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On Being Ill with Notes from Sick Rooms
"By turns lyrical, self-mocking, and outlandish, Woolf's meditation on the perils and privileges of the sickbed lampoons the loneliness that makes one 'glad of a kick from a housemaid.' When Woolf imagines beauty in a frozen-over garden . . . it seems less a triumph of nature than of art."—The New Yorker
"Brilliant and beautiful."—Francine Prose, Bookforum
"[A] long-neglected reverie on illness . . . reprinted by the sterling Paris Press. This is a brilliant and odd book, charged with restrained emotion and sudden humor."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The resurrection of this forgotten work on illness is a boon indeed. . . . This is Woolf at her spangled best."—Booklist
In this poignant and humorous book, Virginia Woolf observes that no human being is spared toothaches, colds, and the flu. Yet illness—transformative and as common as love and war—is rarely the subject of polite conversation, let alone literature. This paperback facsimile of the 1930 Hogarth Press edition, with Hermione Lee's introduction to Woolf's life, work, and On Being Ill, is ideal for book groups, general readers, students, caregivers, and of course anyone suffering from a cold or more serious illness.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) is among the greatest literary geniuses of the twentieth century. Her groundbreaking books include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One's Own.
Hermione Lee is the renowned author of Virginia Woolf. Her other best-selling biographies include Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Philip Roth. She is president of Wolfson College, University of Oxford, England.
"Brilliant and beautiful."—Francine Prose, Bookforum
"[A] long-neglected reverie on illness . . . reprinted by the sterling Paris Press. This is a brilliant and odd book, charged with restrained emotion and sudden humor."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"The resurrection of this forgotten work on illness is a boon indeed. . . . This is Woolf at her spangled best."—Booklist
In this poignant and humorous book, Virginia Woolf observes that no human being is spared toothaches, colds, and the flu. Yet illness—transformative and as common as love and war—is rarely the subject of polite conversation, let alone literature. This paperback facsimile of the 1930 Hogarth Press edition, with Hermione Lee's introduction to Woolf's life, work, and On Being Ill, is ideal for book groups, general readers, students, caregivers, and of course anyone suffering from a cold or more serious illness.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) is among the greatest literary geniuses of the twentieth century. Her groundbreaking books include Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and A Room of One's Own.
Hermione Lee is the renowned author of Virginia Woolf. Her other best-selling biographies include Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Philip Roth. She is president of Wolfson College, University of Oxford, England.
122 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
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8264 people want to read
About the author
Virginia Woolf
1,752 books28.5k followers(Adeline) Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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January 14, 2025
The snowfield of the mind
Last year, I read Virginia Woolf’s essay On being Ill for the first time, in a collection in which Woolf’s 1926 essay featured as the sun, around which the other pieces (addressing disease from a social and a personal-religious angle) were revolving, basking in her radiance. At the second read, as a standalone piece, what struck me most again was Woolf’s plucky resilience, her quicksilver mind bopping in her exquisite sentences, defying the gravitas of the illness and the gravity of the horizontal position in bed, tumbling from one iridescent insight to another metaphor.
Writing in bed at Monk’s House, afflicted by ‘infernal headache’ and exhaustion that are keeping her from finishing To the Lighthouse, Woolf reminds the reader how being ill reminiscences the status of a child. It brings back memories of being bed-ridden as a child, of the feverish and at times delirious dreams. There are the astonishing perks of entering the realm of 'the undiscovered countries that are disclosed when the lights of health go down'. Being ill liberates one from the responsibilities of the ‘normal’, it opens the eyes and mind, offering new perspectives and perception of details, so one is perhaps even finally able to look round and up, gaze at the sky:
Illness sharpens one’s perceptiveness (perhaps also induced by its companions, medicine, or sleep?) and enhances one’s sense of the unity of the body and the mind. Looking at the world from a bed, slowing down, remarking things one is overlooking being busy, Woolf expresses an inclination to turn to poets and the charming, mystic quality and scent of their words when ill, having no taste for 'the long campaigns that prose exacts'. Illness wakens the consciousness that language is experienced in the body and the mind and encompasses individual feelings and sensations.
Notwithstanding her praise of the 'kingly sublimity of illness' as a door of perception , Woolf’s reflections are also deceitfully featherlight, surging up the slightly bitter taste of medicine, evoking the feelings of isolation from the world and the loneliness. Her thoughts echo the indifference of nature towards human’s plight ('Divinely beautiful it is also divinely heartless.'). She points at the changing relations of the ill person with the healthy busybodies, their comprehensible misapprehension:
As a humorous, subtle, and intricate piece of writing enlivened with a couple of wry swipes, Woolf’s thought-provoking reflections on the experience of illness ring as powerful and significant now as they probably did a hundred years ago.
You can read On Being Ill here.
(Illustrations by Louisa Albani)
Last year, I read Virginia Woolf’s essay On being Ill for the first time, in a collection in which Woolf’s 1926 essay featured as the sun, around which the other pieces (addressing disease from a social and a personal-religious angle) were revolving, basking in her radiance. At the second read, as a standalone piece, what struck me most again was Woolf’s plucky resilience, her quicksilver mind bopping in her exquisite sentences, defying the gravitas of the illness and the gravity of the horizontal position in bed, tumbling from one iridescent insight to another metaphor.
