Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф
Anyhow, nature obligingly supplies me with the illusion that I am about to write something good; something rich and deep and fluent, and hard as nails, while bright as diamonds.
I finished Ulysses and think it a mis-fire. Genius it has, I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I’m reminded all the time of some callow board school boy, full of wits and powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him and stern ones merely annoyed; and one hopes he’ll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely. I have not read it carefully; and only once; and it is very obscure; so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair. I feel that myriads of tiny bullets pepper one and spatter one; but one does not get one deadly wound straight in the face—as from Tolstoy, for instance; but it is entirely absurd to compare him with Tolstoy.
Thursday, September 7th.
Having written this, L. put into my hands a very intelligent review of Ulysses, in the American Nation; which, for the first time, analyses the meaning; and certainly makes it very much more impressive than I judged. Still I think there is virtue and some lasting truth in first impressions; so I don’t cancel mine. I must read some of the chapters again. Probably the final beauty of writing is never felt by contemporaries; but they ought, I think, to be bowled over; and this I was not. Then again, I had my back up on purpose; then again I was over stimulated by Tom’s praises.
Thursday, September 26th.
Wittering. Morgan came on Friday; Tom on Saturday. My talk with Tom deserves writing down, but won’t get it for the light is fading; and we cannot write talk down either, as was agreed at Charleston the other day. There was a good deal of talk about Ulysses. Tom said, ‘He is a purely literary writer. He is founded upon Walter Pater with a dash of Newman.’ I said he was virile—a he-goat; but didn’t expect Tom to agree. Tom did though; and said he left out many things that were important. The book would be a landmark, because it destroyed the whole of the 19th Century. It left Joyce himself with nothing to write another book on. It showed up the futility of all the J English styles. He thought some of the writing beautiful. But there was no ‘great conception’; that was not Joyce’s intention. He thought that Joyce did completely what he meant to do. But he did not think that he gave a new insight into human nature—said nothing new like Tolstoy. Bloom told one nothing. Indeed, he said, this new method of giving the psychology proves to my mind that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t tell as much as some casual glance from outside often tells. I said I had found Tendennis more illuminating in this way. (The horses are now cropping near my window; the little owl calling, and so I write nonsense.) So we got on to S. Sitwell, who merely explores his sensibility—one of the deadly crimes as Tom thinks: to Dostoievsky—the ruin of English literature, we agreed; Singe a fake; present state disastrous, because the form don’t fit; to his mind not even promising well; he said that one must now be a very first rate poet to be a poet at all: When there were great poets, the little ones caught some of the glow, and were not worthless. Now there’s no great poet. When was the last? I asked, and he said none that interested him since the time of Johnson. Browning he said was lazy: they are all lazy he said. And Macaulay spoilt English prose. We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly. He thought D.H. Lawrence came off occasionally, especially in Aaron’s Rod, the last book; had great moments; but was a most incompetent writer. He could cling tight to his conviction though. (Light now fails—7.10 after a bad rainy day.)
Wednesday, October 4th.
I am a little uppish, though, and self assertive, because Brace wrote to me yesterday, ‘We think Jacob’s Room an extraordinarily distinguished and beautiful work. You have, of course, your own method, and it is not easy to foretell how many readers it will have; surely it will have enthusiastic ones, and we delight in publishing it’, or words to that effect. As this is my first testimony from an impartial person I am pleased. For one thing it must make some impression, as a whole; and cannot be wholly frigid fireworks. We think of publishing on October 27th. I daresay Duckworth is a little cross with me. I snuff my freedom. It is I think true, soberly and not artificially for the public, that I shall go on unconcernedly whatever people say. At last, I like reading my own writing. It seems to me to fit me closer than it did before. I have done my task here better than I expected. Mrs Dallo way and the Chaucer chapter are finished: I have read 5 books of the Odyssey; Ulysses; and now begin Proust. I also read Chaucer and the Pastons. So evidently my plan of the two books running side by side is practicable and certainly I enjoy my reading with a purpose. I am committed to only one Supt. article—on essays—and that at my own time; so I am free. I shall read Greek now steadily and begin The Prime Minister on Friday morning. I shall read the Trilogy and some Sophocles and Euripides and a Plato dialogue: also the lives of Bentley and Jebb. At forty I am beginning to | learn the mechanism of my own brain—how to get the greatest amount of pleasure and work out of it. The secret is I think always so to contrive that work is pleasant.
Saturday, October 14th.
I have had two letters, from Lytton and Carrington, about Jacob’s Room, and written I don’t know how many envelopes; and here we are on the verge of publication. I must sit for my portrait to John 0’ London’s on Monday. Richmond writes to ask that date of publication may be put ahead, so that they may notice it on Thursday. My sensations? they remain calm. Yet how could Lytton have praised me more highly? prophesies immortality for it is as poetry; is afraid of my romance; but the beauty of the writing etc. Lytton praises me too highly for it to give me exquisite pleasure; or perhaps that nerve grows dulled. I want to be through the splash and swimming in calm water again. I want to be writing unobserved. Mrs Dalloway has branched into a book; and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side—something like that. Septimus Smith? is that a good name? and to be more close to the fact than Jacob: but I think Jacob was a necessary step, for me, in working free. And now I must use this benignant page for making out a scheme of work.
I must get on with my reading for the Greek chapter. I shall finish The Prime Minister in another week—say 21st. Then I must be ready to start my Essay article for The Times: say on the 23rd. That will take say till 2nd November. Therefore I must now concentrate on Essays: with some Aeschylus, and I think begin Zimmern, making rather a hasty end of Bentley, who is not really much to my purpose. I think that clears the matter up—though how to read Aeschylus I don’t quite know: quickly, is my desire, but that, I see, is an illusion.
As for my views about the success of Jacob, what are they? I think we shall sell 500; it will then go slowly and reach 800 by June. It will be highly praised in some places for ‘beauty’; will be crabbed by people who want human character. The only review I am anxious about is the one in the Supt.: not that it will be the most intelligent, but it will be the most read and I can’t bear people to see me clowned in public. The W.G. will be hostile; so, very likely, the Nation. But I am perfectly serious in saying that nothing budges me from my determination to go on, or alters my pleasure; so whatever happens, though the surface may be agitated, the centre is secure.
Tuesday, October 17th.
As this is to be a chart of my progress I enter hastily here: one, a letter from Desmond who is halfway through says ‘You have never written so well … I marvel and am puzzled’—or words to that effect: two, Bunny rings up enthusiastic; says it is superb, far my best, has great vitality and importance: also he takes 36 copies, and says people already ‘clamour’. This is not confirmed by the bookshops, visited by Ralph. I have sold under 50 today; but the libraries remain and Simpkin Marshall.
Sunday, October 29th.
Miss Mary Butts being gone, and my head too stupid for reading, I may as well write here, for my amusement later perhaps. I mean I’m too riddled with talk and harassed with the usual worry of people who like