Virginia Woolf, página 17 de 54

Al Faro esprime con straordinaria pienezza le caratteristiche della narrativa di Virginia Woolf, quel senso di frammentazione, di dissoluzione della realta esterna che puo essere ricostruita soltanto partendo dalla realta interna dei personaggi, dai pensieri, dalle sensazioni, dalle emozioni, dai ricordi che consapevolmente o inconsapevolmente attraversano la loro coscienza. Articolato in due "momenti" complementari e opposti, il romanzo si esprime dapprima nel tempo dell'attesa, della possibilita, della fluidita; quindi nel tempo della realizzazione, della conclusivita, della concretezza, quando la gita al faro annunciata un decennio prima finalmente si compie, ma in circostanze profondamente mutate.

En 1928 a Virginia Woolf le propusieron dar una serie de charlas sobre el tema de la mujer y la novela. Lejos de cualquier dogmatismo o presunción, planteó la cuestión desde un punto de vista realista, valiente y muy particular. Una pregunta: ¿qué necesitan las mujeres para escribir buenas novelas? Una sola respuesta: independencia económica y personal, es decir, Una habitación propia. Sólo hacía nueve años que se le había concedido el voto a la mujer y aún quedaba mucho camino por recorrer. Son muchos los repliegues psicológicos y sociales implicados en este ensayo de tan inteligente exposición; fascinantes los matices históricos que hacen que el tema de la condición femenina y la enajenación de la mujer en la sociedad no haya perdido ni un ápice de actualidad. Partiendo de un tratamiento directo y empleando un lenguaje afilado, irónico e incisivo, Virginia Woolf narra una parábola cautivadora para ilustrar sus opiniones. Un relato de lectura apasionante, la contribución de una exquisita narradora al siempre polémico asunto del feminismo desde una perspectiva inevitablemente literaria.

Novela en la que se inspiró la película Las horas, protagonizada por Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore y Nicole Kidman, "La señora Dalloway" relata un día en la vida de una mujer de la clase alta londinense desde el punto de vista de una conciencia que experimenta con plena intensidad cada instante vivido, en el que se mezclan sentimientos, pensamientos y emociones y se condensan el pasado, el entorno y el presente.Novela en la que se inspiró la película Las horas, protagonizada por Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore y Nicole Kidman, "La señora Dalloway" relata un día en la vida de una mujer de la clase alta londinense desde el punto de vista de una conciencia que experimenta con plena intensidad cada instante vivido, en el que se mezclan sentimientos, pensamientos y emociones y se condensan el pasado, el entorno y el presente.

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He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others'.So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections, Woolf describes the changing weather all over Britain, taking in both London and countryside as if in a birds-eye view before focusing in on her characters. Although these descriptions move across the whole of England in single paragraphs, Woolf only rarely and briefly broadens her view to the world outside Britain.

The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into modern times without aging perceptibly.As a teenage boy, the handsome Orlando serves as a page at the Elizabethan court and becomes "favorite" of the elderly queen. After her death he falls deeply in love with Sasha, an elusive and somewhat feral princess in the entourage of the Russian embassy. This episode, of love and ice skating against the background of the celebrated Frost Fair held on the frozen Thames River during the Great Frost of 1608, when "birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground", inspired some of Virginia Woolfs most bravura writing:Great statesmen, in their beards and ruffs, despatched affairs of state under the crimson awning of the Royal Pagoda ... Frozen roses fell in showers when the Queen and her ladies walked abroad ... Near London Bridge, where the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty fathoms, a wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible, lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last autumn, overladen with apples. The old bumboat woman, who was carrying her fruit to market on the Surrey side, sat there in her plaids and farthingales with her lap full of apples, for all the world as if she were about to serve a customer, though a certain blueness about the lips hinted the truth.[1]The melting of the ice coincides with Sashas unfaithfulness and sudden departure for Russia. The desolate Orlando returns to writing The Oak Tree, a long poem started and abandoned in his youth. He meets and hospitably entertains an invidious poetaster, Nicholas Greene, who proceeds to find fault with Orlandos writing. Later Orlando feels betrayed on learning that he has been lampooned in one of Greenes subsequent works. A period of contemplating love and life leads Orlando to appreciate the value of his ancestral stately home, which he proceeds to furnish lavishly. There he plays host to the populace.Ennui sets in and the harassment of a persistent suitor, the tall and somewhat androgynous Archduchess Harriet, leads Orlando to look for a way to flee the country. He is appointed by King Charles II as ambassador to Constantinople. Orlando performs his duties well, until a night of civil unrest and murderous riots. He falls asleep for a period of days, resistant to all efforts to rouse him. Upon awakening he finds that he has metamorphosed into a woman the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a womans body. Although the narrator of the novel professes to be disturbed and befuddled by Orlandos change, the fictional Orlando complacently accepts the change. From here on, Orlandos amorous inclinations change frequently although she stays biologically female.

