[Vwoolf] a video on why Woolf matters

Tue Oct 28 19:36:32 EDT 2014

Hello Woolfians,

This has been a fun thread, much as it reminds me of a quotation from Henry
James that I used to have painted on a bookshelf: "One does not defend
one's gods. One's god is, in himself, a defense." [paraphrasing, from
memory; please forgive me.]

I feel that about Woolf, which is maybe an unhelpful feeling for your
project, Ilana. Except, maybe it's not: I mean, part of what makes us so
passionate about her writing is in her writing, tout court. So anything you
can do--whether the topic is feminism, the everyday, the homoerotic or
intertextuality--to give readers a sense of the richness that awaits them
when they read Woolf, will be a bonus.

At its best, Alain de Botton's work does that and so I think this project
has a lot of potential.

All best,

Anne

On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 9:21 AM, coruscate818 <coruscate818 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> >>> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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-- 
Anne E. Fernald
<http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/english/faculty/english_faculty/anne_fernald_28537.asp>
Director of Writing/Composition at Lincoln Center,
Associate Professor of English
<http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/english/index.asp>
and Women's Studies <http://www.fordham.edu/womens_studies>
Fordham University
113 W 60th St.
New York NY 10023

212/636-7613
fernald at fordham.edu
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