25/01/2017

Virginia Woolf on "loneliness and creativity"


Born on a 25th of January in 1882, Virginia Woolf is still celebrated this day.
For her books and her unforgettable diary.

On her website, Brainspicking, Maria Popova chose to focus on this issue:

the Relationship Between Loneliness and Creativity

 


"...it is precisely the transmutation of loneliness into connection with the universal human experience that lends Woolf’s writing its timeless penetrative power".




From Virginia's words:

"Often down here I have entered into a sanctuary… of great agony once; and always some terror; so afraid one is of loneliness; of seeing to the bottom of the vessel. 

That is one of the experiences I have had here in some Augusts; and got then to a consciousness of what I call “reality”: a thing I see before me: something abstract; but residing in the downs or sky; beside which nothing matters; in which I shall rest and continue to exist. Reality I call it. 

And I fancy sometimes this is the most necessary thing to me: that which I seek. 

But who knows — once one takes a pen and writes? How difficult not to go making “reality” this and that, whereas it is one thing. 

Now perhaps this is my gift: this perhaps is what distinguishes me from other people: I think it may be rare to have so acute a sense of something like that — but again, who knows? I would like to express it too".

(August 1928)

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Read the whole article here: 
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/16/virginia-woolf-loneliness/

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