Monday, June 6, 2011

Anthem









        Because there are few women who occupied the position Virginia Woolf assumed in her lifetime.  She says here somewhere that she can't bear what, in her own day, was written about Bloomsbury, and indeed thought, at one moment, to do her own guide to it.  But she cannot be blamed if she was singled out as she was.  Not so much the brilliance of her husband and friends, as her own genius, isolated her in a limelight all her own.  It is to her credit that she seems to despise this.  Nevertheless we can, in this volume, watch her fame rise, and then, in her own estimation, wane.  She takes a pleasure in both, as is perhaps natural in the self-comforting of a diary.  For it appears she can never get away from herself.  But then who can?



From:  Henry Green, A Writer's Diary (Review published in The London Magazine, 1954).  
Please also consult Here
and find a link to  the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice.
 














4 comments:

  1. Of course one cannot blame her, can one, Curtis.

    It is all always too much to bear.

    But that getting-away-from-oneself...really in her case it would not have been a bad idea, after all, when you think of it.

    Blogging, too, has its moments of rising... and waning.

    It always can and can't get out of itself.

    Heard on my Walkman earlier in the bitter cold night that a Great Vortex will occur on 11/11/11. It will last 26,000 years. Its effects will be complicated, localized, and will vary in pleasurability (or lack of same) according to location.

    I like a safe prediction.

    But, in any case, it is all but impossible to imagine the bewilderment that might have overtaken Henry Green had he been made to live through these times.

    The Blitz and the Factory can have been nothing next to this.

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  2. I have listened to an invaluable set of cds where her comrades, husband discuss her-and it is fascinating. I can't say more-because I want to write about it! thanks for the good advice. pgt

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  4. Tom: As someone who wakes up regularly at intervals like 3:33, 4:44, etc., 11/11/11 is particularly meaningful for me. My calendar page is currently blank for that day. Since the "Recovery Summer" label seems to have been abandoned by Washington DC and free for public 2011 use, we've decided that it's our personal recovery summer and getting away from myself a bit will be one of my goals. Reading through the Surviving collection the other day, I rediscovered that very late piece (from 1963) where Green wrote: "Love your wife, love your cat and stay perfectly quiet, if possible not to leave the house." Given current state of things, I see (and feel) your point. Gaye: I'm looking forward to reading your Woolf post on Little Augury. The Zurburan painting will, I think, keep me mentally cool and refreshed and my thoughts happily occupied during a graduation ceremony later today. But (I'm happy to boast), Jane aced her finals and made us very proud this year in school. She's off to England on Saturday (Cambridge for 10 days) and then to camp in Denmark, ME (a new place on the map for us). Recovery Summer Begins. Curtis P.S. Home from graduation. Jane and her friends looked lovely. But these things never ever change. C.

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