Writing in bed at Monk’s House, afflicted by ‘infernal headache’ and exhaustion that are keeping her from finishing To the Lighthouse, Woolf reminds the reader how being ill reminiscences the status of a child. It brings back memories of being bed-ridden as a child, of the feverish and at times delirious dreams. There are the astonishing perks of entering the realm of 'the undiscovered countries that are disclosed when the lights of health go down'. Being ill liberates one from the responsibilities of the ‘normal’, it opens the eyes and mind, offering new perspectives and perception of details, so one is perhaps even finally able to look round and up, gaze at the sky:
'Ordinarily to look at the sky for any length of time is impossible. Pedestrians would be impeded and disconcerted by a public sky-gazer. What snatches we get of it are mutilated by chimneys and churches, serve as a background for man, signify wet weather or fine, daub windows gold, and, filling in the branches, complete the pathos of dishevelled autumnal plane trees in London squares. Now, become as the leaf or the daisy, lying recumbent, staring straight up, the sky is discovered to be something so different from this that really it is a little shocking. This then has been going on all the time without our knowing it!—this incessant making up of shapes and casting them down, this buffeting of clouds together, and drawing vast trains of ships and waggons from North to South, this incessant ringing up and down of curtains of light and shade, this interminable experiment with gold shafts and blue shadows, with veiling the sun and unveiling it, with making rock ramparts and wafting them away—this endless activity, with the waste of Heaven knows how many million horse power of energy, has been left to work its will year in year out'.
Illness sharpens one’s perceptiveness (perhaps also induced by its companions, medicine, or sleep?) and enhances one’s sense of the unity of the body and the mind. Looking at the world from a bed, slowing down, remarking things one is overlooking being busy, Woolf expresses an inclination to turn to poets and the charming, mystic quality and scent of their words when ill, having no taste for 'the long campaigns that prose exacts'. Illness wakens the consciousness that language is experienced in the body and the mind and encompasses individual feelings and sensations.
Notwithstanding her praise of the 'kingly sublimity of illness' as a door of perception , Woolf’s reflections are also deceitfully featherlight, surging up the slightly bitter taste of medicine, evoking the feelings of isolation from the world and the loneliness. Her thoughts echo the indifference of nature towards human’s plight ('Divinely beautiful it is also divinely heartless.'). She points at the changing relations of the ill person with the healthy busybodies, their comprehensible misapprehension:
'We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.
Poets have found religion in nature; people live in the country to learn virtue from plants. It is in their indifference that they are comforting. That snowfield of the mind, where man has not trodden, is visited by the cloud, kissed by the falling petal, as, in another sphere, it is the great artists, the Miltons and the Popes, who console not by their thought of us but by their forgetfulness.
As a humorous, subtle, and intricate piece of writing enlivened with a couple of wry swipes, Woolf’s thought-provoking reflections on the experience of illness ring as powerful and significant now as they probably did a hundred years ago.
You can read On Being Ill here.
(Illustrations by Louisa Albani)
December 24, 2017
“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”
March 22, 2022
“. . . the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed.. .”
I went traveling in illness recently, not through Covid but in that other C, Cancer, where I seem to have survived a large melanoma lesion on my left shoulder, a wound that required plastic surgery to close. In recovery I hustle into Relevant Reading mode, where my reading in part turns to whatever personal or social issue I am going through. So I got this book decades ago, because it was short and cute and Woolf, but I was not yet ready to read it. Not yet ill! In the flower of youth (and denial). And wasn’t until now that I became in any sense ill. I have been lucky, in that I am today 69, never had any real illness, no medications, and though I almost dismissively approached this melanoma as a lower card soft puncher (hey, it’s not bladder cancer!), it actually has kicked me to the curb for a few months just now. I am as they say, cancer free, as far as we know.
Woolf was sick off and on for most of her life, so she is the greater expert I need to consult as I head into my eighth decade (gulp), expecting--in spite of my aggressive exercise and vitamin regimen (!)--my health to eventually get worse, not better. I am preparing my head and attitude with the help of such books.
“I have my books, and my poetry to protect me”--”I Am a Rock,” Simon and Garfunkel
And I began looking for novels initially. Yet Woolf points out that while there are great novels of love and war, there are few great novels of illness: “. . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” We can name several novels of The Great War, but how many great works are there of the 1918 Plague that also killed hundreds of thousands at that same time?
Part of the reason for that lack, according to Woolf, is that language fails us in illness: “. . . to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language.”
Woolf claims that “In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.” Maybe this is true; illness may be beyond our capacity to speak rationally about it.
“Incomprehensibility has an enormous power over us in illness.”
Maybe it's that we need poetic images; maybe we need to hear despondently raging Lear or Macbeth to get at the heart of our emotions at their worst.
But on the other hand, there is the somewhat disorienting but somewhat pleasant (somewhat; there's still the pain and fear to balance this out) experience of being off the grid while ill; I have said it has been nice to be able to read even more than I usually do. We step out of the daily 9-5. We rest, we struggle with pain, we need to heal. We sit still, we lie down.
“[W]e cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky.”
And Woolf encourages us to read and write in illness. Her essay is in part literary criticism, part reading journal, filled with myriad references to a range of literature. We relax, we pay attention, our senses may be heightened. We may learn something when we read and write; we may make some sense of things.
Then illness may reveal what we don’t want to face:
“It is only the recumbent who know what, after all, nature is at no pains to conceal—that she in the end will conquer; the heat will leave the world; stiff with frost we shall cease to drag our feet about the fields; ice will lie thick upon factory and engine; the sun will go out.”
Illness is the uncomfortable truth-teller, and most of us want to live in denial of even the possibility of illness.
“Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness."
Then, there is “. . . a childish outspokenness in illness. Things are said, truths are blurted out, which the cautionary respectability of health conceals.”
“All day, all night, the body intervenes.”
I see at a glance that many Goodreads readers don’t much like this short essay, but this is Woolf, stream-of -consciousness, whimsical, bringing in whatever occurs to her, meandering, somewhat light-heartedly. She's not making a simple argument. She's exploring. I liked it a lot. Virginia Woolf is one of the best writers ever.
