de Tweede Wereldoorlog en haar tot suïcide leidende neerslachtigheid die zich tijdens het schrijfproces over haar dagen uitstrekte. Veeleer las het alsof ze een nieuw elan had gevonden na de zware bevalling en zogenaamde mislukking van 'The Years'. Dat valt grotendeels toe te schrijven aan de originele insteek van 'Between the acts', m.n. de jaarlijkse dorpsvoorstelling op een Engels landgoed tijdens een zomerdag aan de vooravond van W.O.II.
Het is zoals altijd heerlijk hoe Woolf haar personages tot leven schildert, terwijl ze doen en denken, wat vaak via tegenstrijdige en onuitgesproken woorden gebeurt. Nog heerlijker is hier echter het toneelspel waarmee ze zo subtiel, vloeiend en aan het einde ook letterlijk spiegelend haar personages én haar lezers bespeelt. En dat is nog niet alles. Ook het landschap, de natuur, de vogels, de wolken en de plaatselijke koeien krijgen hun rol, waarmee ze zowaar Shakespeares beroemde citaat 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' naar de kroon steekt.
Ja, ik ga 'Between the acts' tot mijn favoriete Woolf-romans rekenen, die ik trouwens stuk voor stuk ooit wil herlezen. Deze zelfs misschien eens in de Nederlandse vertaling van Erwin Mortier, wetende dat hij de juiste stilist en Woolf-adept voor die job is. En ik moet verder haar drie vroege romans nog ontdekken, net als haar short stories, haar brieven en volledige dagboeken. Of om het à la Hopkinson Smith toch nog een keer voluit te zeggen: 'A reader can spend some of the most beautiful hours of his life with Woolf's novels. This is literature which nourishes the soul directly and constantly stimulates the mind.'
Daarbij moest ik denken aan een citaat van de begenadigde luitist Hopkinson Smith: 'A musician can spend some of the most beautiful hours of his life with Bach's solo Sonatas & Partitas. This is music which nourishes the soul directly and constantly stimulates the mind.' Vervang 'musician' door 'reader', 'Bach's solo Sonatas & Partitas' door 'Woolf's novels' en 'music' door 'literature' en je hebt de juiste omschrijving van wat ik bedoel.
Virginia Woolfs laatste roman is voor mij haar meest bruisende, frivole en lichtvoetige. Weinig of niets verraadt de schaduw van de Tweede Wereldoorlog en haar tot suïcide leidende neerslachtigheid die zich tijdens het schrijfproces over haar dagen uitstrekte. Veeleer las het alsof ze een nieuw elan had gevonden na de zware bevalling en zogenaamde mislukking van 'The Years'. Dat valt grotendeels toe te schrijven aan de originele insteek van 'Between the acts', m.n. de jaarlijkse dorpsvoorstelling op een Engels landgoed tijdens een zomerdag aan de vooravond van W.O.II.
Het is zoals altijd heerlijk hoe Woolf haar personages tot leven schildert, terwijl ze doen en denken, wat vaak via tegenstrijdige en onuitgesproken woorden gebeurt. Nog heerlijker is hier echter het toneelspel waarmee ze zo subtiel, vloeiend en aan het einde ook letterlijk spiegelend haar personages én haar lezers bespeelt. En dat is nog niet alles. Ook het landschap, de natuur, de vogels, de wolken en de plaatselijke koeien krijgen hun rol, waarmee ze zowaar Shakespeares beroemde citaat 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' naar de kroon steekt.
Ja, ik ga 'Between the acts' tot mijn favoriete Woolf-romans rekenen, die ik trouwens stuk voor stuk ooit wil herlezen. Deze zelfs misschien eens in de Nederlandse vertaling van Erwin Mortier, wetende dat hij de juiste stilist en Woolf-adept voor die job is. En ik moet verder haar drie vroege romans nog ontdekken, net als haar short stories, haar brieven en volledige dagboeken. Of om het à la Hopkinson Smith toch nog een keer voluit te zeggen: 'A reader can spend some of the most beautiful hours of his life with Woolf's novels. This is literature which nourishes the soul directly and constantly stimulates the mind.'
November 27, 2021
It is always ungrateful to judge an unfinished novel: did what was found in Woolf's estate comply with what she herself intended it to be? What changes would she have made? These are questions that cannot be answered properly. Most experts emphasize that this manuscript was almost complete, so who am I to pass judgment on that?
Anyway, I noticed striking similarities with her other works: the same thoughtful character sketches, the flow of interactions between the characters that reveal a wealth of significant details, and the way time both seems to stand still in the story and at the same time storming ahead at full speed. Especially in the opening scenes the style is very precise and copious, with abundant descriptions of the natural scenery in the English country side.
The stage of this novel is a annual summer event, June 1939, with a play that is brought on the estate of a country house. It's a rather heterogenic play, in several acts, evocating fragments from English history. The company we're in is very mixed: new and old bourgeoisie, vulgar and learned peasants and, obviously, a bunch of domestic servants, … how more English could this be? The short acts of the play, each time in the style of the historical periods involved, are full of references and keys to the relationships and backgrounds of the people in the audience. And the entractes (to which the title of the novel refers) deepen this dynamic and always take it a step further. In the background the coming war is manifest, giving the whole setting a somewhat menacing flavour.
All ingredients are there for a remarkable novel. Yet, to me, this is certainly not Woolf's most accomplished one. It reminded me a little bit too much of those typical English society novels I already read so many of. And I specifically struggled with the stage scenes and their often archaic style. The whole gave me the distinct impression it lacked the more dense focus Woolf's other novels have. But – finished or not – I agree this book is yet another testimony to her deep introspection into the richness and capriciousness of life, set in a typical English context.
Anyway, I noticed striking similarities with her other works: the same thoughtful character sketches, the flow of interactions between the characters that reveal a wealth of significant details, and the way time both seems to stand still in the story and at the same time storming ahead at full speed. Especially in the opening scenes the style is very precise and copious, with abundant descriptions of the natural scenery in the English country side.
