WOOLFING # 43

"With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes—one of the tragedies of married life."

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

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

WOOLFING # 35

On this day in 1917 Leonard and Virginia Woolf purchased a small, used handpress; it was delivered to Hogarth House, their West London home, a month later, and the Hogarth Press was born. Over the next three decades the Woolfs would refine their "rather eccentric and amusing printing antics", eventually publishing 525 titles over three decades, many of them by other influential modernists and most of them collector's items today.

Source: http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=03/23/2015

WOOLFING # 30

On this day in 1924, Virginia Woolf and her husband bought a house at 52 Tavistock Square, in the Bloomsbury district of London near the British Museum. Woolf had been associated with the district since 1902, when she took a house in the area with her three siblings after their father's death. She had remained in the neighborhood, becoming a central character of the "Bloomsbury Group," a set of writers and thinkers including biographer Lytton Strachey and writer E.M. Forster.

(NOTE: 52 Tavistock Square: The Bloomsbury house Woolf lived in the longest, and where she wrote most of her novels, was destroyed in WWII and replaced by part of the Tavistock Hotel. At 52 Tavistock Square, Virginia and Leonard lived on the top two floors, with a firm of solicitors on the ground two floors, and the Hogarth Press in the basement, where Virginia also had a writing room.)

Image: Bust of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square

WOOLFING # 28

From Virginia to Leonard: 

"If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone, in the dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my own condition".

WOOLFING # 26

Leonard Woolf: "How was your sleep?"
Virginia Woolf: "Uneventful..."

WOOLFING # 21

Em 28 de Março de 1941, Virginia Woolf decidiu encerrar seus 59 anos de angústia e sofrimento ao vestir um belo casaco de pele, encher os bolsos de pedras e se atirar nas frias águas do rio Ouse.

Certa de que teria um terceiro colapso nervoso - nos outros dois, chegou a tentar o suicídio -, estava receosa de que jamais iria se recuperar de mais uma crise. Não conseguia mais escrever e estava receosa com os desdobramentos da Segunda Guerra Mundial, que já tinha bombardeado Londres e tinha destruído a residência do casal Woolf em 1940.

O suicídio foi, ao contrário do que muitos acreditam, foi o seu maior ato de coragem. A carta de despedida endereçada ao marido Leonard Woolf retrata com exatidão o sofrimento de Virginia:

Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

 V.

Neste vídeo, a atriz Louise Brealey faz uma leitura dramatizada da carta de Virginia Woolf:

WOOLFING # 12

Christopher Ondaatje (Michael Ondaatje's older brother), is the author of Woolf in Ceylon (2005), an account of Leonard Woolf’s eleven years working on the island in the British Civil Service, the job which he gave up to marry Virginia Stephen. 

"Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man."
-Leonard Woolf