Transcript Virginia Woolf Orlando

Virginia Woolf
Orlando
Title: Orlando
Author: Virginia Woolf
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Pages: 0
Publisher: , 0
ISBN: 2869433735
Format: PDF / Kindle / ePub
Size: 5.9 MB
Download: allowed
Description
Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully
constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover,
Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman
in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as
England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the
novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and
the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th
centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando,
now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise
for women.
Insightful reviews
Jim: Another wonderful adventure in words by Woolf. Orlando traces an imaginary nobleperson
through several centuries from the days of Elizabeth and Shakespeare to the Interwar years in
London and the surrounding countryside.
Woolf uses a "biography" style to tell Orlando's story, but this is pure fiction bordering on
magical realism. Orlando inhabits many forms and functions over 300 plus years, encountering
many of the great nobles and writers of Britain, sometimes in their own era, sometimes
transported to Orlando's current incarnation. And here, then, is the central theme of the book fluidity.
Time, gender, identity, history - all are fluid, all are flexible, all have changeable, unfixed edges.
Woolf pushes and probes our ideas of these supposedly fixed states and shows us that "reality"
and "facts" are all in the eye and mind of the perceiver. Her own father was a famous
biographer and I can't help but think that much of this book is a response to the supposed
authority of official biographies.
Much has been made of Orlando's relation to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's passionate female
lover. Whatever VS-W's real world persona may have been, in Orlando, we have a character
who has a difficult time relating to people and finds him/herself more comfortable in the world of
literature or wrapped in the arms of the natural world of trees, mountains, and her favorite Elk
Hounds. When she does find a husband to love, what Woolf emphasizes is the secret language
they develop, and so the world of words rather than emotions seem to define the relationship.
As always, Woolf has invested much of her heart and soul into this book and as always, another
book to be read and reread and contemplated for a long time.
Samadrita: The most prudent way to review a Virginia Woolf book, perhaps, would be to write
'THIS IS STUPENDOUS. GENIUS. AMAZING. WHY HAVEN'T YOU READ THIS YET?' and
leave it at that. Because not only does this relieve you of the responsibility of casting about for
appropriate words to serenade Woolf but also because you know no review in the world does
justice to the sheer magic that she is capable of creating with words.
But since I have a thing for self-flagellation(not really), I wish to undertake precisely this
mammoth task of writing about Orlando.
After having closed the book and put it aside, the first predominant emotions are that of being
overwhelmed by the all-encompassing nature of its inherent themes, then awestruck, then of
being very close to tears.
One is compelled to sit quietly in a corner, still under the heady influence of Orlando's poetic
prose, and brood over all the discrete human sentiments, actions and events that make up life
as we know it, letting precious minutes trickle by.
Our hero-heroine, Orlando, seems not only to be a representation of the human spirit, a union of
yin and yang in all its imperfect glory, but also a lasting testament to the perpetual flow of time.
His-her pronouncements sound almost like a chorus of voices, echoing all the dichotomies that
characterize our existence and the transience of our emotions.
Orlando begins the journey of life as a man of wealth and social standing in Elizabethan era
England, comfortable in the skin of his vanity, amorous in his dalliances with women. And the
book ends on 11th of October, 1928, in modern England where Orlando is a married woman, a
mother, an accomplished writer and finally at peace with life's many ironies and caprices. I will
refrain from going into all that takes place between these two distant points in time because for
that one can always read the book.
It will suffice to say that Orlando swings back and forth between craving and shunning love,
between pursuing his-her literary interests and trivializing the urge to write, between seeking the
august company of men of letters like Pope, Addison and Swift and then belittling them. And
even though hundreds of years pass by as Orlando goes through the many myriad experiences
that life had in store for him-her, it seems like everything has remained essentially the same.
The reader is struck by a sense of passivity in motion, of an enduring constancy even though
the sights and sounds and scenarios, that Orlando flits through, keep varying.
Thus in a way Orlando is not different from Woolf's other works just because of the noticeable
absence of a stream of consciousness(which, again, is not totally absent here) but because
here, she attempts to grasp at an amorphous entity like time and enclose it within a few pages.
And I am mightily pleased to say that she pulls off this feat with an elan, one associates only
with her.