The stage of this novel is a annual summer event, June 1939, with a play that is brought on the estate of a country house. It's a rather heterogenic play, in several acts, evocating fragments from English history. The company we're in is very mixed: new and old bourgeoisie, vulgar and learned peasants and, obviously, a bunch of domestic servants, … how more English could this be? The short acts of the play, each time in the style of the historical periods involved, are full of references and keys to the relationships and backgrounds of the people in the audience. And the entractes (to which the title of the novel refers) deepen this dynamic and always take it a step further. In the background the coming war is manifest, giving the whole setting a somewhat menacing flavour.
All ingredients are there for a remarkable novel. Yet, to me, this is certainly not Woolf's most accomplished one. It reminded me a little bit too much of those typical English society novels I already read so many of. And I specifically struggled with the stage scenes and their often archaic style. The whole gave me the distinct impression it lacked the more dense focus Woolf's other novels have. But – finished or not – I agree this book is yet another testimony to her deep introspection into the richness and capriciousness of life, set in a typical English context.
July 16, 2022
Bogata w intertekstualności, pastiszowa powieść o ludziach, najprościej i najkonwencjonalniej świadomych własnej znikomości. To książka, które degeneralizuje i uwypukla schematy zachowawcze, po które sięgamy w celach niemej kokieterii międzypłaszczyznowej. Rekonstruuje rzeczywistość za pomocą drobnych gestów, monosylabicznych rozmów i przedmiotów, którymi się otaczamy; a więc wszystkiego tego, w czym zaklęte jest ludzkie życie.
Virginia Woolf jest wirtuozką jeśli chodzi o wnikanie w swoich bohaterów. Sprawia wrażenie narratorki każdej swojej powieści.
"Między aktami" jest właśnie o tym wszystkim, co pomiędzy: zdaniami, intencjami, zmysłami, prośbami, emocjami. O tej powierzchni między gestem a myślą.
Doskonale wpleciony motyw sztuki teatralnej buduje schemat historii w historii, przypowieści w przypowieści. Dokładnie tak, jak ludzkość tworzy konstrukcje szkatułkowe w swoich utopiach sensu, tak naprawdę będąc tylko cekinami na wieczku życia.
Virginia Woolf jest wirtuozką jeśli chodzi o wnikanie w swoich bohaterów. Sprawia wrażenie narratorki każdej swojej powieści.
"Między aktami" jest właśnie o tym wszystkim, co pomiędzy: zdaniami, intencjami, zmysłami, prośbami, emocjami. O tej powierzchni między gestem a myślą.
Doskonale wpleciony motyw sztuki teatralnej buduje schemat historii w historii, przypowieści w przypowieści. Dokładnie tak, jak ludzkość tworzy konstrukcje szkatułkowe w swoich utopiach sensu, tak naprawdę będąc tylko cekinami na wieczku życia.
April 22, 2018
Opera postrema della Woolf, questo libro ha goduto di minor fama rispetto ai suoi più noti capolavori: è in effetti un’opera un po’ strana, di cui la scrittrice non ebbe modo di curare una revisione; parlandone, le premeva metterne in luce un’asserita frivolezza: io parlerei piuttosto di leggerezza, che in realtà è anche apparente, perché il romanzo, sebbene rorido d’ironia sommessa e tipicamente inglese, suona tutt’altro che leggero e frivolo. Tutto si svolge in poche ore: nei pressi d’una vecchia dimora di campagna si mette in iscena, come ogni anno, uno spettacolo teatrale organizzato dalla gente del posto: l’argomento è la storia britannica; e sembra quasi che Virginia Woolf, dipingendo i suoi personaggi e riferendo quello che portano sul palcoscenico, intenda raffigurare e salutare un intero mondo di certezze, modi e idee che avvertiva giunti ormai al tramonto. Io ho trovato affascinante il bellissimo giuoco metaletterario che costruisce su queste vicende minute e scarne: senza dubbio il lettore anglofono, educato per molti anni di scuola ai suoi classici, avrà trovato decine di richiami ad autori notissimi e meno celebri; a me, che della poesia inglese ho una conoscenza molto frammentaria e superficiale, a un certo punto ad esempio sono venuti in mente un verso dall’Ode to a Nightingale di Keats e un incipit di Byron, che descrive un abito a lutto cosparso di brillanti come un cielo notturno stellato. Molto presente anche Shakespeare, e non solo a livello di citazioni: l’intera struttura dell’opera ricorda parecchio il Sogno d’una notte di mezza estate, col contrappunto fra la vita dei signori della villa e la recita un po’ scalcinata e ingenua dei villici locali; ma la Woolf si diverte a giocare anche qui, perché, se la costruzione ricorda Shakespeare, al contrario che nel suo teatro qui sono rispettate rigorosamente le unità di tempo e di luogo: ma sono rispettate, per ironia, nel romanzo, e non nella sequenza di quadri storici e allegorici che vengono materialmente portati sul palcoscenico; e a proposito di unità aristoteliche, a un certo punto la scrittrice non manca di menzionare Racine, che peraltro uno dei personaggi ritiene alquanto noioso. Insomma, mentre trasfonde nella pagina gli echi della sua sensibilità esacerbata, l’autrice amava ancora giocare e scherzare: ed è proprio ciò a rendere affascinante quest’opera pur forse non del tutto riuscita, e certamente non rifinita come la Woolf avrebbe voluto.
April 19, 2024
Szép ez a metafora. Hogy a színpadon zajlik az előadás: a Történelem. A rendező meg a színészek beleadnak apait-anyait, de mégis, a produkció súlytalannak hat. Mert a lényeg a folytonos morajlás, ami a nézőtérről szűrődik ki. Az elkapott mondatok, amikor valakik félreértik egymást, mások pedig félreértik a darabot. Nincsenek nagyszabású párbeszédek, csak a kommunikáció morzsaléka, mondhatni: a tömegből áradó fehér zaj. Nincsen nagyszabású koncepció, nem boltíves templom a szöveg, csak bontásból maradt tégla, olcsón eladó. Csináljon belőle az olvasó magának lakot, ha akar.
