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Over the edge: Virginia Woolf’s price for literary immortality

Over the edge: Virginia Woolf’s price for literary immortality Extraordinary creativity like that reached by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) no doubt came at a price. The crucial question in her case is, of course, Was that price her very own life? – as was the case, for instance, with Truman Capote, who eventually may have committed direct or indirect suicide. With the present paper we propose to begin an exploration – in several sections – of the nature of the high price paid by Virginia Woolf for reaching literary immortality, considering both her life history and her creativity as mirrored in her writings. In Section I (this issue), which serves as an introductory study, we review essential matters relative to the price paid by this woman of genius for her extraordinary success as a writer who for her entire life lived under the sign of mental disorder (psychosis). In the present paper we focus on the following: 1) essential biographical aspects; 2) the novel entitled The Waves, now largely recognized as one of her masterpieces; and 3) the last five years of her life as reflected in The Diary. In the future issues, with a view to understanding the nature of Virginia Woolf’s genius, contribution to creativity, mental problems, and enigmatic suicide – the final price paid for her outstanding creative energy –, we will focus, in turn, on the following (not necessarily in this order): a) The Diary in its entirety (five volumes) – this can be considered as a special dialogue with herself, meant to be read only by us, her posterity, not by her contemporaries, which is why this document is of special interest to us here and is to be given in-depth and detailed consideration; b) The Letters (six volumes) – dialogues with other people; c) The Essays (six volumes; and additionally: the long essay A Room of One’s Own, 1929; the tract Three Guineas, 1938; and Roger Fry: a biography, 1940) – critical dialogues with society, posterity, and herself ; d) the novels (ten volumes: The Voyage Out, 1915; Night and Day, 1919; Jacob’s Room, 1922; Mrs Dalloway, 1925; To the Lighthouse, 1927; Orlando, 1928; The Waves, 1931; Flush, 1933; The Years, 1937; Between the Acts, 1941) – dialogues with creativity itself and with literary form, here we meet Woolf at the peak of her creative powers; e) the short stories – dialogues with the potential possibilities of narrative form – here we meet Woolf probing the possible depths of creative “waters.” This vast literary labyrinth constituting Woolf’s intellectual legacy is priceless for two reasons at least: it offers the researcher 1) a map of the extraordinary creative process (especially The Diary and the novels); and 2) a map of the evolution of Woolf’s mental disorder and powers of analytically, synthetically and creatively approaching reality (The Diary, The Letters, The Essays). In other words, when we explore these writings we probe simultaneously into the labyrinth of genius as well as into the labyrinth of mental disorder and of mental-imaginative powers. In this sense, many elements can be invoked as the triggering factors leading to the suicide: the depression caused by sexual abuse (a childhood extended episode) and the loss of people dear to her (mother, father, half-sister, brother, etc.), both of which generated psychosis; the poverty that the war brought along; the impossibility to deal any more with the “madness” (her manic-depressive disorder); the anxiety in front of old age and its consequent limitations; the “infernal boredom” deriving from her own social position (this factor associates her with a literary figure like Graham Greene, who is known to have suffered of such pathological boredom for his entire life); etc. What is clear in Woolf’s case is that the psychosis, a high price, she felt was a kind of icebreaker, a catalyst allowing her to enter subtle realms of reality leading to the deepest mysteries of being. Disease came thus to be highly praised by her (she realized, like Graham Greene, that illness saved her as a novelist) as one of the most neglected human phenomena in the history of literature – the reason was evident: disease pushed human beings to the very edge of existence, whence they could glance into the endless mystery of life. If one survived the illness to tell the story, in other words if one managed to push through the challenge of the “trough of despair,” then the path was cleared towards reaching unending artistic greatness for contemporary and for endless future generations. Keywords: extraordinary creativity; edge-of-existence condition; essence of reality; essence-revealing disease; manicdepressive disorder. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity Addleton Academic Publishers