What makes Orlando really stand out among other VW works is the dual gender of its
protagonist. Orlando keeps oscillating between his-her manly and womanly bearings and
towards the very end, what nullifies the differences between the sexes is his-her humanity, hisher detachment from the material world and a crossover into the realm of the spiritual.
"The whole of her darkened and settled, as when some foil whose addition makes the
round and solidity of a surface is added to it, and the shallow becomes deep and the
near distant; and all is contained as water is contained by the sides of a well. So she
was now darkened, stilled, and become, with the addition of this Orlando, what is called,
rightly or wrongly, a single self, a real self."
The narrative does seem a bit disjointed at certain points, especially when Woolf foregoes
conventions and goes into intricate detailing of events which seem of little importance in the
greater scheme of things or inserts her witty observations on society's prejudices concerning
women, chastity and more.
"Orlando, who was a passionate lover of animals, now noticed that her teeth were
crooked and the two front turned inward, which, he said, is a sure sign of a perverse and
cruel disposition in women, and so broke the engagement that very night for ever."
"I am she that men call Modesty. Virgin I am and ever shall be. Not for me the fruitful
fields and the fertile vineyard. Increase is odious to me; and when the apples burgeon or
the flocks breed, I run, I run, I let my mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes, I do not see.
Spare, O spare!"
"Truth come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth. For you flaunt in
the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown and undone; you unveil the
shameful; the dark you make clear, Hide! Hide! Hide!"
See what I mean? This is probably Woolf at her funniest and wittiest. So not a single sentence
or passage can be devalued even though it may appear a little out of place or slow down the
progress of the narrative.
In essence, Orlando is a summation of all the irrepressible instincts of both the man and woman
- their quest for love and true wisdom, their search for meaning in chaos, their feelings of
inferiority aroused by the vastness of the universe and their desire to find an eternity trapped
within their brief lifetimes.
mark monday:
Ben: yet what's the current moment?! What does it involve? greater than we know, of course. It
includes the self, we know. Is that each one we know? Me here, writing on my couch, and you,
you there. yet there's more! right here during this room there's more! A table, its wood, the
details, labored, toiled upon for plenty of hours, supplied from carpenters in years earlier within
the nice country of Maryland, land of our nice Queen Mary!; a lager sitting at the table, on a
publication at the table, sweltering, a Mexican beer!; it sits on nice Expectations, it (the beer)
sweating onto nice Expectations, that novel from lengthy ago, loved in lots of hearts, comprising
many stuff in its make-up, the bushes for the wood, the wooden for the paper!, the art on its
cover, placed fourth via a competent yet fearful younger artist (it intended a lot to him! and what
a task he did!, it, his life's triumph, which to him was once the world, used to be existence made
successful); the lives inside of that novel, the discernment, assorted for each reader, each line,
each be aware a special experience, a unique interpretation in each one reader's mind; nice
expectations, all of us have; the sunlight shining, the Corona, sweating, shining down upon the
novel, and oh what the radical is comprised of!, no, irrespective of that I needed to cease after
its first 5 pages; no matter, no matter; in one other lifestyles it breathed into me a brand new
existence, a brand new existence for which used to be already inside of me; already governing
me; one of the lives; many lives all of us live, multi functional moment, in lower than a moment;
what's a second yet an entire life to some; what's in a second yet billions of moments all over
the room (all round this room) all at once, everywhere in the world, with the ants at the ground,
scattering, they sing, they pass approximately their business, and we think-- we expect too
much!; we predict now not enough!, and the molecules relocating round on my fingernails; my
fingernails! And here, right here do i select a comma, or a semicolon; or a query mark by way of
an exclamation point?! what's in a moment? what's in a life of moments? because the moments
sing and the seasons switch all of the moments keep on with their endless moments inside of
moments, that derive into different moments, into different moments, and we need to choose....
our choices! We take from this, and select from that, and it impacts the following selection and
the subsequent selection is tormented by the alternatives earlier than it, which impacts the
following diversity of decisions and so on. And the days change, yet they replaced correct now,
such a lot of times, simply in this sentence they changed, every thing changed, such a lot of
times!-- it's the '80s, long past past, it's the 1950s, the following forever, it really is seventeenth
century Russia, and Christ, Christ is at the Cross!-- and that i take a seat now not on my couch,
yet at a desk; it truly is first grade, Mrs. army Hat's Class; i used to be so bad!-- so obnoxious I
was!, working and throwing things, and never reading, and never knowing. in no way knowing.