Speciel én akartam, de nem igazán tudtam. Nem találtam a regény ritmusát. Elképzelhetőnek tartom, hogy azért, mert Woolf sem találta. Gyakran körülményesnek tűnik a szöveg, mintha a szerző is kedve ellenére írta volna, görcsösen küzdve minden mondattal. Vannak azért sziporkázó passzusok – például a fiktív történelmi színjáték beemelt passzusai tündökletes humorról árulkodnak. De a főszöveg csak vánszorog. Az a fajta olvasmány, ahol minden erőnket felemészti, hogy a történet törmelékéből összerakjuk, miről is van szó voltaképpen, úgyhogy nem marad energia a műélvezésre. Sejteni vélem, mit akart Woolf megvalósítani, és amit sejtek, azt tényleg nagyszabásúnak tartom - csak mintha túlintellektualizálta volna az egészet. Vagy egyszerűen belefáradt, ahogy belefáradtam én is.
Speciel én akartam, de nem igazán tudtam. Nem találtam a regény ritmusát. Elképzelhetőnek tartom, hogy azért, mert Woolf sem találta. Gyakran körülményesnek tűnik a szöveg, mintha a szerző is kedve ellenére írta volna, görcsösen küzdve minden mondattal. Vannak azért sziporkázó passzusok – például a fiktív történelmi színjáték beemelt passzusai tündökletes humorról árulkodnak. De a főszöveg csak vánszorog. Az a fajta olvasmány, ahol minden erőnket felemészti, hogy a történet törmelékéből összerakjuk, miről is van szó voltaképpen, úgyhogy nem marad energia a műélvezésre. Sejteni vélem, mit akart Woolf megvalósítani, és amit sejtek, azt tényleg nagyszabásúnak tartom - csak mintha túlintellektualizálta volna az egészet. Vagy egyszerűen belefáradt, ahogy belefáradtam én is.
April 25, 2021
”Did the plot matter? She shifted and looked over her right shoulder. The plot was only there to beget emotion. There were only two emotions: love; and hate. There was no need to puzzle out the plot. Perhaps Miss La Trobe meant that when she cut this knot in the centre?
Don’t bother about the plot: the plot’s nothing.”
Woolf, a true modernist, tries to portray every aspect of life, experimenting with the writing and narration, writing about the things that aren’t given page time in fiction; say the effect of music on people, rich imagery of nature and food, sudden outburst of strong emotions.
Surely, one can draw a parallel between Miss La Trobe and Woolf, capturing the struggle of a writer to give birth to the concept in their head but “the words escaped her”, words are at the same time wonderful and awfully difficult because they are open to different interpretation. A wise man, in one of my favourite books, one whom I admire a lot, once said:
“It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.”
-Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education
That being said, this novel doesn’t have a traditional protagonist nor plot. One might say that nothing meaningful happens in the novel.
The time span of the novel is one day in June 1939, a few weeks before WWII, exploring the tie between the past and how it influences the present.
It follows one English family and their friends and acquaintances attending a yearly pageant; the pageant itself is a portrayal of the whole spectre of English history and literature from Canterbury tales of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, Restoration comedies to the present day. Another instrument that ties the past and the present together, considering the time when the pageant is played out the question arises – how long will things go unchanged?
” Dear, how my mind wanders, she checked herself. What she meant was, change had to come, unless things were perfect; in which case she supposed they resisted Time. Heaven was changeless.”
Between the acts is, on one hand, a story about creation – the creation of artistic work, creation of the inner dynamics of human relationships, creation of life itself – much of life is in the things unsaid, unwritten, the things hidden Between the acts, between our actions, between our words.
“But we have other lives, I think, I hope,’ she murmured.'We live in others… We live in things.”
In conclusion: I liked this novel very much! The ideas underneath it weren’t stronger than the novel itself – which I often find problematic with modernist prose fiction
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My faith in Virginia Woolf is restored. Review to come.
April 20, 2016
Not my favorite novel by Woolf—not by a longshot—but as the unanticipated terminus for one of literature’s great oeuvres it strikes an incredibly powerful and poignant note, its deliberate, hard-fought expansiveness resisting any sense of finality or closure (indeed, the end is revealed to be just another beginning). On this reading I was struck with how the novel itself feels positioned at a stylistic juncture, an attempt to fuse together the gorgeously abstracted soliloquies of The Waves with the more intimate representation of inner consciousness showcased in Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and most particularly, To the Lighthouse I’m not convinced everything attempted actually works—it all sometimes feels like a fascinating experiment rather than a full expression of mastery—but it also feels like the kind of creation that retrospectively turns out to be a threshold to other things. Of course in this case we’ll never know what those other things could possibly have been; as Leonard Woolf’s prefatory note acknowledges, its author was dead before the inevitable final revisions could be made.
So just to get my critiques out of the way: the quotation of long passages of text being performed at the pageant just don’t ever feel fully integrated into the overall narrative—I’m not inherently against the idea of extended quotation but they almost felt like place cards intended to hold place for something else. Also the various characters seem to function more as archetypal “types” than individuated “people,” and though they signal their various concerns and struggles and thought processes but they feel more like, well, a cast performing lines rather than embodied entities.
That said, the distancing effect was certainly Woolf’s intention, as the narrative itself not only sets out to blur distinctions between the generic markers of fiction and drama, but is just one of many boundary lines Woolf plays with: those separating audience and performer, and even author and reader when it comes to generating meaning. There’s a wonderful moment towards the pageant’s climax when a mirror is produced on stage and the narrative voice shifts pronouns, shifting from “them” to “ourselves:” “a burst of applause greeted this flattering tribute to ourselves.” It’s a subtle alteration, but the effect is jarring, and it immediately begs the question of who exactly “ourselves” refers to. The audience watching the pageant within the text, of course, but the reader also is being intentionally imbricated here, and I imagine the author is including herself as well.
In my first status update during my reading I also noted how queer this book struck me at this time around; during my first reading some ten years ago I was not in the place to detect alternate meanings to William Dodge’s silent confession that he’s “a half-man” or Miss La Trobe’s complaint that “she was an outcast” and that “nature had somehow set her apart from her kind.” But apart from covert queer representation—and rather depressing ones at that—there’s also something weird, and rather queer about the way Woolf attempts to present time throughout Between the Acts, with the constant, sometimes startling crash between the historical past and the tenuous present (with rumblings of upcoming war wafting nervously in the air). Time cycles restlessly throughout the text, always refusing to march linearly forward, instead trying to slip into more ambiguous temporal spaces.