I went traveling in illness recently, not through Covid but in that other C, Cancer, where I seem to have survived a large melanoma lesion on my left shoulder, a wound that required plastic surgery to close. In recovery I hustle into Relevant Reading mode, where my reading in part turns to whatever personal or social issue I am going through. So I got this book decades ago, because it was short and cute and Woolf, but I was not yet ready to read it. Not yet ill! In the flower of youth (and denial). And wasn’t until now that I became in any sense ill. I have been lucky, in that I am today 69, never had any real illness, no medications, and though I almost dismissively approached this melanoma as a lower card soft puncher (hey, it’s not bladder cancer!), it actually has kicked me to the curb for a few months just now. I am as they say, cancer free, as far as we know.
Woolf was sick off and on for most of her life, so she is the greater expert I need to consult as I head into my eighth decade (gulp), expecting--in spite of my aggressive exercise and vitamin regimen (!)--my health to eventually get worse, not better. I am preparing my head and attitude with the help of such books.
“I have my books, and my poetry to protect me”--”I Am a Rock,” Simon and Garfunkel
And I began looking for novels initially. Yet Woolf points out that while there are great novels of love and war, there are few great novels of illness: “. . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.” We can name several novels of The Great War, but how many great works are there of the 1918 Plague that also killed hundreds of thousands at that same time?
Part of the reason for that lack, according to Woolf, is that language fails us in illness: “. . . to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language.”
Woolf claims that “In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.” Maybe this is true; illness may be beyond our capacity to speak rationally about it.
“Incomprehensibility has an enormous power over us in illness.”
Maybe it's that we need poetic images; maybe we need to hear despondently raging Lear or Macbeth to get at the heart of our emotions at their worst.
But on the other hand, there is the somewhat disorienting but somewhat pleasant (somewhat; there's still the pain and fear to balance this out) experience of being off the grid while ill; I have said it has been nice to be able to read even more than I usually do. We step out of the daily 9-5. We rest, we struggle with pain, we need to heal. We sit still, we lie down.
“[W]e cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky.”
And Woolf encourages us to read and write in illness. Her essay is in part literary criticism, part reading journal, filled with myriad references to a range of literature. We relax, we pay attention, our senses may be heightened. We may learn something when we read and write; we may make some sense of things.
Then illness may reveal what we don’t want to face:
“It is only the recumbent who know what, after all, nature is at no pains to conceal—that she in the end will conquer; the heat will leave the world; stiff with frost we shall cease to drag our feet about the fields; ice will lie thick upon factory and engine; the sun will go out.”
Illness is the uncomfortable truth-teller, and most of us want to live in denial of even the possibility of illness.
“Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness."
Then, there is “. . . a childish outspokenness in illness. Things are said, truths are blurted out, which the cautionary respectability of health conceals.”
“All day, all night, the body intervenes.”
I see at a glance that many Goodreads readers don’t much like this short essay, but this is Woolf, stream-of -consciousness, whimsical, bringing in whatever occurs to her, meandering, somewhat light-heartedly. She's not making a simple argument. She's exploring. I liked it a lot. Virginia Woolf is one of the best writers ever.
January 15, 2018
We do not know our souls, let alone the souls of others.
An ode to illness. Another inspiration.
She asks for its presence in literature, as her wit silences desperate voices fighting for her attention.
...how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm-chair...
Her passionate lyricism blends in perfectly with the subtle irony of her gifted mind.
Fragile, gifted mind.
...a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot; they would complain that there was no love in it—wrongly however, for illness often takes on the disguise of love, and plays the same odd tricks.
A break from illness. Shall we cover the silence with a party?
No.
It all starts again. The break is over. The burden of reality ceases and a moment of downright existence comes back. Virginia looks around. She looks up. She disconcerts the world while she looks at the sky.
So much consciousness is flooding the room.
The first impression of that extraordinary spectacle is strangely overcoming. Ordinarily to look at the sky for any length of time is impossible.
The last song to illness. We are gazing at the sky as she decides; enough.
A voice comes from a letter.
Over and over again.
Dec 23, 15
* Also on my blog.
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June 13, 2017I was reading these wonderful pieces by Virginia Woolf and her mother, Julia Stephen, last Saturday morning, in bed, sipping coffee and nibbling a piece of toast when I came across this sentence: The origin of most things has been decided on, but the origin of crumbs in bed has never excited sufficient attention among the scientific world, though it is a problem which has tormented many a weary sufferer. I will forbear to give my own explanation, which may be neither scientific nor orthodox, and will merely beg that their evil existence may be recognised and, as far as human nature allows, guarded against. The torment of crumbs should be stamped out of the sick bed as if it were the Colorado beetle in a potato field.
After reading that, my breakfast in bed was quite spoilt. I was no longer comfortable and kept feeling niggley little crumbs everywhere (though I was grateful they weren't Colorado beetles), but I couldn’t find any and in the end I was forced to get up, frustrated that, on the one hand I hadn’t found the phantom crumbs, and on the other that Julia Stephen refused to reveal her tantalising but unscientific and unorthodox explanation for their origin.
But I was obliged to agree with her that, Among the number of small evils which haunt illness, the greatest, in the misery which it can cause, though the smallest in size, is crumbs.
After reading that, my breakfast in bed was quite spoilt. I was no longer comfortable and kept feeling niggley little crumbs everywhere (though I was grateful they weren't Colorado beetles), but I couldn’t find any and in the end I was forced to get up, frustrated that, on the one hand I hadn’t found the phantom crumbs, and on the other that Julia Stephen refused to reveal her tantalising but unscientific and unorthodox explanation for their origin.
But I was obliged to agree with her that, Among the number of small evils which haunt illness, the greatest, in the misery which it can cause, though the smallest in size, is crumbs.
April 18, 2022
Il saggio di Woolf è un fiammifero acceso in una stanza buia. Un bagliore improvviso che accarezza i profili, accentuandone gli spigoli e creando nuovi livelli di ombra.
