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femaletor's review against another edition
3.0
A diary is very hard to rate, but I have rated it out of my enjoyment of the book only!
A diary is very personal and it says a lot about a person. Personally I struggled to get through this book - it just didn't catch my full attention (which made me spend a year and a half on this book) and even made me skim the last 100 pages.
Virginia Woolf struggled writing as a woman but more as a person with depression. It was completely exciting to read her thoughts and see her development on the books, she wrote.
Woolf was one stubborn woman - that is the (almost) most clear fact about her in this book. As she states in her diary, she doesn't want to have the praise and (now-a-days-called) fame and she made sure not to. She did get very excited about the good words about her book, but those words were mostly from dear friends or her husband.
Another beautiful aspect of this same quote from her diary, she writes that she has found her way to say something in her own voice. I think most of us youngsters are looking to find the right education and goals in life to say what we want in our own voice - may it not be in writing but in other ways to express ourselves and our most important thought in our own lives. Virginia Woolf found it at 40.
A diary is very personal and it says a lot about a person. Personally I struggled to get through this book - it just didn't catch my full attention (which made me spend a year and a half on this book) and even made me skim the last 100 pages.
Virginia Woolf struggled writing as a woman but more as a person with depression. It was completely exciting to read her thoughts and see her development on the books, she wrote.
There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; and that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.
Woolf was one stubborn woman - that is the (almost) most clear fact about her in this book. As she states in her diary, she doesn't want to have the praise and (now-a-days-called) fame and she made sure not to. She did get very excited about the good words about her book, but those words were mostly from dear friends or her husband.
Another beautiful aspect of this same quote from her diary, she writes that she has found her way to say something in her own voice. I think most of us youngsters are looking to find the right education and goals in life to say what we want in our own voice - may it not be in writing but in other ways to express ourselves and our most important thought in our own lives. Virginia Woolf found it at 40.
fionnualalirsdottir's review against another edition
scritch scratch scritch scratch dash
scritch scratch scritch scratch semi-colon
scritch scratch scritch scratch inkblot
the trusty nib flounders a moment
then wades through the puddle of ink
and on to the end of the line
to the end of the page
to the end of that year’s diary
and though it flounders sometimes along the way
the trusty nib keeps on scratching through the diaries
until half-way though the last volume
it flounders finally
_______________________________
Now for The Longer Review - and apologies in advance.
Reading a diary is like being in a room with someone who thinks they are alone. And even though they think they are alone, and feel quite safe talking to themselves aloud, we see them glance in the mirror from time to time to see how they look when they are speaking. It can’t matter how they look but they check all the same, just in case. How much ‘just in case’ is present in Virginia Woolf’s diary, the kindly blank-faced confidante she turned to in good times and in bad?
In March, 1926, aged forty-four, she wrote: But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn then; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; and then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them; if the scraps and scratching were straightened out a little...This is dictated by a slight melancholia, which comes upon me sometimes now and makes me think I am old. Yet, as far as I know, as a writer I am only now writing out my mind.
She was right on all counts. She lived to be fifty-nine and wrote five more novels, some of her most famous essays, many short stories, the second series of [b:The Common Reader|18840|The Common Reader|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099892l/18840._SY75_.jpg|2684550], a biography of the artist Roger Fry, plus fifteen more years worth of diary entries. And Leonard Woolf did edit her diaries after her death in 1941, selecting the sections on writing, and some on reading, which he then published as [b:A Writer's Diary|14948|A Writer's Diary|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099172l/14948._SY75_.jpg|568491] full of little gems like this: You see, I’m thinking furiously about Reading and Writing
[b:A Writer's Diary|14948|A Writer's Diary|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099172l/14948._SY75_.jpg|568491] starts in 1918 when Woolf’s second novel, [b:Night and Day|116056|Night and Day|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368337020l/116056._SY75_.jpg|1019503] was about to be published, and it covers the most important years of her writing life. I for one am very grateful to Leonard Woolf for both the editing and the publishing. It is very exciting to get to read about the writing process as it is happening, and about the writer’s reaction to the reception of their work as it is published.