As well as impending war there’s also the long shadow Woolf’s death casts across the text—would the text seem quite as elegiac as it does if Woolf had lived and written more texts after it? An impossible question, and one undermined somewhat by the text itself, which continuously waves off the past and even the future to place the emphasis instead on the present moment. This moment. “The hands of the clock had stopped at the present moment” the narrative trumpets. “It was now. Ourselves.”
And when exactly is “now?” The “now” of the text? The “now” of the words first written upon a piece of paper? The “now” of the reader reading the words? For the briefest of instants, the present moment manages to contain them all. [Second reading.]
So just to get my critiques out of the way: the quotation of long passages of text being performed at the pageant just don’t ever feel fully integrated into the overall narrative—I’m not inherently against the idea of extended quotation but they almost felt like place cards intended to hold place for something else. Also the various characters seem to function more as archetypal “types” than individuated “people,” and though they signal their various concerns and struggles and thought processes but they feel more like, well, a cast performing lines rather than embodied entities.
That said, the distancing effect was certainly Woolf’s intention, as the narrative itself not only sets out to blur distinctions between the generic markers of fiction and drama, but is just one of many boundary lines Woolf plays with: those separating audience and performer, and even author and reader when it comes to generating meaning. There’s a wonderful moment towards the pageant’s climax when a mirror is produced on stage and the narrative voice shifts pronouns, shifting from “them” to “ourselves:” “a burst of applause greeted this flattering tribute to ourselves.” It’s a subtle alteration, but the effect is jarring, and it immediately begs the question of who exactly “ourselves” refers to. The audience watching the pageant within the text, of course, but the reader also is being intentionally imbricated here, and I imagine the author is including herself as well.
In my first status update during my reading I also noted how queer this book struck me at this time around; during my first reading some ten years ago I was not in the place to detect alternate meanings to William Dodge’s silent confession that he’s “a half-man” or Miss La Trobe’s complaint that “she was an outcast” and that “nature had somehow set her apart from her kind.” But apart from covert queer representation—and rather depressing ones at that—there’s also something weird, and rather queer about the way Woolf attempts to present time throughout Between the Acts, with the constant, sometimes startling crash between the historical past and the tenuous present (with rumblings of upcoming war wafting nervously in the air). Time cycles restlessly throughout the text, always refusing to march linearly forward, instead trying to slip into more ambiguous temporal spaces.
As well as impending war there’s also the long shadow Woolf’s death casts across the text—would the text seem quite as elegiac as it does if Woolf had lived and written more texts after it? An impossible question, and one undermined somewhat by the text itself, which continuously waves off the past and even the future to place the emphasis instead on the present moment. This moment. “The hands of the clock had stopped at the present moment” the narrative trumpets. “It was now. Ourselves.”
And when exactly is “now?” The “now” of the text? The “now” of the words first written upon a piece of paper? The “now” of the reader reading the words? For the briefest of instants, the present moment manages to contain them all. [Second reading.]
March 8, 2018
Kai atsirado LT vertimas, susigriebiau, kad nebuvau skaičiusi. O čia juk paskutinis Woolf romanas - atidavusi jo rankraštį, nusiskandino. Bet pasiėmiau angliškai - man taip patinka jos žodžiai, inversijos, pakartojimai, švelnūs atsikartojimai ir aidai, net skyrbos ženklai, kad nesinori to ieškot jokia kita kalba, kad ir koks geras, tikiu, gali būti vertimas.
Iš toliau, bet susišaukė: viena iš paskutinių skaitytų knygų buvo Binet "HHhH", apie pasikėsinimą į Hitlerio dešiniosios rankos Himmlerio dešiniąją ranką Heydrichą. Ten buvo daug istorijos apie 1938, Miuncheno susitarimus, apie Chamberlaino Britanijos absoliutų neveiksnumą ir stručio taktiką prieš pat WWII. Nors jie juk nežinojo, kad tas metas yra prieš kažką - tik mes dabar taip matom, o tuo metu tai veikiausiai buvo priimtiniausias (beviltiškiausias?) elgesys sunkumų akivaizdoje.
Ir greta viso to - Woolf, viena 1939 metų vasaros, birželio, diena. Ji rašydama jau žinojo, kad ta diena yra - buvo - visai prieš pat karą, kurio pabaigos pati jau nesulaukė, žinojo ir apie politinį, ir apie asmeninį bejėgiškumą - kai tave kankina svetimi balsai (ar jie būtų išorėj, ar viduj), kurių negali kontroliuot ir nuo kurių tu niekur nepasislėpsi. (Pagalvojau - gal ir gerai, kad ji nebematė 1942 ir visko, ką jie atnešė.)
Visa knyga ir yra apie tą dieną, visiškai vulfiška - tarpusavy susiję ir nesusiję žmonės, jų reakcijos vienas į kitą, mintys, pereinančios į išorinio pasaulio garsus, į pasakotojos žodžius, tada vėl grįžtančios į kažkieno, vis kito/s, galvą. Nėra to vidurio knygos supurtymo, koks buvo "To the Lighthouse", tačiau pilna mažų (vaižgantiškų, jei galima taip sakyt) deimančiukų - aukštuomenė suisrinkusi žiūri kaimo vaidinimą, į jį reaguoja, tada staiga mintimis kažkur nuklysta, tada prabyla peizažas, karvės, tada kaimo vaidinimas visai netikėtai pasirodo nebe kažkokia lėkšta kostiuminė dramelė, o su vos ne koršunovišku twistu gale. Istorijos ir beviltiškumo - tik mažyčiai atgarsiai, kaip kad sueižėjęs lapas tvenkiny, kurio forma kažkam primena Europą, virš galvos skrendantys lėktuvai, rodantys, kad net ir sala jau nebėra kažkas atskiro ir saugaus. Turbūt tas ir turima omeny, kai apie Čechovą sako, kad jo personažai geria arbatą, kol aplink dūžta likimai. Bet Čechovas man nebuvo taip surezonavęs, kaip šita aukštuomenės diena dvare. Išties graži, liūdna knyga, kurią gali skaityt turbūt bilekiek kartų - aš kartais pamesdavau, kur skaitau, imdavau skaityt nuo kažkurios pastraipos, atrast joje tiek visko naujo - palyginimų, šuolių - ir tik po kurio laiko suprasdavau, kad ką tik tą pačią vietą jau skaičiau. Ir, regis, atidžiai, bet kiekvienas kartas parodo vis kažką nauja, o kiek ten apskritai visko yra, kiekvienam žody, kiekvienam tarpe- net nesuprasi.