Come un cerino, però, così come si infiamma, si cheta, in poco tempo.
Scritto in modo magnifico, è un susseguirsi di pensieri che spesso scarseggia di rigorosità nella trattazione. Se ne gode nel seguire l'elucubrazione pindarica dell'autrice, più che per quello che vi è affermato.
E preso di per sé, mi spingerebbe soltanto ad una quieta riflessione sul mio rapporto difficoltoso con Woolf, che vorrei amare, con tutto me stesso, ma con cui proprio non riesco a far scattare alcuna scintilla (se non nei suoi testi più personali, come le lettere con Vita Sackville-West).
Purtroppo, delle 117 pagine di questa edizione, Sulla malattia ne occupa una scarsa trentina. Seguono: commento al testo di Woolf curato da Gardini, le otto facciate de Il convalescente di Charles Lamb (testo citato da Woolf che effettivamente mi ha fatto piacere leggere) e poi una lunga postfazione sempre ad opera del già citato Gardini.
Questa nota conclusiva occupa metà volume, facendo sì che due terzi della materia scritta di questo libello che in copertina riporta "Virginia Woolf. Sulla malattia", sia in realtà opera del curatore. L'aspetto che più mi ha fatto incazzare?
La postfazione tratta di Woolf solo per finta. La cita qua e là, di proposito, ma in realtà è l'occasione per Gardini di scrivere un suo saggio sulla malattia - del resto, essendoci un apposito commento al testo immediatamente successivo a Sulla malattia, non c'è neppure bisogno di citarla ancora. E allora via di sproloqui su Mann, Kafka, Settembrini, Sontag (e sul lavoro di questa, unica donna analizzata, è tutto un florilegio paternalistico di critiche).
Sarà forse per quell'uso smodato dell'articolo determinativo prima del cognome delle autrici, che nel 2022 trovo intollerabile [e, si noti bene, la mia copia è una ristampa di fine 2021], sarà per il fatto che questo compendio gardiniano non è citato né sul frontespizio né in quarta di copertina, ma la presenza ingombrante del curatore mi ha reso indigesto tutto il volume.
Mi immagino 'sto uomo come un parassita che vive del talento femminile e si riempie le tasche di soldi per un testo di Woolf che di lui non ha alcun bisogno. È una esagerazione, la mia? Sicuramente sì, ma questa edizione Bollati Boringhieri vorrei venisse data alle fiamme.
E dire che studiose di Woolf, capaci di non trasformare questo testo in un'occasione per elogiare se stessi, in Italia non mancano.
[L'unica stella della mia valutazione è per Woolf, malcapitata in questo lavoro scadente di Gardini]
Come un cerino, però, così come si infiamma, si cheta, in poco tempo.
Scritto in modo magnifico, è un susseguirsi di pensieri che spesso scarseggia di rigorosità nella trattazione. Se ne gode nel seguire l'elucubrazione pindarica dell'autrice, più che per quello che vi è affermato.
E preso di per sé, mi spingerebbe soltanto ad una quieta riflessione sul mio rapporto difficoltoso con Woolf, che vorrei amare, con tutto me stesso, ma con cui proprio non riesco a far scattare alcuna scintilla (se non nei suoi testi più personali, come le lettere con Vita Sackville-West).
Purtroppo, delle 117 pagine di questa edizione, Sulla malattia ne occupa una scarsa trentina. Seguono: commento al testo di Woolf curato da Gardini, le otto facciate de Il convalescente di Charles Lamb (testo citato da Woolf che effettivamente mi ha fatto piacere leggere) e poi una lunga postfazione sempre ad opera del già citato Gardini.
Questa nota conclusiva occupa metà volume, facendo sì che due terzi della materia scritta di questo libello che in copertina riporta "Virginia Woolf. Sulla malattia", sia in realtà opera del curatore. L'aspetto che più mi ha fatto incazzare?
La postfazione tratta di Woolf solo per finta. La cita qua e là, di proposito, ma in realtà è l'occasione per Gardini di scrivere un suo saggio sulla malattia - del resto, essendoci un apposito commento al testo immediatamente successivo a Sulla malattia, non c'è neppure bisogno di citarla ancora. E allora via di sproloqui su Mann, Kafka, Settembrini, Sontag (e sul lavoro di questa, unica donna analizzata, è tutto un florilegio paternalistico di critiche).
Sarà forse per quell'uso smodato dell'articolo determinativo prima del cognome delle autrici, che nel 2022 trovo intollerabile [e, si noti bene, la mia copia è una ristampa di fine 2021], sarà per il fatto che questo compendio gardiniano non è citato né sul frontespizio né in quarta di copertina, ma la presenza ingombrante del curatore mi ha reso indigesto tutto il volume.
Mi immagino 'sto uomo come un parassita che vive del talento femminile e si riempie le tasche di soldi per un testo di Woolf che di lui non ha alcun bisogno. È una esagerazione, la mia? Sicuramente sì, ma questa edizione Bollati Boringhieri vorrei venisse data alle fiamme.
E dire che studiose di Woolf, capaci di non trasformare questo testo in un'occasione per elogiare se stessi, in Italia non mancano.
[L'unica stella della mia valutazione è per Woolf, malcapitata in questo lavoro scadente di Gardini]
July 7, 2021
3.5 stars
A solid essay discussing the portrayal of illness in literature vs other more prominent themes.
A solid essay discussing the portrayal of illness in literature vs other more prominent themes.
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June 19, 2023Se há quem saiba discorrer sobre todo e qualquer assunto, esse alguém é (ou era) Virginia Woolf que, neste ensaio On being ill propõe, essencialmente, que a doença que incapacita o corpo capacita a mente para inteligir o significado para lá da forma.