As a reader, I’m rarely drawn to the biographical details of a writer’s life except where they are so closely linked to the writing that an understanding of one requires an understanding of the other. In the case of Virginia Woolf, it seems to me that biographical details are simply not relevant to an appreciation of her writing. She may have used life experiences as material for her books but the reader doesn’t need to know which episodes are fact and which are fiction; the writing carries the day almost entirely on its own. It is interesting that we don’t often seek to know the intimate lives of artists the way we sometimes do with writers; we accept an artist’s work as it is, simply placing it in its epoch and appreciating its technique and its merits in relation to its contemporaries. The parallel with the artist is particularly relevant in Woolf’s case; the main agenda in her novels is her art. The novels make political points certainly, but it is done without stridency; it never gets in the way of the style of the writing or the shape she is architecting. Even when she makes political points in her non-fiction, her phrasing is always perfect and her voice remains serene; she examines the field as a scientist or an anthropologist might, and sets out her conclusions. In both her fiction and her non-fiction, there is this firm focus on the writing style. I think she would have abhorred any search for intimate details about the personal life behind that writing style.
So what does Virginia Woolf say about the process of writing if writing it is—this dash at the paper of a phrase, this sweep of a brush? In 1923, when she is working on the first draft of [b:Mrs. Dalloway|14942|Mrs. Dalloway|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1646148221l/14942._SY75_.jpg|841320], she writes: But now what do I feel about my writing? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoievsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do?…But to get further. Have I the power of conveying the true reality?…Answer these questions as I may…there remains this excitement: to get to the bones, now that I’m writing fiction again I feel my force glow straight from me at its fullest. After a dose of criticism I feel that I’m writing sideways, using only an angle of my mind.
The other angles of her mind were constantly focused upon the current novel she was working on, or upon the germ of an idea for the next one. Why not invent a new kind of play; as for instance: Woman thinks…He does. Organ plays. She writes. They say: She sings. Night speaks. As we read through the diaries, we watch such seeds grow and change: that particular seed grew into [b:Orlando|18839|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443118010l/18839._SY75_.jpg|6057225]. Soon afterwards, she began mentioning another theme: ‘moths’. She spoke of those moths again and again, spoke of them hovering at the back of her brain, and finally I realised that she was shaping the playpoem that would become [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645526068l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263]. More of her diary entries concern [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645526068l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263] than any of her other books, except perhaps [b:To the Lighthouse|59716|To the Lighthouse|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639106809l/59716._SY75_.jpg|1323448]. I find it significant that of the entire ten, those are the two I appreciated the most.
And so, there was always a story in the making, even before she had finished the previous one, and the diaries were where she coaxed these seeds of stories into the light. As we can see from the quotes, Woolf wrote the diaries in a kind of shorthand, quite unlike the way she writes in her novels and essays: It strikes me that here I practice writing; do my scales; yes and work at certain effects. I daresay I practiced Jacob here; and Mrs D. and shall invent my next book here; for here I write merely in spirit—great fun it is too, and Old V. of 1940 will see something in it too. She will be a woman who can see, old V., everything—more than I can, I think. She registers her thoughts on the spot, her nib following the swerves of her thinking, sensitive to every shift of mood, and very often the mood mentioned is one of exhilaration, of the ‘high' she experienced from creating phrases. The notion of immense satisfaction, rapture, electric shocks gained from writing is repeated over and over again and most often in relation to the periods when she was engaged on fiction: Great content—almost always enjoying what I am at, but with constant change of mood. I don’t think I’m ever bored. Sometimes a little stale; but I have a power of recovery.
She needed every power of recovery that she could muster when it came to the reception of her novels. After [b:Night and Day|116056|Night and Day|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368337020l/116056._SY75_.jpg|1019503] came out to unenthusiastic reviews in 1919, she wrote: I ought to be writing Jacob’s Room; and I can’t…I’m a failure as a writer. I’m out of fashion: old: shan’t do any better….my book..a damp firework. Later, while still working on [b:Jacob's Room|225396|Jacob's Room|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388466257l/225396._SY75_.jpg|3272732], she noted: Elliot (T. S.) coming on the heel of a long stretch of writing (two months without a break) made me listless; cast shade upon me; and the mind when engaged upon fiction wants all its boldness and self-confidence. He said nothing (about Jacob's Room)—but I reflected how what I’m doing was probably being better done by Mr Joyce.