Over the edge: Virginia Woolf’s price for literary immortality

Mihai A. Stroe
Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity , Volume 3 (4): 27 – Jan 1, 2015
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Publisher
Addleton Academic Publishers
Copyright
© 2009 Addleton Academic Publishers
ISSN
2327-5707
eISSN
2473-6562
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Abstract

Extraordinary creativity like that reached by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) no doubt came at a price. The crucial question in her case is, of course, Was that price her very own life? – as was the case, for instance, with Truman Capote, who eventually may have committed direct or indirect suicide. With the present paper we propose to begin an exploration – in several sections – of the nature of the high price paid by Virginia Woolf for reaching literary immortality, considering both her life history and her creativity as mirrored in her writings. In Section I (this issue), which serves as an introductory study, we review essential matters relative to the price paid by this woman of genius for her extraordinary success as a writer who for her entire life lived under the sign of mental disorder (psychosis). In the present paper we focus on the following: 1) essential biographical aspects; 2) the novel entitled The Waves, now largely recognized as one of her masterpieces; and 3) the last five years of her life as reflected in The Diary. In the future issues, with a view to understanding the nature of Virginia Woolf’s genius, contribution to creativity, mental problems, and enigmatic suicide – the final price paid for her outstanding creative energy –, we will focus, in turn, on the following (not necessarily in this order): a) The Diary in its entirety (five volumes) – this can be considered as a special dialogue with herself, meant to be read only by us, her posterity, not by her contemporaries, which is why this document is of special interest to us here and is to be given in-depth and detailed consideration; b) The Letters (six volumes) – dialogues with other people; c) The Essays (six volumes; and additionally: the long essay A Room of One’s Own, 1929; the tract Three Guineas, 1938; and Roger Fry: a biography, 1940) – critical dialogues with society, posterity, and herself ; d) the novels (ten volumes: The Voyage Out, 1915; Night and Day, 1919; Jacob’s Room, 1922; Mrs Dalloway, 1925; To the Lighthouse, 1927; Orlando, 1928; The Waves, 1931; Flush, 1933; The Years, 1937; Between the Acts, 1941) – dialogues with creativity itself and with literary form, here we meet Woolf at the peak of her creative powers; e) the short stories – dialogues with the potential possibilities of narrative form – here we meet Woolf probing the possible depths of creative “waters.” This vast literary labyrinth constituting Woolf’s intellectual legacy is priceless for two reasons at least: it offers the researcher 1) a map of the extraordinary creative process (especially The Diary and the novels); and 2) a map of the evolution of Woolf’s mental disorder and powers of analytically, synthetically and creatively approaching reality (The Diary, The Letters, The Essays). In other words, when we explore these writings we probe simultaneously into the labyrinth of genius as well as into the labyrinth of mental disorder and of mental-imaginative powers. In this sense, many elements can be invoked as the triggering factors leading to the suicide: the depression caused by sexual abuse (a childhood extended episode) and the loss of people dear to her (mother, father, half-sister, brother, etc.), both of which generated psychosis; the poverty that the war brought along; the impossibility to deal any more with the “madness” (her manic-depressive disorder); the anxiety in front of old age and its consequent limitations; the “infernal boredom” deriving from her own social position (this factor associates her with a literary figure like Graham Greene, who is known to have suffered of such pathological boredom for his entire life); etc. What is clear in Woolf’s case is that the psychosis, a high price, she felt was a kind of icebreaker, a catalyst allowing her to enter subtle realms of reality leading to the deepest mysteries of being. Disease came thus to be highly praised by her (she realized, like Graham Greene, that illness saved her as a novelist) as one of the most neglected human phenomena in the history of literature – the reason was evident: disease pushed human beings to the very edge of existence, whence they could glance into the endless mystery of life. If one survived the illness to tell the story, in other words if one managed to push through the challenge of the “trough of despair,” then the path was cleared towards reaching unending artistic greatness for contemporary and for endless future generations. Keywords: extraordinary creativity; edge-of-existence condition; essence of reality; essence-revealing disease; manicdepressive disorder.

Journal

Romanian Journal of Artistic Creativity – Addleton Academic Publishers

Published: Jan 1, 2015

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