Iš toliau, bet susišaukė: viena iš paskutinių skaitytų knygų buvo Binet "HHhH", apie pasikėsinimą į Hitlerio dešiniosios rankos Himmlerio dešiniąją ranką Heydrichą. Ten buvo daug istorijos apie 1938, Miuncheno susitarimus, apie Chamberlaino Britanijos absoliutų neveiksnumą ir stručio taktiką prieš pat WWII. Nors jie juk nežinojo, kad tas metas yra prieš kažką - tik mes dabar taip matom, o tuo metu tai veikiausiai buvo priimtiniausias (beviltiškiausias?) elgesys sunkumų akivaizdoje.
Ir greta viso to - Woolf, viena 1939 metų vasaros, birželio, diena. Ji rašydama jau žinojo, kad ta diena yra - buvo - visai prieš pat karą, kurio pabaigos pati jau nesulaukė, žinojo ir apie politinį, ir apie asmeninį bejėgiškumą - kai tave kankina svetimi balsai (ar jie būtų išorėj, ar viduj), kurių negali kontroliuot ir nuo kurių tu niekur nepasislėpsi. (Pagalvojau - gal ir gerai, kad ji nebematė 1942 ir visko, ką jie atnešė.)
Visa knyga ir yra apie tą dieną, visiškai vulfiška - tarpusavy susiję ir nesusiję žmonės, jų reakcijos vienas į kitą, mintys, pereinančios į išorinio pasaulio garsus, į pasakotojos žodžius, tada vėl grįžtančios į kažkieno, vis kito/s, galvą. Nėra to vidurio knygos supurtymo, koks buvo "To the Lighthouse", tačiau pilna mažų (vaižgantiškų, jei galima taip sakyt) deimančiukų - aukštuomenė suisrinkusi žiūri kaimo vaidinimą, į jį reaguoja, tada staiga mintimis kažkur nuklysta, tada prabyla peizažas, karvės, tada kaimo vaidinimas visai netikėtai pasirodo nebe kažkokia lėkšta kostiuminė dramelė, o su vos ne koršunovišku twistu gale. Istorijos ir beviltiškumo - tik mažyčiai atgarsiai, kaip kad sueižėjęs lapas tvenkiny, kurio forma kažkam primena Europą, virš galvos skrendantys lėktuvai, rodantys, kad net ir sala jau nebėra kažkas atskiro ir saugaus. Turbūt tas ir turima omeny, kai apie Čechovą sako, kad jo personažai geria arbatą, kol aplink dūžta likimai. Bet Čechovas man nebuvo taip surezonavęs, kaip šita aukštuomenės diena dvare. Išties graži, liūdna knyga, kurią gali skaityt turbūt bilekiek kartų - aš kartais pamesdavau, kur skaitau, imdavau skaityt nuo kažkurios pastraipos, atrast joje tiek visko naujo - palyginimų, šuolių - ir tik po kurio laiko suprasdavau, kad ką tik tą pačią vietą jau skaičiau. Ir, regis, atidžiai, bet kiekvienas kartas parodo vis kažką nauja, o kiek ten apskritai visko yra, kiekvienam žody, kiekvienam tarpe- net nesuprasi.
December 10, 2023
Абсолютен шедьовър на модернизма и в същото време пародиен исторически преглед на английското минало в рамките на един единствен ден от живота на едно семейство.
April 1, 2019
В навечерието на втората световна война В.У. написва книга. Между действията = Между войните = Между антракта = Между отношенията.
Тази книга раказва за една пиеса, която проследява развитието на Англия от малко невинно момиче, което говори с езика на елизабетинската епоха в първо действие, еволюира в езика на викторианската епоха във второ действие, а в трето действие завършва вместо с поклон от актьорите - с огледала срещу публиката. От заглавието до най-незначимото и кратко изречение в съдържанието, "Между действията" поставя сериозни въпроси, които е трябвало да гърмят отвсякъде в навечерието на ВСВ.
Книгата на Улф е кресливо тиха в тази си цел. До последното изречение си изяснявах въпросът, който поставя В.У. с тази великолепна творба. Последните думи затварят кръга и всичко се връзва по умопобъркващият начин, който само тази спокойно неспокойна жена умее да спретва. Любима писателка. По-поетична отвсякога с препратките към нейния приятел Т.С. Елиът.
Признавам си нещо: иронията не я схванах и не разбрах къде я приписват. И смятам, че е неправилно да я определят като иронична. Поне аз не я виждам с иронична усмивка. Настрана от това мое лично виждане към личността й, "Между действията"е най-тревожното произведение на Улф. Някой трябва да го пренаписва с четвърто, пето, шесто и седмо действие. И то всяка година. Прочетете го, ако я харесвате.
Тази книга раказва за една пиеса, която проследява развитието на Англия от малко невинно момиче, което говори с езика на елизабетинската епоха в първо действие, еволюира в езика на викторианската епоха във второ действие, а в трето действие завършва вместо с поклон от актьорите - с огледала срещу публиката. От заглавието до най-незначимото и кратко изречение в съдържанието, "Между действията" поставя сериозни въпроси, които е трябвало да гърмят отвсякъде в навечерието на ВСВ.
Книгата на Улф е кресливо тиха в тази си цел. До последното изречение си изяснявах въпросът, който поставя В.У. с тази великолепна творба. Последните думи затварят кръга и всичко се връзва по умопобъркващият начин, който само тази спокойно неспокойна жена умее да спретва. Любима писателка. По-поетична отвсякога с препратките към нейния приятел Т.С. Елиът.
Признавам си нещо: иронията не я схванах и не разбрах къде я приписват. И смятам, че е неправилно да я определят като иронична. Поне аз не я виждам с иронична усмивка. Настрана от това мое лично виждане към личността й, "Между действията"е най-тревожното произведение на Улф. Някой трябва да го пренаписва с четвърто, пето, шесто и седмо действие. И то всяка година. Прочетете го, ако я харесвате.