In health meaning has encroached upon sound. Our intelligence domineers over our senses. But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poem by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent, and ripple like leaves, and chequer us with light and shadow, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having travelled slowly up with all the bloom upon its wings.
Não está em questão se realmente a liberdade que se granjeia com a doença física (a autora também não especifica até que ponto incapacitante) é qualquer coisa de proveniente do domínio sobrenatural, mas, de certa forma, Woolf não está errada em afirmar que a saúde do nosso corpo comporta tantos mecanismos que nos ocupam, entretêm e ofuscam que é normal no dia a dia, deixar-mo-nos ensombrar por um certo vazio, uma certa dormência para tudo aquilo que em nosso redor nos devia sensibilizar:
In illness(...)we cease to be soldiers in the march of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up-to look, for example, at the sky.
A doença traz uma certa liberdade de pensamento e atuação, faz com que baixemos a guarda, agucemos os sentidos que compensam a inércia e esqueçamos os códigos e normas sociais que nos oprimem no dia a dia:
There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional) a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truths blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.
Por tudo isso, defende a autora, é muito estranho que a literatura, que tanto se ocupa do homem, lhe cante os males da alma e não os do corpo. Por qualquer razão, a clarividência, o esclarecimento espiritual que nos é oferecido quando em mãos com a doença do corpo; os mistérios da sabedoria que se alcança quando o espírito não está obrigado às rotinas mecânicas; por qualquer razão estes não são temas que apelem ao escritor, não são trabalhados na literatura, não são procurados pelos leitores:
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads(...) - when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no.
People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected.
Estas belas reflexões não se esgotam aqui, mas o ponto alto deste ensaio, mais do que fazer pensar, é, sem sombra de dúvida a beleza de uma escrita que Woolf trabalha e domina em seu absoluto proveito e vontade, mesmo com um tema como a doença como fio condutor:
Illness makes us disinclined for the long campaigns that prose exacts. We cannot command all our faculties and keep our reason and our judgment and our memory at attention while chapter swings on top of chapter, and, as one settles into place, we must be on the watch for the coming of the next, until the whole structure-arches, towers, battlements stands firm on its foundations. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is not the book for influenza, nor The Golden Bowl, nor Madame Bovary.(...) - other tastes assert themselves; sudden, fitful, intense. We rifle the poets of their flowers. We break off a line or two and let them open in the depths of the mind, spread their bright wings, swim like coloured fish in green waters.
In health meaning has encroached upon sound. Our intelligence domineers over our senses. But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poem by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent, and ripple like leaves, and chequer us with light and shadow, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having travelled slowly up with all the bloom upon its wings.
Não está em questão se realmente a liberdade que se granjeia com a doença física (a autora também não especifica até que ponto incapacitante) é qualquer coisa de proveniente do domínio sobrenatural, mas, de certa forma, Woolf não está errada em afirmar que a saúde do nosso corpo comporta tantos mecanismos que nos ocupam, entretêm e ofuscam que é normal no dia a dia, deixar-mo-nos ensombrar por um certo vazio, uma certa dormência para tudo aquilo que em nosso redor nos devia sensibilizar:
In illness(...)we cease to be soldiers in the march of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up-to look, for example, at the sky.
A doença traz uma certa liberdade de pensamento e atuação, faz com que baixemos a guarda, agucemos os sentidos que compensam a inércia e esqueçamos os códigos e normas sociais que nos oprimem no dia a dia:
There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional) a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truths blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.
Por tudo isso, defende a autora, é muito estranho que a literatura, que tanto se ocupa do homem, lhe cante os males da alma e não os do corpo. Por qualquer razão, a clarividência, o esclarecimento espiritual que nos é oferecido quando em mãos com a doença do corpo; os mistérios da sabedoria que se alcança quando o espírito não está obrigado às rotinas mecânicas; por qualquer razão estes não são temas que apelem ao escritor, não são trabalhados na literatura, não são procurados pelos leitores:
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads(...) - when we think of this and infinitely more, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no.
People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected.
Estas belas reflexões não se esgotam aqui, mas o ponto alto deste ensaio, mais do que fazer pensar, é, sem sombra de dúvida a beleza de uma escrita que Woolf trabalha e domina em seu absoluto proveito e vontade, mesmo com um tema como a doença como fio condutor:
Illness makes us disinclined for the long campaigns that prose exacts. We cannot command all our faculties and keep our reason and our judgment and our memory at attention while chapter swings on top of chapter, and, as one settles into place, we must be on the watch for the coming of the next, until the whole structure-arches, towers, battlements stands firm on its foundations. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is not the book for influenza, nor The Golden Bowl, nor Madame Bovary.(...) - other tastes assert themselves; sudden, fitful, intense. We rifle the poets of their flowers. We break off a line or two and let them open in the depths of the mind, spread their bright wings, swim like coloured fish in green waters.
February 16, 2016
Reading Virginia Woolf for me is like reading a much more eloquent version of my own personal journals I keep. She looks inside herself and empties what she finds onto the pages in a way that not only I can identify with but that I marvel at. Her prose is an unstructured poem that I can never get enough of.
I'm an 18 year old girl who has lived with a debilitating chronic illness for the past 3 years and will continue to have my entire life. When I found this essay I just about cried. The way she shares her experience with the reader is so personal and wonderful I found myself putting down this short book a couple times just to smile and ponder every word she wrote.
The experience of illness is extremely unrepresented not only in literature but in popular culture all together. Sometimes it feels as though it's been sent up into the family attic only to be brought back down when everyone is leaving and needs to say their goodbyes.
