terça-feira, 9 de agosto de 2016

WOOLFING # 41




Virginia Stephen and Leonard Woolf married on this day in 1912, against all odds. The biographers, and Leonard Woolf himself, point to a number of major hurdles that had to be overcome. Though in Virginia’s circle of friends, Leonard did not belong to the same level of society, and felt himself to be “only recently struggled up … from the stratum of Jewish shopkeepers.” Secondly, they each had to come to terms with the other’s health problems. Leonard’s less serious or ominous infirmity was a nervous tremor that sometimes set his hands shaking so much that he could not sign his name. Virginia’s most recent bout of mental illness had been early in 1912, and serious enough to put her into a nursing home. 

The letter excerpted below is from one which Virginia wrote to Leonard on May 1, 1912, in response to his offer of marriage. The letter gives no clear answer, but in attempting to convey to Leonard her present frame of mind, Virginia includes observations that might cause all but the most determined or unusual lovers to quit the field. After listing several other reasons for her hesitation — she is looking for more than companionship, he is too passionate, too Jewish — she comes to what seems almost a clincher: 
 
  "…I sometimes feel that no one ever has or ever can share something—Its the thing that makes you call me like a hill, or a rock. Again, I want everything—love, children, adventure, intimacy, work…. I sometimes think that if I married you, I could have everything—and then—is it the sexual side of it that comes between us? As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction in you. There are moments—when you kissed me the other day was one—when I feel no more than a rock."

Source: http://www.todayinliterature.com

Translate