April 21, 2021
The prose is magnificent–it sparkles, but I am not sure I fully understand the message the book was meant to convey. Your guesses are as good as mine. Parts of the story are not fully worked through. The novel was published after Woolf’s death. Sit back, enjoy the lines and think about what Woolf wants said.
We spend one day at an English countryside home. It is the day of the annual pageant--a summer day in June 1939. All of the village will attend. The weather is variable—should the performance be held out on the terrace or in the barn? All must be arranged—the seating, the food, the costumes, stage paraphernalia and sound effects. An old gramophone is put to use. Miss La Trobe is and has for the last seven years been responsible for the script.
The pageant celebrates different periods of English literary history—Shakespeare and Elizabethan literature, Restoration comedies and literature of the Victorian era. Periods in between are to be imagined—funds and time are limited! The pageant closes with a mirror reflecting the audience itself. The audience is confused. All have different explanations of what this is to mean. Readers are left to analyze this too. For me, the message is –what we do now will shape history!
Between the Acts refers to both the interludes between the acts of the pageant as well as the years between the First and Second World Wars. Woolf began writing the novel in 1938 when war with Germany was hanging in the balance. Her non-fiction, anti-war piece Three Guineas had recently been published. Between the Acts had been sent to her publisher and then recalled; she wished to make further alterations. While still working on the manuscript, she took her own life. A few months after her suicide, Leonard Woolf had it published.
Multiple themes are focused upon—gender roles, homophobia, the cooling off of marital relationships, the value of individualism versus the comfort of belonging to a group, being part of a community and of sharing a common heritage. These themes don’t feel sufficiently worked through. In my view, the novel was not quite ready for publication. It is nevertheless definitely worth reading.
The pageant itself is less interesting than those sections where we observe the community’s reaction to it. No two people agree. I like this. It doesn’t surprise me. When do people ever agree?!
Stream of consciousness, is this employed here? We are in the heads of many townspeople and Oliver family members—the pageant takes place, as always, at Pointz Hall, the Olivers’ family home. The thirty-nine-year-old wife and mother Isabella Oliver is the anchor of the story. We observe the characters and are privy to what they are thinking. Each one’s words, thoughts, behavior, appearance and demeanor blend. Here, Woolf excels. Tidbits about each are thrown at the reader. It is up to each reader to then stitch the assorted facts together—a puzzle in a book.
Georgina Sutton gives a fabulous narration. She performs—she sings ditties, recites nursery rhymes, poetry and Shakespeare, all equally well. Her intonations are superb; she captures the many different community figures perfectly. Sutton’s performance deserves a whopping five stars.
Woolf needed to invest just a little more time to transform what we have before us into a work of the highest caliber.
********************
*Mrs. Dalloway 4 stars
*Jacob's Room 4 stars
*Between the Acts 3 stars
*The Voyage Out 3 stars
*The Mark on the Wall 3 stars
*Night and Day 3 stars
*To the Lighthouse 3 stars
*Kew Gardens 3 stars
*The Waves 1 star
*A Room of One's Own 1 star
*The Years TBR
*Orlando TBR
*Flush TBR
*Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf by Maureen Adams TBR
We spend one day at an English countryside home. It is the day of the annual pageant--a summer day in June 1939. All of the village will attend. The weather is variable—should the performance be held out on the terrace or in the barn? All must be arranged—the seating, the food, the costumes, stage paraphernalia and sound effects. An old gramophone is put to use. Miss La Trobe is and has for the last seven years been responsible for the script.
The pageant celebrates different periods of English literary history—Shakespeare and Elizabethan literature, Restoration comedies and literature of the Victorian era. Periods in between are to be imagined—funds and time are limited! The pageant closes with a mirror reflecting the audience itself. The audience is confused. All have different explanations of what this is to mean. Readers are left to analyze this too. For me, the message is –what we do now will shape history!
Between the Acts refers to both the interludes between the acts of the pageant as well as the years between the First and Second World Wars. Woolf began writing the novel in 1938 when war with Germany was hanging in the balance. Her non-fiction, anti-war piece Three Guineas had recently been published. Between the Acts had been sent to her publisher and then recalled; she wished to make further alterations. While still working on the manuscript, she took her own life. A few months after her suicide, Leonard Woolf had it published.
Multiple themes are focused upon—gender roles, homophobia, the cooling off of marital relationships, the value of individualism versus the comfort of belonging to a group, being part of a community and of sharing a common heritage. These themes don’t feel sufficiently worked through. In my view, the novel was not quite ready for publication. It is nevertheless definitely worth reading.
The pageant itself is less interesting than those sections where we observe the community’s reaction to it. No two people agree. I like this. It doesn’t surprise me. When do people ever agree?!
Stream of consciousness, is this employed here? We are in the heads of many townspeople and Oliver family members—the pageant takes place, as always, at Pointz Hall, the Olivers’ family home. The thirty-nine-year-old wife and mother Isabella Oliver is the anchor of the story. We observe the characters and are privy to what they are thinking. Each one’s words, thoughts, behavior, appearance and demeanor blend. Here, Woolf excels. Tidbits about each are thrown at the reader. It is up to each reader to then stitch the assorted facts together—a puzzle in a book.
Georgina Sutton gives a fabulous narration. She performs—she sings ditties, recites nursery rhymes, poetry and Shakespeare, all equally well. Her intonations are superb; she captures the many different community figures perfectly. Sutton’s performance deserves a whopping five stars.
Woolf needed to invest just a little more time to transform what we have before us into a work of the highest caliber.
