Pow.

Feb. 22nd, 2006 04:08 pm
ysobelle: (Default)
[personal profile] ysobelle
[Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]

How stark. How plain. And how unbearably painful.

I remember reading To The Lighthouse in high school, many years ago, and thinking how I was probably never going to be a big Virginia Woolf fan. But I could never forget that I got through the novel grumbling up to that point, read that passage, and began to sob uncontrollably. Being older and somewhat-- I say somewhat-- less dramatic now, I just cried the least bit, sitting at lunch in a deli, and spent the next half an hour in a lit-induced daze.

If Jane Austen wrote on a "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory,"* Viginia Woolf wrote on a pinhead.











*Austen once said of her writing that it was "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as to produce little effect, after much labour."

Date: 2006-02-22 11:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] deathwardegg.livejournal.com
And just why weren't you a literature major??

Date: 2006-02-23 12:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ysobelle.livejournal.com
I WAS!

Jeez!

Date: 2006-02-23 08:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] deathwardegg.livejournal.com
You mean you couldn't mystically discern the mischievous smirk on my face as I wrote that comment?

Seriously, my fault - I forgot the universal Internet symbol for irony, " ;-) " !

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