As a child, every summer, our family would go on vacation at Tarand Manor in St Ives, where I met the Godreve Lighthouse.
When I was 13 years old, my mom, who died of the flu, had my first nervous breakdown.
At the age of 25, I moved to Fitzroy Square and started writing my first novel.
At the age of 30, I got married with a husband named Leonard Woolf. The following year, I attempted suicide for the second time, but I failed.
Since then, I have been thinking and writing. During World War II, my husband and I's homes in London were all destroyed.
At the age of 59, I finished my last book.
It didn't take long for me to write a letter to my husband, then fill my pocket with stones and walk into the Osse River.
"I just want to say that the happiness of my life comes from you."
What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you.
"I can't continue to ruin your life. I don't think there are two people who are happier than we once were. ”
I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
My original name was Adeline Virginia Stephen, and people often remember my later name, Virginia Woolf.
[English] Virginia Woolf
She is known as the "literary pioneer of twentieth-century women's literature" and one of the avant-garde pioneers of the British literary scene.
T.S. Eliot called her "the center of the literary life of lunology."
"She used one hand to fend off the onslaught of fate, and the other hurriedly wrote down her own things on the paper." Kafka said so about her.
Her novels were named to Time Magazine's "100 Best Novels" and are among the most moving and revolutionary works of art in the 20 world.
She is the spiritual leader of countless girls and the shaper of women's ideal life.
"Life is not an arrangement, but a pursuit, and the meaning of life may never be there, but we must also feel this life without answers."
She is like a beacon, shining on the self in the hearts of women.
In the distance, there will always be light.
Today is the 140th anniversary of Woolf's birth, commemorating this legendary female writer with both melancholy and elegant temperament.
Woolf's most autobiographical novel
Dedicated to the deeds and deeds of our fathers and mothers, and to the lives that have hurt us
Wouldn't forget, she thought, as she gathered up some of the pictures he had cut out—a refrigerator, a lawn mower, a gentleman in an evening dress—little children would forget nothing. Therefore, what a person says and does is a matter of great importance, and they can feel relaxed after they go to bed. At this time, she did not have to care about anyone. She can be alone, she can be in a state of nature. That's exactly what she often feels needed now—to think; oh, not even to think. Just be silent; alone. All outward, splendid, linguistic existence and action disappear; man retracts himself with a sense of solemnity, a wedge-shaped secret core that is invisible to others. She continued to weave socks even as she sat upright, but it was in this way that she felt herself; and this self, free from all external appendages, was free to engage in the most peculiar adventures. When the activity of life is temporarily reduced, the field of experience seems endless. She imagined that everyone felt possessing this infinite inner resource; she herself, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, all felt that our outward appearance, the things that people used to know us, were simply naïve. Beneath this surface is darkness, ever-expanding, unfathomable; but from time to time we rise to the surface, and it is through which you see us. She seemed to feel the boundlessness of her inner horizons. There was everything she had never seen before; the plains of India; she felt herself in Rome lifting the heavy leather curtain of a church. This hidden kernel can go anywhere because no one can see it. No one could stop it, she thought ecstatically. There is freedom, there is tranquility, and the most gratifying thing is to be able to rest intact on a stable and consolidated platform. In her experience, as a person in life she could never get a break (she had now knitted an elaborate trick out of a sweater knit), only as a wedge-shaped secret kernel. Without being a human being, you lose your troubles, your anxieties, your restlessness; whenever everything comes together in this peace, this rest, this eternity, the joy of triumph over life wells forth between her lips; she pauses at the thought of this, and looks out the window, and meets the last long and steady beam of light of the three flashes of the lighthouse, which belongs to her, for always gazing at them with such a mood at this moment, she cannot help but associate herself with one of the things she sees And this thing, this long and steady beam of light, is her beam. She often found herself sitting there staring, with a work in her hand, until she became something she was staring at—like the beam of light. It would elevate one or two of the sentences buried in her mind, like this one—"Little children will forget nothing, little children will not forget anything"—and she would repeat them and start adding, "It will end, it will end," she said. It would come, it would come, and suddenly she added that we were all in the palm of God's hand.
Excerpt from "To the Lighthouse"
Write a woman's life in one day
A dinner party, a group of old acquaintances, a lazy afternoon of a middle-class noblewoman
She frowned, and she stomped her feet. She had to go back to Septimus, for it was almost time to go to Sir William Bradshaw's house. She had to go back and tell him, back to him sitting in the green chair under the tree talking to herself, or talking to the dead Evans. She had only seen Evans once in a hurry in a store. He looked like a gentle and pleasant man, a good friend of Septimus, who had died in the Great War.
But everyone has encountered this kind of thing. Everyone has friends who died in the great war. Everyone has to give up something when they get married. She gave up her home and moved into this terrible city. But Septimus allowed herself to think of something terrible, and she would do the same if she tried. He became more and more eccentric. He said someone was talking behind the bedroom wall. Mrs. Fillmer thought it was too strange. He also had hallucinations—he saw the head of an old woman in the middle of a fern tree. However, as long as he wants, he can live quickly. They sat on the top floor of the bus to Hampton Court Palace, and they were very happy that time. The grass was full of little red and yellow flowers, and he said it was like a floating lamp, and he said it was laughing and laughing, making up stories. Suddenly, he said, "Now we're going to kill ourselves." They were standing by the river, and he was looking at the river, a look she had seen in his eyes before, and it was in his eyes whenever a train or a bus passed, and she felt that he was leaving her, and she grabbed him by the arm. But on the way home he was very quiet — very sane. He would argue with her about suicide, explaining how evil people were and how he could see how they were making up lies as they walked down the road. He knew all their thoughts, he said, and he knew everything. He understood the meaning of the world, he said.