********************
*Mrs. Dalloway 4 stars
*Jacob's Room 4 stars
*Between the Acts 3 stars
*The Voyage Out 3 stars
*The Mark on the Wall 3 stars
*Night and Day 3 stars
*To the Lighthouse 3 stars
*Kew Gardens 3 stars
*The Waves 1 star
*A Room of One's Own 1 star
*The Years TBR
*Orlando TBR
*Flush TBR
*Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf by Maureen Adams TBR
April 17, 2011
2011 Update: This is the third consecutive spring in which I've read BTA. I'll confess my reading this go-round felt less urgent (I...dare I say it?...skimmed parts of the pageant), but nevertheless increased yet again my love for this novel. Deceptively minimalist, austerely affective, Between the Acts feels somehow so apart from and so integral to Woolf's canon. The characters themselves are powerfully immediate; almost allegorical in the way Woolf employs metaphors, images, or emotions as shorthand for these figures (Isa and the sensation of drowning; Mrs. Swithin's prehistory; Giles' burning desire for violent action; Mrs. Manresa, the 'wild child of Nature'). They don't feel one-dimensional, though, for all this referentiality; it's almost as if they're akin to one's own index of the people one knows. This is a different kind of relationality from, say, The Waves, where the very boundaries between selves are diffuse, hardly even fluid--almost nonexistent. There's an alienating quality to BTA that doesn't permeate her other works, and perhaps that's why it so often is read as a bleak text; but I find something almost energizing about this sense of separateness, inasmuch as the entire novel is seeking an articulation for the simultaneous 'unity' and dispersal of all relationships.
At any rate, enough of my 'thoughtful' blabbering. Another fantastic experience of reading this book, with many more readings (hopefully) to come.
**
2010
When I discovered I'd be re-reading Between the Acts for my Modernism course this spring, I groaned internally and began to steel myself against the novel, once again. I read this for the first time about 2 years ago in a Woolf seminar, and found it to be an absolute chore in the way none of her other novels had been. I, like many, questioned why the hell Woolf would write such a superficial & trivial novel with the war looming so heavily before her. And if this Modernism course was invested in particular themes--heroism, experimentalism, acute interest in the seismic historical shifts of the first half of the 20th century--why weren't we reading Jacob's Room or Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse?
I was in for quite a great surprise. Since I knew from the start of the semester that I'd probably end up writing on this novel (I couldn't bear the thought of writing on Ulysses or The Waste Land, and knew *nothing* of Beckett or Djuna Barnes), I began plotting ways of coping. When the time came to read the novel, in the midst of the eye-of-the-semester's-storm, I found myself--SHOCKING--positively loving the novel. So much so that I re-read it again only days after finishing it, which is something I *never* do with books, even the ones that really pierce me.
I wholly revise my contention that the novel is superficial. In fact, now I find it to be one of Woolf's most politically cognizant novels--the pageant functions as a direct indictment of England's troublesome history, the sound & sight of the aeroplanes overhead is possibly the most disturbing moment of the novel, Giles figures as a sort of blossoming fascist who nonetheless must be incorporated into the novel's community...certainly helps to read the novel alongside Three Guineas (where Woolf suggests that the embryonic fascist is not simply a monster--but is within us). The novel's intense interest in precultural histories, "thoughts without words" & the like makes for a wonderfully philosophical read, but you never feel overburdened by abstraction; the strange ideas are presented through the characters' encounters with them, much in the way we, the readers, might likewise encounter them.
The writing left me misty-eyed and out of breath on numerous occasions (the final scene with Miss La Trobe, for example, may contain five of the best pages of prose styling in all of literature). The characters are intensely beautiful--Miss La Trobe, William Dodge, Isa Oliver, Lucy Swithin...each seems tattooed on my innards in some way (that's less grotesque than I'm describing it). Also, the fact that there's an old woman/tranny (ok, gay man) bonding session tickles my naughty bits.
Ok, I just never feel adequate when I try talking about Woolf--god knows how I felt assured enough to write a paper on the novel. It's amazing, it's incredible, it's fucking Virginia Woolf (which should pull you in, in any case). If you've already read it and hated it, give it another go. I was knocked off my feet by the novel this time around, and highly advise anyone remotely interested in Woolf to grant it a little breathing room. I'm almost tempted to read it again this summer, but I've got other Woolf on my list (The Waves--finally). Happy reading, and possibly sobbing...
At any rate, enough of my 'thoughtful' blabbering. Another fantastic experience of reading this book, with many more readings (hopefully) to come.
**
2010
When I discovered I'd be re-reading Between the Acts for my Modernism course this spring, I groaned internally and began to steel myself against the novel, once again. I read this for the first time about 2 years ago in a Woolf seminar, and found it to be an absolute chore in the way none of her other novels had been. I, like many, questioned why the hell Woolf would write such a superficial & trivial novel with the war looming so heavily before her. And if this Modernism course was invested in particular themes--heroism, experimentalism, acute interest in the seismic historical shifts of the first half of the 20th century--why weren't we reading Jacob's Room or Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse?
I was in for quite a great surprise. Since I knew from the start of the semester that I'd probably end up writing on this novel (I couldn't bear the thought of writing on Ulysses or The Waste Land, and knew *nothing* of Beckett or Djuna Barnes), I began plotting ways of coping. When the time came to read the novel, in the midst of the eye-of-the-semester's-storm, I found myself--SHOCKING--positively loving the novel. So much so that I re-read it again only days after finishing it, which is something I *never* do with books, even the ones that really pierce me.
I wholly revise my contention that the novel is superficial. In fact, now I find it to be one of Woolf's most politically cognizant novels--the pageant functions as a direct indictment of England's troublesome history, the sound & sight of the aeroplanes overhead is possibly the most disturbing moment of the novel, Giles figures as a sort of blossoming fascist who nonetheless must be incorporated into the novel's community...certainly helps to read the novel alongside Three Guineas (where Woolf suggests that the embryonic fascist is not simply a monster--but is within us). The novel's intense interest in precultural histories, "thoughts without words" & the like makes for a wonderfully philosophical read, but you never feel overburdened by abstraction; the strange ideas are presented through the characters' encounters with them, much in the way we, the readers, might likewise encounter them.
The writing left me misty-eyed and out of breath on numerous occasions (the final scene with Miss La Trobe, for example, may contain five of the best pages of prose styling in all of literature). The characters are intensely beautiful--Miss La Trobe, William Dodge, Isa Oliver, Lucy Swithin...each seems tattooed on my innards in some way (that's less grotesque than I'm describing it). Also, the fact that there's an old woman/tranny (ok, gay man) bonding session tickles my naughty bits.
Ok, I just never feel adequate when I try talking about Woolf--god knows how I felt assured enough to write a paper on the novel. It's amazing, it's incredible, it's fucking Virginia Woolf (which should pull you in, in any case). If you've already read it and hated it, give it another go. I was knocked off my feet by the novel this time around, and highly advise anyone remotely interested in Woolf to grant it a little breathing room. I'm almost tempted to read it again this summer, but I've got other Woolf on my list (The Waves--finally). Happy reading, and possibly sobbing...