By 1939, even though she had some huge successes behind her, and had had books written about her, she was still easily cast down by criticism and brooded about her writing reputation having been damaged by Windham Lewis and Gertrude Stein, and about how she was seen by some critics to be out of date..unlikely to write anything good again…second-rate and likely to be discarded altogether. I think that's my public reputation at the moment. It is based largely on C. Connolly's cocktail criticism: a sheaf of feathers in the wind.
About reading contemporary reviewers such as Cyril Connolly, she writes: When I read reviews [of other people's books] I crush the column together to get at one or two sentences; is it a good book or a bad? And then I discount those two sentences according to what I know of the book and of the reviewer. But when I write a review I write every sentence as if it were going to be tried by three Chief Justices. I can’t believe that I am crushed together and discounted. Reviews seem to me more and more frivolous…The truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.
Whatever about being read, reading itself was a tremendous pleasure. She mentions reading certain authors again and again; Dante and Proust were two such. She not only reread her favourites over and over, she liked to read them alongside other books, and the more books she had going at once, the better she liked it. In one of her letters, she said: I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time. Due to her association with The Times Literary Supplement as an occasional reviewer, she claims to have learned eventually to read with a pen and notebook, seriously.
There are frivolous moments as well as serious ones in her diary life; a line from an old song is tossed out several times like a repeated theme in a piece of music; it reveals a different Virginia from the one we usually see: And what do I care for a goose-feather bed. The line is from the well-known ballad about the Lady who leaves her Lord and her comfortable house and goes off to share a life on the road with the RaggleTaggle Gypsy-O. Interpret that how we like, it is clear that Virginia liked her comforts and was pleased to have made enough money from her writing to eventually afford certain luxuries. I enjoy epicurean ways of society; sipping and then shutting my eyes to taste. I enjoy almost everything.
Coexistent with the epicurean was a restless spirit constantly questioning itself, sometimes finding only blackness. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay one’s hands on and say ‘This is it’? My depression is a harassed feeling. I'm looking: but that's not it—that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?
It is at this point that the reviewer might be tempted to end this review by presuming tritely that Virginia Woolf never did find ‘it’. But no, this reviewer thinks she had ‘it’ in front of her all the time, and that she knew it: Nothing makes a whole except when I am writing.
scritch scratch scritch scratch semi-colon
scritch scratch scritch scratch inkblot
the trusty nib flounders a moment
then wades through the puddle of ink
and on to the end of the line
to the end of the page
to the end of that year’s diary
and though it flounders sometimes along the way
the trusty nib keeps on scratching through the diaries
until half-way though the last volume
it flounders finally
_______________________________
Now for The Longer Review - and apologies in advance.
Reading a diary is like being in a room with someone who thinks they are alone. And even though they think they are alone, and feel quite safe talking to themselves aloud, we see them glance in the mirror from time to time to see how they look when they are speaking. It can’t matter how they look but they check all the same, just in case. How much ‘just in case’ is present in Virginia Woolf’s diary, the kindly blank-faced confidante she turned to in good times and in bad?
In March, 1926, aged forty-four, she wrote: But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn then; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; and then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them; if the scraps and scratching were straightened out a little...This is dictated by a slight melancholia, which comes upon me sometimes now and makes me think I am old. Yet, as far as I know, as a writer I am only now writing out my mind.