The powerful experience that exists between the physical body and the metaphysical body, is virtually ignored and forgotten. But once you become sick it overwhelms you and comes rushing back. For most people, luckily, this lasts at the most two weeks of bed rest and antibiotics. But for those who live with illness, it becomes a part of you and everything you do. With this experience comes a lot of new, even good, things as well. Virginia speaks about being sedentary and having the time to simply stare at the sky and flowers, taking in the world and all it's small unseen moments as if it were a secret tonic you just realized you could never live without.
"It is only the recumbent who know that, after all, nature is at no pains to conceal - that she in the end will conquer"
I could quote this entire essay and still be unable to express how I feel about it. All I can say is, like all of her writing, it is an experience that can't be missed!
I'm an 18 year old girl who has lived with a debilitating chronic illness for the past 3 years and will continue to have my entire life. When I found this essay I just about cried. The way she shares her experience with the reader is so personal and wonderful I found myself putting down this short book a couple times just to smile and ponder every word she wrote.
The experience of illness is extremely unrepresented not only in literature but in popular culture all together. Sometimes it feels as though it's been sent up into the family attic only to be brought back down when everyone is leaving and needs to say their goodbyes.
The powerful experience that exists between the physical body and the metaphysical body, is virtually ignored and forgotten. But once you become sick it overwhelms you and comes rushing back. For most people, luckily, this lasts at the most two weeks of bed rest and antibiotics. But for those who live with illness, it becomes a part of you and everything you do. With this experience comes a lot of new, even good, things as well. Virginia speaks about being sedentary and having the time to simply stare at the sky and flowers, taking in the world and all it's small unseen moments as if it were a secret tonic you just realized you could never live without.
"It is only the recumbent who know that, after all, nature is at no pains to conceal - that she in the end will conquer"
I could quote this entire essay and still be unable to express how I feel about it. All I can say is, like all of her writing, it is an experience that can't be missed!
July 5, 2019
A fascinating, sensitive and insightful essay by a writer who had to live with long periods of being ill all her life.
'All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane — smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always of the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how the mind has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher’s turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which the body wages with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism.'
'All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February. The creature within can only gaze through the pane — smudged or rosy; it cannot separate off from the body like the sheath of a knife or the pod of a pea for a single instant; it must go through the whole unending procession of changes, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, hunger and satisfaction, health and illness, until there comes the inevitable catastrophe; the body smashes itself to smithereens, and the soul (it is said) escapes. But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write always of the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how the mind has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher’s turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which the body wages with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth. Short of these, this monster, the body, this miracle, its pain, will soon make us taper into mysticism, or rise, with rapid beats of the wings, into the raptures of transcendentalism.'
September 2, 2023
"Cuando estamos enfermos lo incomprensible ejerce un enorme poder sobre nosotros, de un modo más legítimo quizá de lo que aguantaría el sano".
Con este ensayo confirmo que leer a Woolf es un deleite. Te lleva por los camino más visuales y realistas de la época y te hace pensar cómo es que esta mujer era capaz de ver el mundo como lo hacía, contándolo tan bien que te hace sentir que estás viviendo todo con ella. Era una adelantada en su época, de eso no hay duda. En mi cabeza no cabe que en los dos ensayos que he leído de la autora esta haga hincapié en cómo es que se ve en la obligación de escribirlos ya que quiere leer algo así y en ese entonces no lo encontraba en la literatura. La enfermedad común y cotidiana era brutalmente ignorada, romantizada, santificadora e incluso glorificada, y se ve que Virginia no buscaba eso a la hora de leer sobre un enfermo en ficción.
Amé "estar enfermo" porque aquí leí realidad. Amé "estar enfermo" porque aquí leí una fuerte crítica la sociedad en que vivimos sin dejar de ser respetuosa haciéndolo. Amé estar enfermo y punto, porque la enfermedad nos ha azotado a todos alguna vez y nos hemos sentido inútiles estando enfermos, porque nos hemos sentido morir estando enfermos, porque "estar enfermo" es humano y lo humano debe tener lugar en la literatura siempre.
Con este ensayo confirmo que leer a Woolf es un deleite. Te lleva por los camino más visuales y realistas de la época y te hace pensar cómo es que esta mujer era capaz de ver el mundo como lo hacía, contándolo tan bien que te hace sentir que estás viviendo todo con ella. Era una adelantada en su época, de eso no hay duda. En mi cabeza no cabe que en los dos ensayos que he leído de la autora esta haga hincapié en cómo es que se ve en la obligación de escribirlos ya que quiere leer algo así y en ese entonces no lo encontraba en la literatura. La enfermedad común y cotidiana era brutalmente ignorada, romantizada, santificadora e incluso glorificada, y se ve que Virginia no buscaba eso a la hora de leer sobre un enfermo en ficción.
Amé "estar enfermo" porque aquí leí realidad. Amé "estar enfermo" porque aquí leí una fuerte crítica la sociedad en que vivimos sin dejar de ser respetuosa haciéndolo. Amé estar enfermo y punto, porque la enfermedad nos ha azotado a todos alguna vez y nos hemos sentido inútiles estando enfermos, porque nos hemos sentido morir estando enfermos, porque "estar enfermo" es humano y lo humano debe tener lugar en la literatura siempre.
Read
March 21, 2020I went back and re-read A Journal of the Plague Year, and then I went back and re-read “On Being Ill,” and if I had to put one of them in front of you as evidence of what it's like to be alive right now, on COVID-19’s watch, it would have to be Woolf, not Defoe. (I’m not even sick, mind you.) The stress; the distractedness; the where-did-everybody-go-ness; the worry, and the impatience with others’ worries; the individual reckoning; the feeling of living confiscated—she gets it, and she does it all so well, with only the slightest sense of focus or purpose.
June 9, 2015
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/5237230...
