Celebratory greetings to all.
And happy celebration of the centenary of the publication of Virginia Woolf’s short story collection, Monday or Tuesday. More information on this is available at Paula Maggio’s Blogging Woolf, through this link:
https://bloggingwoolf.org/2021/04/08/celebrating-the-centenary-of-virginia-woolfs-monday-or-tuesday/
Paula’s site is searchable of course, and has more information about Dalloway Day and a host of other topics.
On we go!
Lighthouse
Wednesday will mark the celebration of the fourth annual Dalloway Day (“the third Wednesday in June.”) And as restrictions due to the Covid 19 pandemic begin to be lifted, we recall that Virginia Woolf, who gave us Mrs Dalloway and so much more, lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic. Indeed, the eponymous character of Woolf’s novel is portrayed as having suffered from that illness.
However, I have titled this post “Lighthouse” thinking of Woolf’s fourth novel, the book she published two years after Mrs Dalloway. After all, the literary “day” honoring her 1925 novel also honors her fuller achievement, rather as Bloomsday honors more than James Joyce’s Ulysses. And—as many already know—the third Wednesday in June this year happens to fall on the 16th, the annual date of Bloomsday.
So, definitely, let us continue to celebrate! And as the author of To the Lighthouse notes in the essay “On Re-reading Novels,” recall that,
[o]ur observations [from previous readings] … can now come out and range themselves according to the directions we have received. [….] On a second reading we are able to use our observations from the start, and they are much more precise, but they are still controlled by these moments of understanding.
Walking in the Pyrenees*
hurrying to beat the traffic
we pack the food,
check the house and lock up
* From June last year, actually. While we open up
and ease pandemic restrictions we still haven't had
a chance to return farther north than Viladrau. Hope-
fully this month or next will bring new horizons.