Original link http://article.yeeyan.org/view/239946/275530
I have to tell you in advance that Virginia Woolf is very interesting at the party one person. I say this because even today, 70 years after her death, people still often think of her as a mysterious lady in English literature, angry and sad, glaring at a dark corner in the history of literature, still tightly held in her pocket. With a stone.
Of course, she had moments of sadness. I'll talk about this later. But first I want to announce to people who don’t know her that when she is not immersed in her paroxysmal depression, she is a person who loves parties very much. She can talk and laugh on almost any topic. She exudes charm. She is very interested in what other people say (although I must admit that she can sometimes be very shocking). She loves the future and looks forward to possible miracles.
As a fearless feminist, she is very easy to blame herself for days after other people made a mockery of her dress. She is not easy to encourage herself. And like most of us, there is a lack of fashionable cells. At the same time, she is extremely lacking in confidence in her work. She often suspects that her "fancy practice" in fiction is likely to be shelved with the results of other people's unnecessary attempts.
Many artists are not appreciated before, but their works will shine in later generations. This is nothing new. However, for a charming but sensitive and fragile woman like Woolf, she suffers from paroxysmal depression, cold sex, and strange dressing taste. She does not seem to be strong enough to experience history. Heroic character tested by violent winds and big waves. Not to mention the comparison with James Joyce (another modernist of the same period). The latter trumpeted his genius, just like a general planning an offensive, preparing for his immortal fame.
Seventy years ago, Woolf committed suicide by throwing himself into the river at the age of 59. Part of the reason is that her last novel, "Between the Acts", failed completely. There are relatively few great writers like her who are so uncertain about their achievements in front of them.
Since the publication of my own novel "The Hours" (The Hours), because Woolf is the character in my article, I have some (perhaps superficial) understanding of her life and work, but unexpectedly Become a recognized expert in this area. I am surprised how many people say to me like this: "Yes, Woolf is great, but she can't be Joyce, can
she ?" She really can't be Joyce. Because she is herself. She has her limitations. She only writes about the lives of high-class celebrities and has nothing to do with sex. There are only two romantic kisses mentioned in all her works --- once in the book "The Voyage Out" and once in the book "Mrs Dalloway". After these two relatively early books, she never wrote any erotic clips.
But to be honest, I suspect that compared to Woolf and Joyce, people may be more prejudiced against her because her writing is more about women, and the area that women were mainly in charge of at the time---family events. Joyce is relatively sensitive, and he writes mostly about men.
As a woman, Woolf can especially understand the helplessness experienced by women who don't have much to do. She knew and emphasized that the life of presiding over housework and arranging gatherings is not necessarily a meaningless life. She made us understand that even the most frugal family life is still a great journey for people who experience this lifestyle, no matter how ordinary it looks in the eyes of outsiders. She refuses to ignore this "ordinary" life like most other writers.
This may be related to Woolf's unstable mental state. And she also worried that she would be ignored as an insignificant little person. If she is too worried or extremely excited, she will fall into a state of despair. At that time, the term "depression" seems quite normal in comparison. In her sober moments, she is very good at hosting parties. But at other moments, she was simply beyond comfort. She saw hallucinations. With the lethal sharpness of genius, she lashed out at people close to her, and her husband Leonard was the first to bear the brunt. And this harsh ability, even when the logic is lost, is still undiminished. Virginia like this is not cute at all.
The curse of darkness will always pass, usually within a few weeks. But Woolf is often shrouded in fear of the next spell attack, and she is worried that her mental state is too unstable to sustain her career as a writer. When she started writing novels, her crazy fear of herself led her to write two relatively traditional works: "The Voyage Out" and "Night and Day". She wants to prove to herself and others that she (most of the time) is awake enough to write normal novels like other novelists, instead of the nonsense and crazy roar of a mad woman. She especially wanted to prove her health, because her editor was her half-brother George Duckworth, who had assaulted her when she was 12 years old. It is not difficult to imagine that through these first two books, Woolf wanted to prove to Duckworth that he did not cause long-term trauma to her. It is not difficult to imagine that almost no male writer was caught in such a situation during the same period.