But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poems by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent and distill their flavor, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour. Foreigners, to whom the tongue is strange, have us at a disadvantage. ___ Virginia Woolf from On Being Ill
Had I known about this essay, On Being Ill, and had I read the quote above prior to publishing my first book of poems, Zimble Zamble Zumble, I would have used it as an introduction to my work. No one could have framed my book any better than Ms. Woolf did here, although Gordon Lish wrote a foreword for it the likes that I have not ever seen bested anywhere else. An editor of a small press in New Orleans, I have forgotten his name and outfit as I am sure most of us have or eventually will, wanted to publish my first book provided the Lish foreword was removed. He certainly did not “get” what my work was about inasmuch that Ms. Woolf surely would have and Lish had already proven he does and did. I gladly refused the scum bag’s offer and went on to publish a limited edition with elimae books and now have an artifact we are all very happy with, and I guess by chance we have survived him.
The point is the body, and it happens through our feelings. And if we get the meaning of something it comes through these senses. Every word must do something to us, make us feel it through and in our body, and the meaning of the work is secondary and something that comes when it does as a result of this communion with our senses. The “queer odor” is foreign to us, almost another language sometimes, and must be enjoyed and savored the way one reads philosophy and poetry the likes of Gilles Deleuze and Wallace Stevens for two of the most perfect examples I can give. Virginia Woolf writes in this manner, and this essay precludes her great work To The Lighthouse.
There are interesting back stories behind the writing of this essay On Being Ill. One tidbit has it that T.S. Eliot had requested an essay from Woolf for his revamped magazine New Criterion even after having basically screwed the Woolfs’ own Hogarth Press over by republishing his book The Waste Land at a rival press a mere three years after Hogarth Press had graciously published it. Eliot has always been known to have audacity, but this, if true, proves it. Of course, Woolf agreed to provide an essay for him and Eliot published it after remarking that her work was wordy and feeble. There is a lot I personally do not like about this guy Eliot, and for Virginia I feel the extreme opposite.
But this essay of hers is basically a long poem for me, beautifully written, and lyrical enough for me to hear the birds sing. It is short, twenty-eight pages, and something to revisit from time to time. It is challenging and brave, and hardly sad at all even when book-ended by her own eventual death and her several failed attempts at suicide prior to the one which finally succeeded. There is something glorious and operatic about reading Virginia Woolf. The shorter her work is the better able I am to withstand my own resulting and incessant pounding happening in my chest.
But in illness, with the police off duty, we creep beneath some obscure poems by Mallarmé or Donne, some phrase in Latin or Greek, and the words give out their scent and distill their flavor, and then, if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour. Foreigners, to whom the tongue is strange, have us at a disadvantage. ___ Virginia Woolf from On Being Ill
Had I known about this essay, On Being Ill, and had I read the quote above prior to publishing my first book of poems, Zimble Zamble Zumble, I would have used it as an introduction to my work. No one could have framed my book any better than Ms. Woolf did here, although Gordon Lish wrote a foreword for it the likes that I have not ever seen bested anywhere else. An editor of a small press in New Orleans, I have forgotten his name and outfit as I am sure most of us have or eventually will, wanted to publish my first book provided the Lish foreword was removed. He certainly did not “get” what my work was about inasmuch that Ms. Woolf surely would have and Lish had already proven he does and did. I gladly refused the scum bag’s offer and went on to publish a limited edition with elimae books and now have an artifact we are all very happy with, and I guess by chance we have survived him.
The point is the body, and it happens through our feelings. And if we get the meaning of something it comes through these senses. Every word must do something to us, make us feel it through and in our body, and the meaning of the work is secondary and something that comes when it does as a result of this communion with our senses. The “queer odor” is foreign to us, almost another language sometimes, and must be enjoyed and savored the way one reads philosophy and poetry the likes of Gilles Deleuze and Wallace Stevens for two of the most perfect examples I can give. Virginia Woolf writes in this manner, and this essay precludes her great work To The Lighthouse.
There are interesting back stories behind the writing of this essay On Being Ill. One tidbit has it that T.S. Eliot had requested an essay from Woolf for his revamped magazine New Criterion even after having basically screwed the Woolfs’ own Hogarth Press over by republishing his book The Waste Land at a rival press a mere three years after Hogarth Press had graciously published it. Eliot has always been known to have audacity, but this, if true, proves it. Of course, Woolf agreed to provide an essay for him and Eliot published it after remarking that her work was wordy and feeble. There is a lot I personally do not like about this guy Eliot, and for Virginia I feel the extreme opposite.
But this essay of hers is basically a long poem for me, beautifully written, and lyrical enough for me to hear the birds sing. It is short, twenty-eight pages, and something to revisit from time to time. It is challenging and brave, and hardly sad at all even when book-ended by her own eventual death and her several failed attempts at suicide prior to the one which finally succeeded. There is something glorious and operatic about reading Virginia Woolf. The shorter her work is the better able I am to withstand my own resulting and incessant pounding happening in my chest.
Read
January 9, 2022oof, that hit me right in the chronic disability.
4 stars / review to come
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besties i have been compromised. miss rona took a victim in me.
i feel like reading this is appropriate at a time like this.
4 stars / review to come
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besties i have been compromised. miss rona took a victim in me.
i feel like reading this is appropriate at a time like this.
Read
February 24, 2016Es posible encontrar belleza incluso en las temáticas más tristes u oscuras. En la enfermedad podemos encontrar la lividez, el recuerdo de estar sanos, incluso el romanticismo de los síntomas que acompañan algunas enfermedades célebres para (o entre) los artistas: no existe ningún objeto prohibido al arte, porque todo es posible convertirlo en objeto de admiración.
