WOOLFING # 36

“(…) I was just thinking about her death. That's always been such a strong image: going to the river with your pockets full of stones."

Florence Welch – on VW’s death

Virginia Woolf left us 75 years ago. As soon as her pockets were full of stones so as she could drown ‘till death, her pain came to an end. However, her legacy as a novelist and intellectual still remains with us after this period.

One of VW’s latest influences is Florence Welch, lead singer and composer from Florence + The Machine. Ceremonials (the band’s second album) brought one of the most powerful songs about Virginia’s tragedy: “What the Water Gave Me” is not only inspired by Woolf’s suicide, but also shows the importance of Frida Kahlo’s painting to Welch’s song-writing…

Frida Kahlo - "Lo Que el Agua Me Dió" (1938)

“WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME”

(Florence Welch & Francis "Eg" White)

Time it took us

To where the water was

That’s what the water gave me

And time goes quicker

Between the two of us

Oh, my love, don’t forsake me

Take what the water gave me

Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

Pockets full of stones

Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

And oh, poor Atlas

The world’s a beast of a burden

You’ve been holding up a long time

And all this longing

And the ships are left to rust

That’s what the water gave us

So lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

Pockets full of stones

Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

‘Cause they took your loved ones

But returned them in exchange for you

But would you have it any other way?

Would you have it any other way?

You couldn't have it any other way

‘Cause she’s a cruel mistress

And a bargain must be made

But oh, my love, don’t forget me

When I let the water take me

So lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the over flow

Pockets full of stones

Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

So lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

Pockets full of stones

Lay me down

Let the only sound

Be the overflow

We really hope that Virginia Woolf may rest in peace after having an intense life characterised by genius, pain and sorrow…

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 # 34

On this day in 1913, thirty-one-year-old writer Virginia Woolf delivers the manuscript of her first novel, The Voyage Out, to her publisher.
“I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

WOOLFING # 33

Happy Women's Day!

 
"Love, the poet said, is the woman's whole existence." 

Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

WOOLFING # 32

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”

— Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

WOOLFING # 31

STICK IT TO THE MAN WITH 10 VIRGINIA WOOLF QUESTIONS FOR THINKERS 

By MEAGHAN WAGNER

Virginia Woolf, born this week in 1882, was a singular figure in literature and in history.  A writer whose work wouldn't be appreciated for decades after her own life, Woolf nevertheless came to be considered a seminal modernist and exerted influence on major thinkers of the day through letters and conversation. Her tenacious focus on women, particularly the inner lives of "average" women, and her eloquent way of expressing the detriment of double standards are what set her apart from her contemporaries and blazed a trail for women in all professions, writing and beyond.
In large part, her success stemmed from her willingness to challenge conventions. Her brothers were formally educated at Cambridge and she had no compunction about showing her resentment at being denied the same opportunity. Instead, she became a strong advocate of independent education especially in the forms of broad reading and writing beyond the accepted cannon. Perhaps because of this, one quality that pervades all of her writing -- fiction, nonfiction, even her personal diaries -- is the propensity to ask questions. Often it's rhetorical, occasionally it's more stylistic, but always her questions push the reader to think independently.So in celebration of Woolf's 134th birthday, we've assembled a list of some of her most thought-provoking questions for you to ponder for yourself.

1. How could one leap on the back of life and wring its scruff? (“20 February 1930.” A Moment's Liberty, 1990)

2. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner? (Jacob's Room, 1922)

3. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question. (To the Lighthouse, 1927)

4. I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill. ("Professions for Women." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays ,1942)

5. Here I come to one of the memoir writer’s difficulties — one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: ‘This is what happened’; but they do not say what the person was like to whom it happened. Who was I then?  (A Sketch of the Past, 1939)

6. But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? (Mrs. Dalloway, 1925)

7. Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different. ("Professions for Women." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays ,1942)

8. Perhaps I have been too happy for my soul's good? And does some of my discontent come from feeling that? (“2 January 1923.” A Moment's Liberty,1990)

9. Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement — is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self.  (A Room of One's Own, 1929)

10. Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life. (“15 September 1926.” A Moment's Liberty, 1990)

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