After the publication of "Night and Sun", in order to relieve Woolf's "dark curse" and gloom, she and Leonard moved to the quiet suburbs of Richmond and were in the basement of their own residence. Founded a printing company. This is the birthplace of Hogarth Press. Its early publications included Woolf's highly anti-traditional novel Jacob's Room. Publishing her own work with Leonard made a big difference. Suddenly, Woolf stopped responding to anyone. She has proven that she is capable of writing novels similar to other writers. In this way, she ushered in a glorious period of her creation, which lasted until her death. She no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. "Jacob's Room" was followed by "Mrs. Dalloway", "To the Lighthouse" (To the Lighthouse), and "Orlando" (Orlando).
This new freedom is crucial for Woolf to become an artist, but it has little effect on treating her paroxysmal depression. Depression plagued her all her life. At that time, psychology hadn't taken shape at all. Although Hogarth Publishing later published Freud's early books, Woolf had no treatment plan to learn from. In the 1920s, it was believed that mental disorders originated from inflammation of the teeth and eventually infected the brain. Woolf pulled out a few teeth as a result, but it didn't get better.
Nevertheless, if Woolf understands the deepest sorrow better than most people, she has shown through her peculiar will that she is also better at conveying the beauty of life than almost everyone --- that can be in an ordinary On Tuesday in June, the plain joy of living in this world. This is why we fans love her so enthusiastically. She knows how bad life is. However, she still insists on believing in simple and eternal beauty, even though beauty is often fleeting. Woolf's love and optimism for the world, this determination is worthy of our trust, because she is a writer who has experienced the lowest point of life. In her book, life is endless, magnificent, luxurious, and beautiful; it transcends obstacles and setbacks.
I read "Mrs. Dalloway" for the first time in my second year of high school. I'm lazy, not the kind of kid who can take a book to read mesmerizingly (and I can tell you with certainty that this book is not included in the curriculum revised for lazy people in the school in Los Angeles I attended). I was just anxious to please a girl who was reading this book at the time. I hope that by appearing a little literate, I can gain the love of girls.
If you don’t know yet, "Mrs. Dalloway" is about a day in the life of a woman named Clarissa Dalloway. This Clarissa Dalloway is a 52-year-old lady. In the book, she accepted a task, met an old lover who had no sparks, slept for a while, and held a party. This is the whole plot.
However, in this book, we are not limited to Clarissa's perspective. The thinking consciousness between the characters is constantly changing, just like the baton of the players in a relay race. We enter the minds of the elderly suitor Peter Walsh; we go shopping with Clarissa’s daughter Elizabeth; we are bombed in the First World War The sick, mentally disordered veteran Septimus Warren Smith (Septimus Warren Smith) stayed with him for a while. We also entered the minds of some completely secondary characters, but only for a short moment --- a man who met Clarissa on Bond Street, a man sitting in Hyde Park ) The old lady on the bench. We always return to Clarissa in the end, but we also see that as her usual day unfolds, she is also surrounded by the different tragedies and comedies of those around her. So we understand that when Clarissa, or all of us, are engaged in daily affairs, we actually wander in this vast world and change it with our existence all the time.
In the book "Mrs. Dalloway," Woolf asserted that a day in any person's life, if you look closely, contains everything we want to know about human life, just as every strand of DNA contains the entire organism. The blueprint of the body is the same. From "Mrs. Dalloway" and Woolf's other novels, we know that the absence of life is trivial. It is only possible that people observe them in the wrong way.
When I was 15 years old, I couldn't understand this at all. I can't read "Mrs. Dalloway", and I have not been able to appear clever in front of that girl at all (God bless her, no matter where she is now). But even as an ignorant and lazy child, I have been able to notice the density, symmetry and strength of Woolf's sentences. I said to my heart, wow, she uses the same language as Jimi Hendrix (Jimi Hendrix) playing guitar. What I mean by this is that she walks freely between chaos and order. She did it at her fingertips, and then when the sentence seemed to be loose and disorderly, she pulled it into the main melody in time.
My only writing experience before this was limited to simple notices. Woolf’s sentence patterns inspire me. It is very likely that other books have similar and amazing sentences. In fact, I later discovered that some books do. Reading "Mrs. Dalloway" gradually turned me into a reader.