June 30, 2021
Pobyłam sobie w weekend na małej angielskiej wsi końca lat 30., obserwując doroczne widowisko z udziałem pewnej rodziny, jej gości i innych mieszkańców wsi. Weszłam do kilku umysłów, próbowałam odczytać, co tam gra 'między aktami', zgubiłam się kilkukrotnie w interpretacji i oddawałam się pięknie płynącej narracji prowadzonej przez Woolf.
Virginia Woolf miała wspaniałą umiejętność oddawania przestrzeni swoim bohaterom. W jej książkach każdy zdaje się mieć swoje miejsce i sposobność na uwewnętrznienie się. Jest jakiś spokój w książkach Woolf, stabilność mimo wewnętrznych rozterek bohaterów, do których głów nas zaprasza. W trakcie lektury kolejnej mojej Woolf pomyślałam sobie, że jej bohaterowie musieli ją lubić.
To ostatnia książka Virginii Woolf, niepoddana zresztą finalnym poprawkom, skończona miesiąc przed jej samobójczą śmiercią. Są w niej typowe dla prozy Woolf elementy: ekstremalnie krótki czas akcji, mało 'fabularna' akcja, koncentracja na relacjach międzyludzkich i wewnętrznych światach bohaterów, płynąca narracja, dużo rozmyślań i obserwacji. I język - piękny, zgrabny, zmysłowy, delikatny, wyważony.
Nie jest to moja ulubiona książka Woolf, ale i tak miło jest spędzić trochę czasu w tym angielskim świecie tak pięknie przez nią opisywanym.
Virginia Woolf miała wspaniałą umiejętność oddawania przestrzeni swoim bohaterom. W jej książkach każdy zdaje się mieć swoje miejsce i sposobność na uwewnętrznienie się. Jest jakiś spokój w książkach Woolf, stabilność mimo wewnętrznych rozterek bohaterów, do których głów nas zaprasza. W trakcie lektury kolejnej mojej Woolf pomyślałam sobie, że jej bohaterowie musieli ją lubić.
To ostatnia książka Virginii Woolf, niepoddana zresztą finalnym poprawkom, skończona miesiąc przed jej samobójczą śmiercią. Są w niej typowe dla prozy Woolf elementy: ekstremalnie krótki czas akcji, mało 'fabularna' akcja, koncentracja na relacjach międzyludzkich i wewnętrznych światach bohaterów, płynąca narracja, dużo rozmyślań i obserwacji. I język - piękny, zgrabny, zmysłowy, delikatny, wyważony.
Nie jest to moja ulubiona książka Woolf, ale i tak miło jest spędzić trochę czasu w tym angielskim świecie tak pięknie przez nią opisywanym.
January 26, 2014
I love Virginia Woolf's "Letters" and "Diaries". I often look at them as they show her wit. They are brilliant and compelling reading. I also thoroughly enjoyed her novel "Mrs Dalloway" but this book, well I'm sorry but it's not for me at all. I liked it initially and then I lost interest. It appeared to be full of fripperies.
Such a shame...
Such a shame...
July 4, 2008
I took a class on Woolf in the last semester of my third year. This was the last book we read. We had the option of taking an in-class final or writing a paper. As I had not finished much of the assigned reading, I opted for the paper. That quarter, all of my finals were done Monday, and this paper wasn't due until Friday at 5pm. I figured I'd gun this out and turn it in Wednesday at the latest. Ha. No.
Woolf never finished editing this book. It was the middle of WWII and she lost hope. She killed herself before it was complete. You can feel that hope draining as you read it, can feel movement towards the inevitable conclusion. Humankind is doomed to re-enact its mistakes, and the only thing that changes is the number of stones in the churchyard.
On Wednesday, after I'd written most of a paper about some one being a foil to some one else, I realized her actual conclusion. I sat and cried and cried, both for her sadness and my own faltering faith. I stayed there for, seriously, a day and a half, until I finally found the other half of the conclusion: this is the way it's been, but things could be different. Woolf wove together a damning account of (man's) history with a resolute belief that things can change. If not now then someday. She lost faith, it's true, but we're still here and so can be different. And then I ended up rewriting the whole thing Friday afternoon and ran to submit it without reading it or editing. And, embarrassingly, I haven't read it since because I want to idealize the moment and not screw it up with my run-on sentences and footnotes.
I realize this probably isn't the best recommendation of a book, but I am telling the story because it's why I love it. Between The Acts broke open my whole perception of the world. Twice.
Woolf never finished editing this book. It was the middle of WWII and she lost hope. She killed herself before it was complete. You can feel that hope draining as you read it, can feel movement towards the inevitable conclusion. Humankind is doomed to re-enact its mistakes, and the only thing that changes is the number of stones in the churchyard.
On Wednesday, after I'd written most of a paper about some one being a foil to some one else, I realized her actual conclusion. I sat and cried and cried, both for her sadness and my own faltering faith. I stayed there for, seriously, a day and a half, until I finally found the other half of the conclusion: this is the way it's been, but things could be different. Woolf wove together a damning account of (man's) history with a resolute belief that things can change. If not now then someday. She lost faith, it's true, but we're still here and so can be different. And then I ended up rewriting the whole thing Friday afternoon and ran to submit it without reading it or editing. And, embarrassingly, I haven't read it since because I want to idealize the moment and not screw it up with my run-on sentences and footnotes.
I realize this probably isn't the best recommendation of a book, but I am telling the story because it's why I love it. Between The Acts broke open my whole perception of the world. Twice.
October 31, 2023
Esta é a obra mais original de Woolf. Mistura prosa com teatro. Retrata várias famílias de ambientes rurais. Que parecem estarem tristes e melancolicos. É com a chegada de Madame de La Trope que as famílias se animaram e participaram nas peças que retratam a época histórica da Inglaterra. Como é o caso da época Elizabetiana. A obra foi escrita na segunda guerra mundial, a escritora apenas expõe promenores como a guerra está iminente através da água e céu envenenado. Pelo que entendi, a escritora queria dar esperança aos ingleses mostrando os seus tempos de glória. Infelizmente suicidou-se antes da publicação da obra.
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