[Vwoolf] larks

[Davis, Michael]

I've always thought that both senses are in play here and (with regard to
the second sense of the bird) that George Meredith's poem "TheLark
Ascending " (which in turn inspired Ralph Vaughn Williams' 1921 composition
of the same title) is in the near background.  Of course the specificity of
the lark is that it has a sudden pattern of ascent (hence Meredith's title)
and so "what a lark, what a plunge" (if that's the right transcription)
establishes from  the outset the recurring  pattern of sudden
(emotional/psychological) rise and fall for the novel.

Michael F. Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Associate Chair
Department  of English
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY 13214
USA




On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 7:08 AM, Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no>wrote:

>  I can't be the first to be struck by the fact that the word "lark"
> appears very near the opening of both *Mrs Dalloway* and *To the
> Lighthouse*. But are they the same, etymologically? The TTL lark is
> unambiguous - up with the lark refers to the bird. But about "What a lark!
> What a plunge!" (quoted from memory as I'm on hoiliday) I'm less sure. It
> might also be a reference to the bird, which does rise and plunge. But it
> seems to me more likely to be related to lark meaning "game", still found
> in (I think) Lancashire dialect, where "laiking" means playing. This
> meaning is (again, I think) etymologically unrelated to the bird, and
> descends from an old Norse root from what I can gather. In modern
> Norwegian, "å leke" means "to play" as in a child's game. In modern British
> informal speech, "what a lark" does not suggest any relationship to the
> feathered creature, at least not to me.
>
> So: is Clarissa comparing herself to the bird, or is she thinking that
> it's like being a child again and rushing outdoors to play?
>
> Jeremy Hawthorn
>
>
>
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