That first reading made me confused and in awe --- it can even be said that it changed my beliefs. In the following decades, I tried to write a novel about Woolf and "Mrs. Dalloway." I devoutly come to realize this ideal. Because, for one, when a person stands with a genius, he will appear smaller than himself. Second, I am a man, and Woolf is not only a great writer, but also a symbol of feminism. For a long time, people thought she belonged to the female group.
However, I still want to write a book about reading. Although I did not understand the powerful connotations of "Mrs. Dalloway" when I was young, it taught me the power of pen and paper. For some of us, reading a particular book at a particular moment is an indispensable life experience. It is also the same as traditional events that inspired novel writing (such as first love, bereavement, marriage failure, etc.). It is an important part of writing materials.
Although I still have doubts and worries about writing such a book, I feel that instead of writing a book that knows exactly how to write, it makes more sense to exercise myself in the unknown and exciting. So I picked up the pen.
My novel "The Moments" is a modern retelling of "Mrs. Dalloway." I want to know how much Clarissa Dalloway’s personality will change in today’s world where women have more choices. This quickly proved to be my self-righteousness, and it was not convincing. We already have a perfect Mrs. Dalloway, who wants another copy?
As stubborn as I am (stubbornness is actually an important quality of novelists), I am reluctant to give up this book completely. I tried to rewrite it into two lines, so that the chapter about modern Mrs. Dalloway and the situation in the time when Woolf wrote the book alternately appear. In that era, she was uneasy and suspicious, but wrote this immortal book. I even tried to write Woolf's story on odd-numbered pages and Clarissa's story on even-numbered pages, so that every time the page is turned, the two stories will kiss. This idea now sounds like nonsense in front of the public, but when I think alone, it seems much more feasible.
However, even with the addition of the second line, the book still feels wrong. It can never exude the temperament of literature, but stubbornly is just a conception of a novel, rather than the real novel itself.
By this time, I had almost decided to let go and rewrite the book. But one morning, sitting in front of the computer, I began to think about why Woolf was so important to me that I was willing to spend more than half a year writing a doomed novel about her and her works. It is true that I love "Mrs. Dalloway", but every novelist has many favorite works, but few of them feel the need to write a new book for this old book. (The only exception I can think of is Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea." Of course, this book is from Mr. Rochester's first wife, Bertha. Retelling "Jane Eyre" (Jane Eyre) from a perspective.)
So, what is going on with me? Sitting in front of the computer, I imagined Clarissa Dalloway and then Woolf, her creator, standing behind her. Then, without warning, I imagined my mother standing behind Woolf.
I started thinking about all this, and then I realized that my mother was, in a sense, a suitable candidate for the third woman. My mother is a housewife, the kind of woman Woolf calls "the angel in the house." Like many such angels, my mother dedicated her life to this extremely small world for her. In my eyes, she has always looked like an Amazon queen, but was captured in this suburb and forced to live in a cage that could not contain her. And all this seems to be destined, and it is difficult to escape.
My mother controlled her frustration in life by nitpicking any details. She can spend most of the day deciding the napkin for the cocktail at the party. She cooked every meal extremely exquisitely, but she still couldn't help worrying about not doing well enough. The bacteria finally decided not to enter my home anymore, because they have no place to live here.
Sitting in front of the computer, I started to think... if you remove the ultimate goal (this goal is a novel for one woman, and for the other, a perfect and exquisite home where nothing bad and dark can take root), the rest In fact, it is the same effort---try to realize an ideal, connect with the sublime, and create a grand cause that can't be created no matter how great hands and thoughts are.
From some of the most basic level, my mother and Woolf are engaged in the same great cause. They are all pursuing unachievable ideals. The two are never satisfied, because their achievements, no matter whether it is a novel or a cake, cannot and will never be commensurate with their ideals. This ideal seems to be floating in the unreachable front forever.
Judging from Woolf's legacy, this equivalence is correct. She has repeatedly emphasized that no life is trivial, and a woman's life is easier to be ignored than a man's.
Therefore, I changed my mother’s name to Laura Brown (the name comes from Woolf’s article "Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown"), and the book was changed to The three main lines are parallel. I wrote it in accordance with this idea.