She was right on all counts. She lived to be fifty-nine and wrote five more novels, some of her most famous essays, many short stories, the second series of [b:The Common Reader|18840|The Common Reader|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099892l/18840._SY75_.jpg|2684550], a biography of the artist Roger Fry, plus fifteen more years worth of diary entries. And Leonard Woolf did edit her diaries after her death in 1941, selecting the sections on writing, and some on reading, which he then published as [b:A Writer's Diary|14948|A Writer's Diary|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099172l/14948._SY75_.jpg|568491] full of little gems like this: You see, I’m thinking furiously about Reading and Writing
[b:A Writer's Diary|14948|A Writer's Diary|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639099172l/14948._SY75_.jpg|568491] starts in 1918 when Woolf’s second novel, [b:Night and Day|116056|Night and Day|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368337020l/116056._SY75_.jpg|1019503] was about to be published, and it covers the most important years of her writing life. I for one am very grateful to Leonard Woolf for both the editing and the publishing. It is very exciting to get to read about the writing process as it is happening, and about the writer’s reaction to the reception of their work as it is published.
As a reader, I’m rarely drawn to the biographical details of a writer’s life except where they are so closely linked to the writing that an understanding of one requires an understanding of the other. In the case of Virginia Woolf, it seems to me that biographical details are simply not relevant to an appreciation of her writing. She may have used life experiences as material for her books but the reader doesn’t need to know which episodes are fact and which are fiction; the writing carries the day almost entirely on its own. It is interesting that we don’t often seek to know the intimate lives of artists the way we sometimes do with writers; we accept an artist’s work as it is, simply placing it in its epoch and appreciating its technique and its merits in relation to its contemporaries. The parallel with the artist is particularly relevant in Woolf’s case; the main agenda in her novels is her art. The novels make political points certainly, but it is done without stridency; it never gets in the way of the style of the writing or the shape she is architecting. Even when she makes political points in her non-fiction, her phrasing is always perfect and her voice remains serene; she examines the field as a scientist or an anthropologist might, and sets out her conclusions. In both her fiction and her non-fiction, there is this firm focus on the writing style. I think she would have abhorred any search for intimate details about the personal life behind that writing style.
So what does Virginia Woolf say about the process of writing if writing it is—this dash at the paper of a phrase, this sweep of a brush? In 1923, when she is working on the first draft of [b:Mrs. Dalloway|14942|Mrs. Dalloway|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1646148221l/14942._SY75_.jpg|841320], she writes: But now what do I feel about my writing? One must write from deep feeling, said Dostoievsky. And do I? Or do I fabricate with words, loving them as I do?…But to get further. Have I the power of conveying the true reality?…Answer these questions as I may…there remains this excitement: to get to the bones, now that I’m writing fiction again I feel my force glow straight from me at its fullest. After a dose of criticism I feel that I’m writing sideways, using only an angle of my mind.
The other angles of her mind were constantly focused upon the current novel she was working on, or upon the germ of an idea for the next one. Why not invent a new kind of play; as for instance: Woman thinks…He does. Organ plays. She writes. They say: She sings. Night speaks. As we read through the diaries, we watch such seeds grow and change: that particular seed grew into [b:Orlando|18839|Orlando|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443118010l/18839._SY75_.jpg|6057225]. Soon afterwards, she began mentioning another theme: ‘moths’. She spoke of those moths again and again, spoke of them hovering at the back of her brain, and finally I realised that she was shaping the playpoem that would become [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645526068l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263]. More of her diary entries concern [b:The Waves|46114|The Waves|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1645526068l/46114._SY75_.jpg|6057263] than any of her other books, except perhaps [b:To the Lighthouse|59716|To the Lighthouse|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1639106809l/59716._SY75_.jpg|1323448]. I find it significant that of the entire ten, those are the two I appreciated the most.
And so, there was always a story in the making, even before she had finished the previous one, and the diaries were where she coaxed these seeds of stories into the light. As we can see from the quotes, Woolf wrote the diaries in a kind of shorthand, quite unlike the way she writes in her novels and essays: It strikes me that here I practice writing; do my scales; yes and work at certain effects. I daresay I practiced Jacob here; and Mrs D. and shall invent my next book here; for here I write merely in spirit—great fun it is too, and Old V. of 1940 will see something in it too. She will be a woman who can see, old V., everything—more than I can, I think. She registers her thoughts on the spot, her nib following the swerves of her thinking, sensitive to every shift of mood, and very often the mood mentioned is one of exhilaration, of the ‘high' she experienced from creating phrases. The notion of immense satisfaction, rapture, electric shocks gained from writing is repeated over and over again and most often in relation to the periods when she was engaged on fiction: Great content—almost always enjoying what I am at, but with constant change of mood. I don’t think I’m ever bored. Sometimes a little stale; but I have a power of recovery.
