A Pause and Then the Reading On
Sep. 17th, 2017 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdayI had decided, earlier in the day, that I MUST finish reading the Virginia Woolf biography by this evening. Because, after today, I have only 10 days to read the Virginia Woolf novel, Mrs. Dalloway, which will be the subject of this month's book club meeting at the Liverpool Library.
However, having gotten to Friday, March 28th, 1941, and then a paragraph beyond, I've had to pause. It's, you know, one of those things that you know is coming but there's always some little twist which finds that weakness in your emotional preparation and exploits it.
For me, I think it was this:
Leonard [her husband] dealt with the necessary inquest and arranged
a cremation, which he attended alone. He buried the ashes in the gar-
den at Monk's House, under one of the two elm trees they had named
"Leonard" and "Virginia." [Alexandra Harris, Virginia Woolf, Thames &
Hudson, 2011, p. 157.]
IDK if they had discussed this, in the months during which they endured The Blitz, saw their house in London destroyed, and experienced Virginia slipping into another depression which they both feared she might not survive.
They had in the meantime decided that, should Hitler's forces successfully invade England, they would die together by ingesting a drug supplied by Virginia's younger brother. So that this, as events had actually unfolded, had not been the plan.
And yet, I thought it brave of them both. Leonard, for living out his life and courageously managing her legacy, and Virginia for wanting to spare him what she was certain would be her slow and exhausting decline and death.
The first time I encountered her last letter to him, I simply couldn't finish it. But now, as I read it again, I sense the comfort that I'm very sure she'd hoped that Leonard would find in reading it.
And so, after a pause, I'll be reading on, hopefully having gained an appreciation of the writer's life which will likewise enhance my understanding of her novel and enable me to contribute to the discussion of it in Liverpool at the end of the month...
LPK
Dreamwidth
9.17.2017
However, having gotten to Friday, March 28th, 1941, and then a paragraph beyond, I've had to pause. It's, you know, one of those things that you know is coming but there's always some little twist which finds that weakness in your emotional preparation and exploits it.
For me, I think it was this:
Leonard [her husband] dealt with the necessary inquest and arranged
a cremation, which he attended alone. He buried the ashes in the gar-
den at Monk's House, under one of the two elm trees they had named
"Leonard" and "Virginia." [Alexandra Harris, Virginia Woolf, Thames &
Hudson, 2011, p. 157.]
IDK if they had discussed this, in the months during which they endured The Blitz, saw their house in London destroyed, and experienced Virginia slipping into another depression which they both feared she might not survive.
They had in the meantime decided that, should Hitler's forces successfully invade England, they would die together by ingesting a drug supplied by Virginia's younger brother. So that this, as events had actually unfolded, had not been the plan.
And yet, I thought it brave of them both. Leonard, for living out his life and courageously managing her legacy, and Virginia for wanting to spare him what she was certain would be her slow and exhausting decline and death.
The first time I encountered her last letter to him, I simply couldn't finish it. But now, as I read it again, I sense the comfort that I'm very sure she'd hoped that Leonard would find in reading it.
And so, after a pause, I'll be reading on, hopefully having gained an appreciation of the writer's life which will likewise enhance my understanding of her novel and enable me to contribute to the discussion of it in Liverpool at the end of the month...
LPK
Dreamwidth
9.17.2017