Although a great writer is always "a great writer" when it comes to it, regardless of his or her life and other events, Woolf is probably the greatest chronicler of a woman's life. The female image she portrays is never obvious, nor is it notorious. The skills they possess are only traditional female skills. Mrs. Dalloway, like Mrs Ramsey in "To the Lighthouse", is an impeccable hostess. They are all very good at organizing dinner parties, so that everyone at the dinner party is free and has a sense of participation. They make sure that the food and centerpieces are flawless. Such skills have greatly depreciated in the following decades. We are now more inclined (and preferably so) that women can take on greater responsibilities. And these responsibilities, even today in 2011, are still more given to men.
Part of Woolf's genius is that she never devalued the female characters she created, and never exaggerated their credit. Instead, the men in her novel feel a bit ridiculous: Richard Dalloway (Richard Dalloway) is doing a small job in court, and Mr. Ramsey needs people’s intelligence, ability, and The potential is constantly affirmed. In the book, when men continue to work and sigh frustrated with their status in the world, women breathe life into their men and families. Women are electric waves flowing in the room. Women are not only a source of comfort, but also a source of vitality and intelligence. They know that when our work is finally taken over by young people and our earthly work is shelved, we still need food and love.
Although Woolf writes very wisely about all this, he is not so sure in real life. This is not unexpected. In her eyes, her sister Vanessa is the real artist. Vanessa has children and a lover, and has a courageous spirit. Woolf is even willing to become Vanessa's picture. Woolf admits that her sister may not be the smartest among scholars, but has a passionate passion, and she herself is a dry and sterile old virgin aunt (her marriage to Leonard is friendly but not passionate) ), write books for life. Although this is an enviable profession, it is relatively boring compared to having children.
Even if she wrote a work like "A Room of One's Own", she still has the above thoughts. The realization of early feminism was far more difficult than we thought. You might say that measuring the greatness of an artist depends on whether he can surpass his or her own personality, desire for security, and other minor problems. Woolf called for equality for women, but at the same time, because he had no descendants, he felt that his life was a failure.
To the surprise of the authors, agents and editors, "The Moment" (which was originally Woolf's original name for the book "Mrs. Dalloway") escaped from what seemed to be its obvious destiny for some reason. --- Read by a small group of fans of Woolf (most likely not yet recognized), and then march towards the remaining readers with the little dignity that remains. It sells well (if measured by bestseller standards). The biggest surprise is that it has also been made into a movie and is very popular. Nicole Kidman (Nicole Kidman) plays Virginia, Meili Meryl Streep played Clarissa and Julianne Moore played Laura. Many people ask me what I think Woolf would think of books and movies. I'm sure, she won't like my book --- she is a very violent critic. She doesn't think she likes this movie, but I still like to think that she should be very happy to see herself played by a beautiful Hollywood movie star.
My mother, as the only living character in the novel, is not satisfied with the novel, although she bravely expressed that she likes it. I was so stupid that I thought she would be very happy about this, because I took her life so important that it must be written in a novel. I did not expect that she would feel exposed, betrayed, and misunderstood. Mothers, never let your children become novelists.
A few years after the novel was published, while the movie was still being produced, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Because it has not been checked for a long time, by the time it was discovered, it was already too late. After the diagnosis, my mother died less than a year later.
In the last days of her life, I was with my father and sister in Los Angeles. I called Scott Rudin, the film producer. I said, my mother probably won't be able to see the movie anymore. Could you please arrange to let her see the movie clips you have made so far? Rudin had only a 20-minute daily documentary at the time, and he sent someone to my home. I inserted the disc into the TV while the messenger waited patiently in another room.
So my terminally ill mother and I sat on the sofa that I bought back when I was 15 years old and watched Julianne Moore playing her, as if returning to her youthful era, with great looks.
This can only be regarded as a very small thing among all things in the world. It is a small favor. However, ten years later, I am still amazed by how things work. At one end of the years, Woolf began to write a new novel. She worries about whether this is just driven by a momentary curiosity, and whether it will be another failed practice of mankind. And this practitioner is far more crazy than talent, just an unpaid writer who pays attention to the lives of ordinary women in the world every day. They are plagued by war, torture, and the murder of the entire human race. At the other end of the years, 70 years later, my mother, a character who could theoretically appear in Woolf's book, watched herself being played by a talented actor, knowing (at least I hope she knew) her life It was far more meaningful than she had dared to think.
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