[Vwoolf] Prescience: Virginia Woolf's deathday

[Stuart N. Clarke]

And a Hogarth Press author, to boot: "Fairground Music" (1961); "The Tree that Walked" (1967).

Stuart

From: Adolphe Haberer 
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 3:57 PM
To: vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu 
Subject: [Vwoolf] Prescience: Virginia Woolf's deathday

Dear Woolfians, 
I have come across a poem by John Fuller, a Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, Oxford, certainly one of the finest living poets in England. John told me he wrote it in syllabics “in order to accommodate the prose quotations”. It is a bit long, but well worth reading to the end.
Ado Haberer

Prescience
 
To mourn throughout your life
That unknown day when you
Wake up for the last time
Is quite impossible.
It will arrive when it
Decides to, and will not
Be denied, though it be
Painful and unannounced.
 
Still, we toy with this thought
And find the resonance
Attractive to our sense
Of the deep recklessness
Of all physical hopes
Which nonetheless rely
On celebration and
Calendar calculations.
 
No candles on a cake,
Unless a countback from
Your theoretical
Threescore-and-ten might serve.
No congratulations,
Since all you have achieved
Is a noted dwindling.
What a licence for gloom !
 
No presents: far better
A disburdening of
All earthly possessions,
A practised letting go.
And yet the unseen guests
At the non-existent
Party expect some words.
It is that kind of day.
 
Take the example of
Virginia Woolf, who
In 1941
Walked into the Ouse on
The 28th of March,
Thus forever putting
>From her like a locked door
The fear of going mad.
 
On that very same day
A dozen years before,
With deathday prescience
She opened her journal
And her pen sailed over
The calm flowing of the
Page: ‘I met Nessa in
Tottenham Court Road this
 
Afternoon, both of us
Sunk fathoms deep in that
Wash of reflection in
Which we both swim about.’
And then, with precision,
Wrote: ‘Only in myself . . .
Forever bubbles this
Impetuous torrent.’
 
She continued thus in
1929: ‘I
Feel on the verge of some
Strenuous adventure.’
In 1930 (though
She was writing about
Her novel The Waves): ‘How
To end . . . I do not know.’
 
The following year her
Nib broke the surface of
The ink: ‘Arnold Bennett
Died last night’ were its words.
In 1935:
‘Spring triumphant.’ And in
1937:
‘I shall lapse into dreams.’
 
These were deathday speeches:
Gracious, though in places
Troubled; prophetic, though
Never balefully so.
Whatever you are heard
To say on your deathday
You may be sure that it
Will hardly be noticed.
 
In fact, no one will be
There to wish you many
Unhappy returns; no
Cards clatter through your box.
But make no mistake. Death
Will come one day, smiling,
With that shape you must guess:
The stone in his pocket.
 
John Fuller
The Grey Among the Green, London, Chatto and Windus, 1988, p. 24.
New Selected Poems, London, Chatto and Windus, 2012, p. 6.



====================
Adolphe Haberer
Professeur émérite à l'Université Lumière-Lyon 2
1 route de Saint-Antoine
69380 Chazay d'Azergues
33 (0)4 78 43 65 24
adolphe.haberer at univ-lyon2.fr
ado at haberer.fr









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