[Vwoolf] First Encounters with Virginia on Blogging Woolf

[Roberta Rubenstein]

           As an English major at the University of Colorado during the
1960s, I knew I wanted to attend graduate school but hadn’t been able to
decide on which period to focus. The first novel  I read by Virginia Woolf,
*Mrs. Dalloway*, assigned in a course on modern fiction, not only
galvanized me but immediately answered my question about literary
concentration: it had to be modernism, with an emphasis on Woolf. *Mrs.
Dalloway* was by far the most illuminating and stylistically unique novel I
had ever read.  As a twenty-year-old with limited worldly as well as
literary experience, I couldn’t yet understand Septimus Warren Smith’s
self-judged inability to feel as a painful manifestation of his feeling too
much, but I knew that I wanted to better understand him, and Clarissa, and
Peter, and that day in June, and Woolf’s method of expressing consciousness
and time. I too (like several others who have offered memories of their
encounters) was puzzled to discover that most people outside of my
literature courses (and inside some of them as well) had only heard of
Virginia Woolf in connection with Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
No one, including me, seemed to be able to explain the obscure connection
between the two writers.

           Subsequently, I was fortunate enough to study Virginia Woolf and
her response to the Russian writers at Birkbeck College, University of
London.  It was truly thrilling to read all of her fiction while living in
Bloomsbury. I’ll never forget my first experience of *The Waves, *which
struck me to my depths in a way no other novel had ever done. Yet the novel
to which I continue to return is *To the Lighthouse*, which I now know like
the back of my hand. While pursuing my doctoral degree on Woolf, I also had
the good fortune (as some of you know) to discuss her life and fiction with
Leonard Woolf, who was 87 when I met him at the age of 23, and who was
exceptionally generous to me and to other scholars with an interest in his
wife’s work.

           I’ve remained enthralled with Virginia Woolf for my entire
academic career.  Re-reading, teaching, and writing about her novels and
essays over the course of more than four decades have helped me to know
myself.  I echo what others have expressed: thank you, Virginia Woolf, for
what you have meant for my inner life as well as my scholarly life.

        Roberta Rubenstein




On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 3:03 PM, LAURIE REICHE <p.reiche at comcast.net> wrote:

> I enthusiastically second that cheer!
> On that note, I stayed up until 4 in the morning reading Janet Malcolm's
> new book, *Forty-One False Starts - Essays on Artists and Writers* and,
> even though I've read every book known to mankind about Woolf & co., I
> still could not, to my delight, put down the essay about "the legend of
> Bloomsbury," called, "A House Of One's Own." There's something about being
> alive in this moment and watching from afar "fate" unfold and in that
> unfolding all that would be offered to you and me!…(too sleepy to be
> profound!)
> Laurie
>
> On Aug 27, 2013, at 11:05 AM, <kllevenback at att.net> wrote:
>
> e
>
>
>
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>
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