It was an uncertain spring. The weather, perpetually changing, sent clouds of blue and of purple flying over the land. In the country farmers, looking at the fields, were apprehensive; in London umbrellas were opened and then shut by people looking up at the sky. But in April such weather was to be expected. Thousands of shop assistants made that remark, as they handed neat parcels to ladies in flounced dresses standing on the other side of the counter at Whiteleys and the Army and Navy Stores. Interminable processions of shoppers in the West end, of business men in the East, paraded the pavements, like caravans perpetually marching,--so it seemed to those who had any reason to pause, say, to post a letter, or at a club window in Piccadilly. The stream of landaus, victorias and hansom cabs was incessant; for the season was beginning. In the quieter streets musicians doled out their frail and for the most part melancholy pipe of sound, which was echoed, or parodied, here in the trees of Hyde Park, here in St. Jamess by the twitter of sparrows and the sudden outbursts of the amorous but intermittent thrush.

Virginia Woolf nos plantea en este relato una utopia feminista: ¿Que pasaria si todas las mujeres jurasen no traer ningun hijo al mundo hasta que no esten satisfechas profesional e intelectualmente?Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), una de las escritoras inglesas mas estimadas del siglo pasado por su literatura y su postura feminista, escribio Una sociedad en 1921 con la intencion de defender la figura de las mujeres como escritoras y artistas. En un claro homenaje a Lisistrata, una comedia clasica de Aristofanes, la autora traza la linea del relato reuniendo a siete mujeres que fundan una sociedad y prometen no traer ninos al mundo hasta no satisfacer sus deseos de tener una vida mas cultural e intelectual. De esta manera, estas siete mujeres se dan por fin un lugar propio en la sociedad londinense del periodo de entreguerras y se reunen para compartir vivencias personales y averiguar cual es el proposito de la vida. Una sociedad esta tan constelado de alusiones historicas, literarias y personales que resulta un claro antecedente literario de su celebre ensayo feminista Un cuarto propio y de sus numerosos escritos en honor a mujeres artistas y escritoras.

The novel takes place in a country house somewhere in England, just before the Second World War. It is the day when the annual pageant is to be performed in the grounds of the house. The pageant is traditionally a celebration of English history, and is attended by the entire local community. The owner of the house is Bartholomew Oliver, a widower and retired Indian Army officer. His sister Lucy, who is also living in the house, is slightly eccentric but harmless. Bartholomew has a son, Giles, who has a job in the city and is restless and frustrated. His wife, Isa, is staying at the house with her two children and has lost interest in Giles. She is attracted to a local gentleman farmer, Haines, although the relationship goes no further than eye contact. In the course of the day, Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge turn up and stay for the pageant. The pageant has been written by Miss La Trobe, a strange and domineering spinster. The day is interspersed with events leading up to the pageant. Lucy Swithin fusses around making all kinds of preparations, from the decorations to the food. Bartholomew frightens his grandson by jumping out at him from behind a newspaper and then calls him a coward when he cries. Mrs Manresa flirts with Bartholomew and Giles and is clearly being provocative, and William Dodge is dismissed as obviously homosexual. The pageant takes place in the evening and is made up of three main parts. After a prologue by a child, the first scene is a Shakespearean scene with romantic dialogue. The second scene is a parody of a restoration comedy, and the third scene is a panorama of Victorian triumph based on a policeman directing the traffic in Hyde Park. The final scene is entitled "Ourselves", at which point Miss La Trobe shocks the audience by turning mirrors on them. The book ends quietly with life returning to normal.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayers men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach.What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"--was that it?--"I prefer men to cauliflowers"--was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace--Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished--how strange it was!--a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase. Some critics see Woolfs friend E. M. Forster as an inspiration for him.Louis is an outsider who seeks acceptance and success. Some critics see in him aspects of T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well.Neville, who may be partly based on another of Woolfs friends, Lytton Strachey, seeks out a series of men, each of whom becomes the present object of his transcendent love.Jinny is a socialite whose world view corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty. There is evidence that she is based on Woolfs friend Mary Hutchinson.Susan flees the city, preferring the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood. Some aspects of Susan recall Woolfs sister Vanessa Bell.Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt and anxiety, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude. She echoes Shelleys poem "The Question" (paraphrased: I shall gather my flowers and present them O! to whom?). Rhoda resembles Virginia Woolf in some respects.Percival, partly based on Woolfs brother, Thoby Stephen, is the god-like but morally flawed hero of the other six. He dies midway through the novel, while engaged on an imperialist quest in British-dominated colonial India. Percival never speaks on his own in The Waves, but readers learn about him in detail as the other six characters repeatedly describe and reflect on him.The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together.

Fino a quarantanni e oltre fui ossessionata dalla presenza di mia madre... Poi un giorno, mentre attraversavo Tavistock Square, pensai al Faro: con grande, involontaria urgenza. Una cosa ne suscitava unaltra... Che cosa aveva mosso quelleffervescenza? Non ne ho idea. Ma scrissi il libro molto rapidamente e, quando lebbi scritto, lossessione cesso. Adesso non la sento piu la voce di mia madre. (Virginia Woolf)