The moments, they pass. They move us all; and nonetheless we needs to choose....
BrokenTune: "Are we so made that we have got to take loss of life in small doses day-by-day or
shall we no longer cross on with the company of living? after which what unusual powers are
those that penetrate our so much mystery methods and alter our so much precious possessions
with out our prepared it ? Had Orlando, tired by way of the extremity of his suffering, died for a
week, after which come to existence again? And if so, of what nature is dying and of what
nature life? Having waited good over part an hour for a solution to those questions, and none
coming, allow us to get on with the story."What a ride! Virginia Woolf and that i do not usually
get on. At all. I frequently depression over her stream-of-consciousness variety of writing and
her characters. So, I approached Orlando with a few trepidation. And what happens? Woolf
pulls this masterpiece of a romp out of the hat which indicates not just that she was once a truly
shrewdpermanent author yet that she additionally had a scrumptious experience of humor.Of
course, it can be that that part of hers does in basic terms convey in Orlando since it is a ridicule
biography of and a tribute to Vita Sackville-West. One assessment I learn even defined the
ebook as the most very good of affection letters ever written - although either Virginia and Vita
may need disagreed.According to Nigel Nicolson, either Vita and Virginia denied rumors unfold
by way of Vita's mom that their liaison was once a major one: "She advised me that every thing
used to be actual other than the half approximately Virginia endangering their marriage, yet
none of it mattered a hoot as the love they bore one another was once so strong that it could
actually face up to anything. ‘My diary access for Sunday, 28 May, 3 weeks later, reads:
Virginia and Leonard got here to lunch . Virginia taking a look good and chuffed after her Italian
trip. She listened to the total tale of my stopover at to Brighton along with her head bowed. Then
she said: “The outdated girl needs to be shot”."(Nigel Nicolson - Portrait Of A Marriage: Vita
Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson)Apart from the biographical point of Orlando being the
fictionalised account of Vita's life, the booklet additionally amazes in that it dares to handle the
problems of identification and gender-bending or really gender-switching - making it some of the
most outspoken works of literature of its time to criticise a society that may condemn humans to
precise roles according to their gender. "And she fell to considering what a wierd move we have
now come to whilst all a woman’s good looks needs to be stored coated lest a sailor may
possibly fall from a mast-head. ‘A pox on them!’ she said, knowing for the 1st time what, in
different circumstances, she could were taught as a child, that's to say, the sacred obligations of
womanhood."Of direction there are lots of different themes that Woolf takes up in Orlando, akin
to the character of time, the conceit of poets, the nostalgia for issues some time past which
blinds us from an appreciation of the present, etc. yet i must admit that the majority of my
admiration for Orlando relies on how Woolf displays a few of Vita's convictions in her
fictionalised account and the way to the purpose Orlando turns out as a personality who's at
domestic in his/her identity. Having learn Nigel Nicolson's biography of Vita, his mother, whilst
asOrlando, it was once pleasant to work out the hyperlinks among the 2 bills of somebody who
possessed a slightly unconventional outlook for her time:"I carry the conviction that as centuries
cross on, and the sexes develop into extra approximately merged as a result of their expanding
resemblances, I carry the conviction that such connections will to a truly huge volume stop to be
considered as purely unnatural, and should be understood a ways better, at the least of their
highbrow if no longer of their actual aspect. (Such is already the case in Russia.) i feel that then
the psychology of individuals like myself might be an issue of interest, and that i think will
probably be well-known that many extra humans of my style do exist than below the presentday approach of hypocrisy is usually admitted."(Nigel Nicolson - Portrait Of A Marriage: Vita
Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson)
