On Virginia Woolf’s posthumous collection, Moments of Being.
Reflections from ch. 1, Reminiscences: I am enamored by the way Woolf writes of her sister Vanessa (or Nessa) and her mother, Julia Stephen. Descriptors that stuck with me:
impetuous, and also a little imperious
so conscious of her own burning will that she could scarcely believe that there was not something quicker or more effective in her action than in another’s
she clung to the truth too tenaciously, too simply
swept aside on the tide of someone else’s emotion
exaggerated in her own deficiency
perhaps once or twice she looked steadily in the glass when no one was by and saw a face that excited her strangely
she had come to attach a desperate importance to the saving of time as though she saw heap themselves all round her, duties and desires, and time to embrace them slipped from her and left her with grasping fingers
as her strength lessened her respites were fewer; she sank, like an exhausted swimmer
living voices still speak of her as of someone who is actually a fact in life
they speak of her as of a thing that happened, recalling, as though all round her grew significant, how she stood and turned and how the bird sang loudly, or a great cloud passed across the sky
much of her phantom loneliness came from accidents of the moment—changing light in the eyes
You may see the two things in her face. ‘Let us make the most of what we have, since we know nothing of the future’ was the motive that urged her to toil so incessantly on behalf of happiness, right doing, love; and the melancholy echoes answered ‘What does it matter? Perhaps there is no future.’
Just 30 pages in, I feel deeply connected to both characters, see so much of myself in words I’d normally never think of stringing together. I miss Nessa as if I’m the sister who lost her. To get so much heart onto paper and do so in less than one chapter—I’m floored. And of course, unsurprised.
ok ttyl
—fiza