[Vwoolf] a video on why Woolf matters

Tue Oct 28 09:21:31 EDT 2014

I would argue that Woolf thought more deeply than others, including
other writers, about language, semiotics, and alternatives to the
conventional sign system. See the essay "Craftsmanship" (or listen to
it: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/29/craftsmanship-virginia-woolf-speaks-1937/).

See also these passages from "The Waves":

"I will not conjugate the verb," said Louis, 'until Bernard has said
it. My father is a banker in Brisbane and I speak with an Australian
accent. I will wait and copy Bernard. He is English. They are all
English I know the lesson by heart. I know more than they will ever
know. I knew my cases and my genders; I could know everything in the
world if I wished. But I do not wish to come to the top and say my
lesson. My roots are threaded, like fibres in a flower-pot, round and
round about the world...They laugh at my neatness, at my Australian
accent. I will now try to imitate Bernard softly lisping Latin."

"Those are white words," said Susan, "like stones one picks up by the
seashore."

"They flick their tails right and left as I speak them,' said Bernard.
'They wag their tails; they flick their tails; they move through the
air in flocks, now this way, now that way, moving all together, now
dividing, now coming together."

"Those are yellow words, those are fiery words,' said Jinny. 'I should
like a fiery dress, a yellow dress, a fulvous dress to wear in the
evening."

"Each tense," said Neville, "means differently. There is an order in
this world; there are distinctions, there are differences in this
world, upon whose verge I step. For this is only a beginning."
........
"I am astonished, as I draw the veil off things with words, how much,
how infinitely more than I can say, I have observed. More and more
bubbles into my mind as I talk, images and images. "
........
"My mind hums hither and thither with its veil of words for
everything... There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what
meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word?
It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is
futile. All is experiment and adventure.
.........
"When I read, a purple rim runs round the black edge of the textbook.
Yet I cannot follow any word through its changes. I cannot follow any
thought from present to past."
...........
"The trees, scattered, put on order; the thick green of the leaves
thinned itself to a dancing light. I netted them under with a sudden
phrase. I retrieved them from formlessness with words."
-L.D.

On Oct 27, 2014 7:58 PM, "Jeannette Smyth"
<jeannette_smyth at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> The beauty of the quotidian: moments of being.
>
> There's also a remarkable thread thru "A Haunted House" , On Being Ill,  and her statement somewhere in the shards of her madness (at Hogarth?), she saw and heard her mother again, was it? The ghosts of Thoby, Jacob, Percival, and Mrs. Ramsay form a lacuna at the center of her designs which is modern and tragic and abstract all at once.
>
> The numinousness of it all, and in this age where the writing of novels seems to be a paleolithic exercise for scholars of dead language, I think a video about Virginia Woolf should at least touch on her sense that writing mattered, that you could absolutely strike sentences out of the rock hard crystal to last forever, that it was the only way there was to get the moments of being to stay a while. They were so beautiful. From John Bayley's 1984 review of the final volume of the diary:
>
> "Katherine Mansfield writes in her journal what Virginia Woolf’s Diary continually implies: ‘I must not forget that.’ She must not forget the way the hens looked, and how the rain soaked her thin shoes. A few days before her death Virginia Woolf recorded the haddock and sausage meat. ‘I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.’"
> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n16/john-bayley/superchild
>
> The sausage and the haddock.
>
> Jeannette Smyth
>
>
>
> On Oct 27, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Candis McLean wrote:
>
>> How do people really communicate? It has nothing to do with words.
>>
>> From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+hcmclean=shaw.ca at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Kristin Czarnecki
>> Sent: October-27-14 11:35 AM
>> To: Andre Gerard; Ella Ophir
>> Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu; ilana.simons at gmail.com
>> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] a video on why Woolf matters
>>
>> The beauty and importance to be found in the everyday, the quotidian aspects of life.
>>
>> From: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+kristin_czarnecki=georgetowncollege.edu at lists.osu.edu] On Behalf Of Andre Gerard
>> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 1:31 PM
>> To: Ella Ophir
>> Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu; ilana.simons at gmail.com
>> Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] a video on why Woolf matters
>>
>> Thinking in common...culture as a collective enterprise.
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Ella Ophir <e.ophir at usask.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> Certainly the nature of the "self," its fluidity, instability, permeability (Mrs. D for a lacunalloway: ". . . she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.") All her writing on biography and autobiography, what it is to "know" oneself or another.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Ilana Simons <ilana.simons at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi group,
>>>> I'm seeking input--I'd love a group brainstorm leading to a video about V Woolf.
>>>>
>>>> My Project:
>>>> I'm making a video about Woolf for The School of Life, a learning center partly founded by Alain de Botton, in which philosophy is made (more) accessible.  The center produces a video series about big thinkers.  See here for examples:
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/theschooloflifetv
>>>>
>>>> Each video in the series tries to isolate 1-4 big ideas developed by thinkers.  you can check out the link above for how they do this.
>>>>
>>>> Our Challenge:
>>>> If you had to name 1-4 aspects of life in which Woolf thought more deeply than others have, what would those topics be?
>>>> And what are the ways in which she developed that aspect of life?
>>>>
>>>> Possible Examples:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Gender.
>>>> Woolf looked at how the genders occupied their traditional gender roles, and how these roles served to create a sense of commitment, of community, but also served to distance the genders from each other....
>>>>
>>>> 2. Role of Silence in communication
>>>> Woolf had a sense of what goes unspoken in any conversation, attuning us to how much of our communication is transmitted between the words we actually speak.
>>>>
>>>> 3. Time
>>>> or Solitude
>>>> or ...wanna throw an idea in the hat?  I'd appreciate your brainwork.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Ilana
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Vwoolf mailing list
>>>> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
>>>> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ella Ophir
>>> Assistant Professor, Department of English
>>> University of Saskatchewan
>>> 9 Campus Drive
>>> Saskatoon, SK  S7N 5A5
>>> Tel. (306) 966-2056
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Vwoolf mailing list
>>> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
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>>
>>
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