The Write Thing

As I struggled with its difficult verbose style at times, ages ago in a small room of my own in Paris, Vita Sackville-West’s The Land became an unwanted axis of a thesis that I would have fancied more gossipy, had gossip been accepted as a literary genre in those days. Perhaps today it should, and people would write far funnier theses.

It must have been that Orlando had been brilliantly coded by Mrs Woolf to give Vita some form of ownership after her beautiful childhood home of Knole was repossessed by the male family line. It must have been that her larger loss of a home with English ancestry bleeding from every wall paradoxically mirrored my minimal family betrayal at the hands of a brother. It must have been the “land” inside the word Orlando, the modern history of Vita as Woolf re-wrote it and installed it as a classic of all times, or simply the fact that I miss those days of piecemeal research and the promise of a finding, somewhere, that would give the work its originality.

Regardless of the remoteness or lucidity of these memories, today it all came back to me, as it can happen at times when some episodes of one’s own soap opera become bad karma. It must be that, years later, I still do not own the land that is rightfully mine, but I do have the vision.

The country habit has me by the heart,
For he’s bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision,
Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves
with sun.

(“Winter”, from The Land)

By the way, for those who want a peak (or an “ear”?) of Vita’s voice, here’s an excerpt of this poem, read by the authoress herself.

I have decided to put the following motto in action: mens sana in corpore sano. Not sure if I can make it through to the end though, but have resumed spinning lessons after a while. I’m pretty happy about it in all. Yesterday evening I did another class, and took one of the books I’m reading at the moment with me. I normally do that while I wait for the instructor to arrive and as I get in line to make sure I can climb on a bike and actually do the class. Classes tend to be pretty crowded now that many people have returned from holidays, so you have to be prepared. All this introduction is in fact to speak about my readings right now, particularly a book about Virginia Woolf (are you surprised?). It is called Virginia Woolf, An Inner Life and was written by Julia Briggs.

The book is very revealing both of Woolf’s writing process (something that biographies, essays and other Virginiabilia have covered extensively) and also of the life surrounding her. I have only started my reading, but I have enjoyed the story behind The Voyage Out immensely, and now I am rediscovering Night and Day in a new light. I have long suspected that the universe connects to us through what we love. Personally I have that feeling with books. When I come across a book I can’t help buying, I feel as if life has taken me there by some crazy erratic action. It did with Briggs’ book. I was walking along the streets of Rome and I entered the Feltrinelli International bookstore. There the book was, waiting for a new reader to take a peek at Woolf’s through other eyes.

…But don’t you see, donkey West, that you’ll be tired of me one of these days (I’m so much older) and so I have to take my little precautions. Thats why I put the emphasis on ‘recording’ rather than feeling. But donkey West knows she has broken down more ramparts than anyone. And isnt there something obscure in you? There’s something that doesn’t vibrate in you: It may be purposely — you don’t let it: but I see it with other people, as well as with me: something reserved, muted — God knows what…It’s in your writing too, by the bye. The thing I call central transparency — sometimes fails you there too….

Virgina Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West. November 19, 1926

As I read this I thought of how many of us would identify with Woolf’s words. Human beings have different ways of showing and hiding emotions. Here Woolf speaks about “precautions”. Who doesn’t take precautions in relationships? Maybe some of us don’t even when we feel that something does not “vibrate” in the other, and when we start assessing what the other is like in the presence of other people but us.

History would claim Vita was a free woman, able to do as she pleased. Maybe her freedom resided in the way she did not have to take precautions, in this non-vibration Woolf so clearly felt. There is nothing more difficult than to chase a vibration that does not exist. Paradoxically, the other is not aware of what goes on inside, and becomes a rampart like the ones Vita herself “broke down”. That is the cost of freedom.