Sara: In gran parte delle introduzioni e presentazioni a Orlando — il cui titolo completo, non
dimentichiamolo, è Orlando, una biografia — si insiste un po' troppo sulla dedica a Vita SackvilleWest, spiegando poi col basso gusto del pettegolezzo che questa eccentrica aristocratica fu
adultera e bisessuale, nonché probabilmente amante della Woolf, e che, tra le altre cose,
amava dare scandalo presentandosi in società abbigliata come un maschio. Ne consegue un
paragone limitante: Orlando è l'alter ego di Vita, los angeles completa rappresentazione e
fusione dei suoi spiriti maschile e femminile, eccetera... e l'intera opera non sarebbe nient'altro
che «la più lunga e affascinante lettera d'amore» mai scritta (a detta di story Nigel Nicholson
che, mi si comunica dalla regia, period il figlio di codesta Vita).Con una story preparazione ci
accingiamo a seguire le avventure di un affascinante e umorale giovanotto in keeping with poi
ritrovarlo, quasi a metà del libro, nel corpo di una donna — e rendendoci conto che è sempre
stato così — e non ci stupiamo più di tanto, giacché, appunto, eravamo preparati. Ciò che
davvero non riusciamo a incasellare nel quadro semplicistico del rapporto Vita-Virginia è
quell'anomalo corso del pace a cui tutto il romanzo (pardon, los angeles biografia) ci costringe a
piegarci. In effetti, Orlando e quasi tutto il suo entourage — con le sole eccezioni delle
governanti, che invecchiano e muoiono come ogni governante, sebbene un po' più lentamente,
e dei grandi poeti, los angeles cui mortalità è strettamente legata alla caducità della fama —
attraversano nel corso della narrazione ben quattro secoli di storia inglese, muovendo dal regno
di Elisabetta in keeping with terminare in quello di Edoardo. Non c'è da stupirsi che tra i
commentatori di Goodreads regni a questo punto una certa confusione. Leggo testualmente:
«chi è Orlando?» e «cos'è Orlando?» l. a. risposta è in verità molto più semplice di quello che
appare, ma Orlando è una storia di apparenze e non dovete sentirvi degli sciocchi se queste
apparenze sono riuscite a ingannare anche voi. D'altronde l. a. Woolf ha messo in gioco tutto il
suo estro e una cultura davvero imponente according to farvela in barba.Cominciamo col
definire che cosa non è Orlando. Orlando non è "un uomo che a un certo punto diventa una
donna", in quanto è sempre stato entrambe le cose — solo, il suo sesso si è trovato lungamente
nascosto "dalla moda del tempo" — né los angeles sua figura ha a mio parere molto a che fare
con quella creatura androgina presentata su decine di quarte di copertina e le cui implicazioni
semantiche richiamerebbero concetti filosofico-religiosi del tutto alieni alle intenzioni
dell'autrice.Semplicemente, Orlando è lo spirito del poeta inglese, il quale, attraverso i secoli, va
interrogandosi sul significato della vita e dell'arte, scontrandosi di volta in volta con lo spirito del
tempo: motivo according to cui nasce maschio — giacché in epoca elisabettiana l. a. letteratura
period appannaggio esclusivo del sesso maschile — e solo nel corso del diciottesimo secolo si
apre completamente alla sensibilità femminile, ma senza mai scordare o rinnegare il suo
passato.Con questo espediente, unitamente a quello della biografia, Virginia Woolf può
permettersi una satira brillante, acuta e colta, che tutto investe e nulla risparmia: poeti,
aristocratici, zingari, esploratori, e perfino re e regine sono oggetto di una feroce
ridicolizzazione; according to non parlare delle splendide pagine devote alla trasformazione di
Orlando, in cui si compie una lucidissima analisi sulla condizione dei due sessi e sul ruolo
sociale a essi attribuito dall' "umida" società Vittoriana. l. a. stessa veste narrativa scelta dalla
Woolf si prende in giro da sola, smantellando l. a. tradizionale serietà degli storiografi (e quante
gliene vengono dette!), oltre che prestandosi abilmente al gioco dell'ambiguità di Orlando,
mantenendo un by myself di mistero sulle sue vicende e sulla sua natura stessa (d'altronde,
Orlando non arriverà mai a trovare una vera risposta ai suoi interrogativi).Una lettura, insomma,
gradevolissima e preziosa, che sulla falsariga del pensiero proustiano ma con uno stile del tutto
originale riesce in pieno nell'intento di restituire los angeles profonda discrepanza tra il pace
della materia e quello della memoria.Leggi los angeles recensione qui:
http://zeldasroom.wordpress.com/2015/...
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