So I’m getting back to the library books I borrowed a couple of weeks ago, and am now reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I haven’t read any Woolf before–I remember To the Lighthouse being on the syllabus for my freshman “civ” class in college; alas, like so many assigned texts, it went unread–but I’m liking her prose (despite her almost-obsession with semicolons). It has a poetic flow, almost like it’s meant to be spoken rather than read. I find myself lingering over phrases and turning them over in my head. Right now I’m about ten or so pages into it, and apart from its iconic opening line (“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”), which as an aside evokes for me the perpetual motion of the movie The Hours, the following is my favorite passage so far. Go ahead, read it aloud. Relish it.
In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
Ahh.
More aside: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway inspired Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which was adapted for the screen by David Hare, whose play The Blue Room I am seeing tonight. Oh, the curious happenstance.
3 replies on “This moment of June”
Groan. I can’t understand the woman. I had to read her To The Lighthouse. After that I swore I’d never willingly read her again. It was absolutely painful to read her.
Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse are in my top 20 all time favorites. Gorgeous, original thoughts.
I read Mrs. Dalloway this summer. It’s catapulted into my faves list.