I believe that Virginia Woolf knew she was creating a masterpiece as she wrote Mrs. Dalloway.
The artful combination of the internal and external worlds; the boldness of piercing, one-word sentences that force the story's moment to its crisis; the unrelenting movement backward into memories the characters themselves would rather bury -- these elements work to re-create the genre that Woolf dominated. Or so I think. And I think she did, too.
When I finished the final page last night, I stared at the blank space beneath the final lines:
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.
Eventually I came back to reality just long enough to fill the empty margin with a cursive "beautiful" before closing my eyes and falling asleep. Honestly, I wasn't sure what else to do. It's been awhile since a book's finality hit me this hard.
Without extensively summarizing plot I find it hard to describe why I found this conclusion so undeniably, hauntingly, painfully beautiful. About what is this book? War? (It is set in post-WWI England.) Time? (Many old friends from school are brought together for one of Clarissa Dalloway's many parties.) Love? (Peter Walsh, Clarissa's first love, attends this party.) Loneliness? Loss? Memory?
Ah. It's the old trick, Virginia, isn't it?
Perhaps this is part of what makes classic literature classic. As my parents and I drove to Boston today, I told them all about Clarissa and Peter. I read aloud my favorite passages; summarized the most intense interactions; pondered their individual memories of the other as youths. The same story; but mom, dad, and I each viewed the tale from a fundamentally different vantage point and thus took away something unique. I find that hopeful.
So, I think, does Peter:
The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent's Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained - at last! - the power which adds the supreme flavor to existence, - the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.
And from my position of youthful, hopeful ignorance, I read the story as one of first love confronting a world in which it no longer fits. Or, at least, has yet to determine how it can fit again. Peter loved Clarissa as Orpheus loved Eurydice; as Baucis loved Philemon; as any first ("slash always," my professor reminded me at our last meeting in May) love adores their other.
Many years have passed since Peter and Clarissa were students together, stealing away time alone in the school's gardens and exuding uncontrollable mirth as they passed in the crowded halls each morning. They have both experienced relationships with others. Clarissa has a daughter. Peter has asked a woman in India to marry him.
And yet, these things matter not. Because the first-slash-always love is one that cannot be erased or broken or forgotten when chosen not to be. Because even the fact that their marriage would likely have failed is an (almost) absurdly unimportant detail. Because he is Peter and she is Clarissa, and that alone is enough to explain the terror and the ecstasy of it all.
For there she was.
And this, this notion precisely, is what I am finding so difficult to live with. It defies the notions of logic and reason. It turns on a sentiment so deeply entrenched in the heart that even the wind of rationality fails to change its course. It will endure both the blazing intensities of passion or hate and the coldest winters of separation or fear.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Kisses from a disgruntled soul in Cambridge --
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