"Learning can sometimes be, Mrs. Woolf insists, at odds with art.
Learning can sometimes degenerate into superstition. Learning by no means
always makes for wisdom. One is reminded of that passage in The Mark on
the Wall when she reflects how admirable the world might be without
specialists or learned men. …" (1)
" 'Mrs. Ramsay – it was part of her perfect goodness to Lily – sat
there quite simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted
her reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat…'
Then '…she looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas;
it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw clear for a second,
she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; finished. Yes, she
thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.'
” (2)
(1) Winifred Holtby, --_ Virginia Woolf, A Critical Memoir-_, (1935/1978),
pp. 124
(2) ibid., 146.
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"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a
cigarette in a gutter - all are stories. But which is the true story? That
I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard,
waiting for someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making
this note and then another, I do not cling to life."
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931.
(...life clings to me...)
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diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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