But when they got home he could hardly walk. He lay down on the couch and let her hold his hand so that he wouldn't fall down, fall, fall into the fire! He shouted. He saw many faces on the wall laughing at him, cursing him with terrible, disgusting words, and many hands pointing at him around the screens. In fact, no one else was present at all. But he began to speak loudly, to answer others, to argue, to cry and laugh, to get so excited that he asked her to write everything down. It's all nonsense, about death, about Miss Isabelle Ball. She couldn't take it anymore and wanted to go back to her own house.
Now that she was so close to him, she could see him clasping his hands and muttering to himself as he looked into the sky. But Dr. Holmes said he was not sick. So what the hell is going on? - Why did he walk away? Why was he startled when she sat down beside him, frowning at her, moving away, pointing to her hand, picking it up and looking at her in horror?
Was it because she took off her wedding ring? "My hands are thin like this." She said. "I put the ring in my handbag." She told him.
He let go of her hand. Their marriage was over, he thought bitterly and easily. The rope has been cut; he has stepped on the horse; he is free, and Providence has decided that he, Septimus, the sovereign of mankind, deserves to be free; alone (since his wife has thrown away her wedding ring, since she has left him), he, Septimus, alone, before the masses, was called before the masses to hear the truth, to understand the truth, and now finally after all the hard work of civilization—the Greeks, the Romans, Shakespeare, Darwin, and now himself—are about to give intact..."To whom? He asked out loud. to the Prime Minister. The rustle above his head replied in a whisper. This supreme secret must be reported to the Cabinet. First, the trees are alive; second, there is no sin; and secondly, there is love, universal love, and he gasps and trembles and murmurs, uttering these profound truths in pain, which are so profound and obscure that it takes great effort to say them, but which have forever and completely changed the world.
Excerpt from Mrs. Dalloway
Woolf's first truly experimental novel
His youth and confusion were intercepted by the smiles of the times...
People say that the sky is the same everywhere. Wanderers on the journey, shipwreck survivors, uprooted people, and dying people all find comfort in this idea, and there is no doubt that if you have a mystical temperament, then comfort, even explanation, will pour down from the surface of the continuous sky. But above Cambridge— at least over the roof of the church at King's College— it was different. On the sea, a great city will illuminate the night sky. Wouldn't it be strange to think that the sky had been washed into the crevices of the King's College Church and had become brighter, thinner, and more sparkling than the sky elsewhere? Does Cambridge shine not only at night, but also during the day?
You see, when they went in to worship, the robes were blown up briskly by the wind, as if there were no dense flesh in them. Although the large boots under the robe are marching, and the face is like a sculpture, the certainty and authority are controlled under the piety. How neatly they lined up as they marched. Thick candles stand upright; young men in white robes stand up; and a convenient eagle-shaped prayer table supports a huge white Bible for reference.
A sloping light shines precisely through every window, giving it purple and yellow even where it is covered with dust, and when the light falls on the stone, the stone is printed with soft reds, yellows, and purples. Whether it is snow or green leaves, winter or summer, it is powerless to affect the ancient stained glass. Just as the four sides of the lantern protect the flame so that it burns steadily even on a stormy night—burning steadily and solemnly illuminating the trunk—so everything is in order inside the church. The people's voices sounded serious; the organ answered wisely and cautiously, as if to prop up human faith with the approval of nature. Men in white robes walked from one side to the other; sometimes up the steps, sometimes down the steps, and everything was in order.
...... If you put a lantern under a tree, every bug in the forest will crawl to the lamp—an incomprehensible collection, because though they climb and turn desperately and bang their heads against the glass, there seems to be no purpose—something meaningless is motivating them. They circle slowly around the lanterns, bumping as if to ask them to enter, the most obsessive of which is a large toad, pushing forward with its shoulders, and you will get bored looking at them. Ah, but what's that? A terrible burst of pistol fire rang out—a crisp crackling sound; sound waves were sent in all directions—and the silence smoothly drowned out the sound. A tree — a tree fell, a kind of death in the forest. After that, the sound of the wind among the trees sounded melancholy and sad.
But this liturgy in the King's College chapel – why are women allowed? Undoubtedly, if the mind is deserted (Jacob looks extremely absent-minded, his head is tilted back, and the hymn book turns the wrong page), if the mind is deserted, it is because several hat shops and cabinet after cabinet of brightly colored skirts are displayed on the chairs with pudded seats. Although the head and body may be religious, you can feel the presence of the individual – some people prefer blue, others prefer brown; some people like feathers, others like pansy and forget-me-not flowers. No one wants to bring a dog into church. For although the dog is fine on the gravel road and does not show disrespect to the flowers, if it wanders down the aisle, looks east and west, raises its paws, and walks toward a pillar with a frightening blood-cold purpose (if you are one of the church congregations, alone, there is no embarrassment), it will completely ruin the service. The same was true of these women—though each of them was religious, prominent, and vouched for by their husbands' theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek. God knows why this is the case. First of all, Jacob thought to himself, they were all ugly.
Excerpt from Jacob's House
Editor: Xu VV