She needed every power of recovery that she could muster when it came to the reception of her novels. After [b:Night and Day|116056|Night and Day|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368337020l/116056._SY75_.jpg|1019503] came out to unenthusiastic reviews in 1919, she wrote: I ought to be writing Jacob’s Room; and I can’t…I’m a failure as a writer. I’m out of fashion: old: shan’t do any better….my book..a damp firework. Later, while still working on [b:Jacob's Room|225396|Jacob's Room|Virginia Woolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388466257l/225396._SY75_.jpg|3272732], she noted: Elliot (T. S.) coming on the heel of a long stretch of writing (two months without a break) made me listless; cast shade upon me; and the mind when engaged upon fiction wants all its boldness and self-confidence. He said nothing (about Jacob's Room)—but I reflected how what I’m doing was probably being better done by Mr Joyce.
By 1939, even though she had some huge successes behind her, and had had books written about her, she was still easily cast down by criticism and brooded about her writing reputation having been damaged by Windham Lewis and Gertrude Stein, and about how she was seen by some critics to be out of date..unlikely to write anything good again…second-rate and likely to be discarded altogether. I think that's my public reputation at the moment. It is based largely on C. Connolly's cocktail criticism: a sheaf of feathers in the wind.
About reading contemporary reviewers such as Cyril Connolly, she writes: When I read reviews [of other people's books] I crush the column together to get at one or two sentences; is it a good book or a bad? And then I discount those two sentences according to what I know of the book and of the reviewer. But when I write a review I write every sentence as if it were going to be tried by three Chief Justices. I can’t believe that I am crushed together and discounted. Reviews seem to me more and more frivolous…The truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.
Whatever about being read, reading itself was a tremendous pleasure. She mentions reading certain authors again and again; Dante and Proust were two such. She not only reread her favourites over and over, she liked to read them alongside other books, and the more books she had going at once, the better she liked it. In one of her letters, she said: I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time. Due to her association with The Times Literary Supplement as an occasional reviewer, she claims to have learned eventually to read with a pen and notebook, seriously.
There are frivolous moments as well as serious ones in her diary life; a line from an old song is tossed out several times like a repeated theme in a piece of music; it reveals a different Virginia from the one we usually see: And what do I care for a goose-feather bed. The line is from the well-known ballad about the Lady who leaves her Lord and her comfortable house and goes off to share a life on the road with the RaggleTaggle Gypsy-O. Interpret that how we like, it is clear that Virginia liked her comforts and was pleased to have made enough money from her writing to eventually afford certain luxuries. I enjoy epicurean ways of society; sipping and then shutting my eyes to taste. I enjoy almost everything.
Coexistent with the epicurean was a restless spirit constantly questioning itself, sometimes finding only blackness. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay one’s hands on and say ‘This is it’? My depression is a harassed feeling. I'm looking: but that's not it—that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?
It is at this point that the reviewer might be tempted to end this review by presuming tritely that Virginia Woolf never did find ‘it’. But no, this reviewer thinks she had ‘it’ in front of her all the time, and that she knew it: Nothing makes a whole except when I am writing.
whatshereadyesterday's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely beautiful! Wonderful quotes from the genius herself and you can feel the claustrophobia within Virginia Woolf's world during WW2. How could anyone live through that, being such a sensitive person as Woolf was?
lauralina2345's review against another edition
5.0
The end is amazing and sad, as the war is starting again...
mala_ramona's review against another edition
4.0
Ukronija should really get a lektor - to što su pustili da ne prerađen prevod i tekst izađe u štampu samo kvari Virdžinijinu genijalnost.
snowbenton's review against another edition
5.0
Extremely readable, poignant, sad, funny. Everything you always think your own diary will be but never is. It's a fascinating insight into Woolf herself and her writing process. I like that this version is edited to be just about her writing and literary thoughts.