Virginia Woolf

A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, which centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporal and psychological elements. To the Lighthouse follows and extends the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, where the plot is secondary to philosophical introspection, and the prose can be winding and hard to follow. The novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception. To the Lighthouse is divided into three sections: "The Window," "Time Passes," and "The Lighthouse." Each section is fragmented into stream-of-consciousness contributions from various narrators. Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer who is considered one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

Roberta Falco

Tija

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? 

If only he could be alone in his room working, he thought, among his books. That was where he felt at his ease. 

 there is nothing more tedious, puerile and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. 

 and this, and this, and this, she thought, 

he stretched his arms out. They remained empty

 The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.

Alina

But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible.

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE quotes

Join the club