De ese modo piensa Virginia Woolf que en De la enfermedad, se permite jugar con nuestras expectativas: nos hace pensar que criticará la ausencia de la enfermedad en la literatura —algo, de todos modos, cierto sólo a medias—, para acabar haciendo una reivindicación poética del papel de la muerte en nuestra apreciación de los acontecimientos de la vida. Como si sólo la existencia de la enfermedad nos permitiera valorar el hecho de estar sanos, como sólo la muerte nos permite valorar el hecho de estar vivos. Todo ello evitando en todo momento el tono de sermón eclesiástico propio de los columnistas tanto de su tiempo como el nuestro . Abraza escenas, desarrollos y pinceladas que van haciendo bambolear nuestro cerebro de un extremo al otro, sin dejarnos aprehender lugares comunes en ningún momento, obligándonos a leer sin poder despegar nuestros ojos del libro. Hace del ensayo literatura.
Además, Woolf es una estilista soberbia. Su puntuación, rozando lo divino, abre la posibilidad de su fino hilado de pensamientos, sostenidos sobre mínimos alfileres retóricos, que permite que sus detalles expresen más que la mera suma de sus partes. En esencia, sobrepasa la mera belleza sensual inmediata para sumergirse en un intelectualismo de la belleza.
Siempre es un placer volver sobre los pasos de un gran escritor. Pero si además es el caso de Woolf, ese placer es doble: el placer de leer algo excelso y el placer de leer algo que transmuta ante nuestros propios ojos.
De ese modo piensa Virginia Woolf que en De la enfermedad, se permite jugar con nuestras expectativas: nos hace pensar que criticará la ausencia de la enfermedad en la literatura —algo, de todos modos, cierto sólo a medias—, para acabar haciendo una reivindicación poética del papel de la muerte en nuestra apreciación de los acontecimientos de la vida. Como si sólo la existencia de la enfermedad nos permitiera valorar el hecho de estar sanos, como sólo la muerte nos permite valorar el hecho de estar vivos. Todo ello evitando en todo momento el tono de sermón eclesiástico propio de los columnistas tanto de su tiempo como el nuestro . Abraza escenas, desarrollos y pinceladas que van haciendo bambolear nuestro cerebro de un extremo al otro, sin dejarnos aprehender lugares comunes en ningún momento, obligándonos a leer sin poder despegar nuestros ojos del libro. Hace del ensayo literatura.
Además, Woolf es una estilista soberbia. Su puntuación, rozando lo divino, abre la posibilidad de su fino hilado de pensamientos, sostenidos sobre mínimos alfileres retóricos, que permite que sus detalles expresen más que la mera suma de sus partes. En esencia, sobrepasa la mera belleza sensual inmediata para sumergirse en un intelectualismo de la belleza.
Siempre es un placer volver sobre los pasos de un gran escritor. Pero si además es el caso de Woolf, ese placer es doble: el placer de leer algo excelso y el placer de leer algo que transmuta ante nuestros propios ojos.
May 8, 2015
Oh, Virginia, why must you be so coy? You've written so little on a topic I know you knew so well, and what you have written is veiled in literary references. I'm enticed by phrases like,"the army of the upright," and who hasn't lived the saga of influenza? Isn't it true that illness frees us from the expectations of the everyday, lets us say what we really mean? I wish this essay were at least four times as long, but then, I suppose you wrote it while you were ill, and you really didn't have the energy to give us more.
January 15, 2025
Abituati a credere che la mente sia l’unico strumento davvero utile, l’unico al quale potersi affidare in ogni occasione e nel quale sono racchiusi tutti i misteri del nostro essere, ci dimentichiamo del corpo, della nostra concretezza nel mondo, del peso che ci portiamo dietro, fatto di carne, dolore, sangue.
I bisogni del nostro corpo – sicuramente banali, ma vitali – sembrano non essere degni della nostra attenzione e per questo vengono relegati in un angolo piccolo e scomodo della nostra percezione, quasi fossero un ostacolo alla vita di tutti i giorni.
Anche la letteratura storce il naso di fronte alle necessità dei suoi protagonisti, le sminuisce o – addirittura – non ne fa menzione, al punto che ci sembra quasi impossibile trovare il linguaggio giusto da poter utilizzare per esprimere come ci sentiamo quando stiamo male, relegati in un letto, ad attendere che passi.
Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...
I bisogni del nostro corpo – sicuramente banali, ma vitali – sembrano non essere degni della nostra attenzione e per questo vengono relegati in un angolo piccolo e scomodo della nostra percezione, quasi fossero un ostacolo alla vita di tutti i giorni.
Anche la letteratura storce il naso di fronte alle necessità dei suoi protagonisti, le sminuisce o – addirittura – non ne fa menzione, al punto che ci sembra quasi impossibile trovare il linguaggio giusto da poter utilizzare per esprimere come ci sentiamo quando stiamo male, relegati in un letto, ad attendere che passi.
Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...
May 5, 2025
leído para el taller que estoy llevando
corto, conciso y poético.
Virginia se pregunta por qué la enfermedad no tiene más protagonismo en los textos, si tiene hasta más peso que otras pasiones.
nuevamente, no me dijo nada nuevo, pero es por la cantidad de años entre nosotras, supongo que en la época fue algo interesante de leer; o tal vez en latam tendemos a escribir más sobre este tipo de literatura que Woolf sentía que hacía falta en su país.
corto, conciso y poético.
Virginia se pregunta por qué la enfermedad no tiene más protagonismo en los textos, si tiene hasta más peso que otras pasiones.
nuevamente, no me dijo nada nuevo, pero es por la cantidad de años entre nosotras, supongo que en la época fue algo interesante de leer; o tal vez en latam tendemos a escribir más sobre este tipo de literatura que Woolf sentía que hacía falta en su país.
November 17, 2024
Most of us would agree that Virginia Woolf is well suited to write on illness: Her style of writing is excellent, so we could trust her to write on almost anything literary. And her original approach to her themes ensures that each subject, however bizarre, remains fascinating to the reader. And we all know that she suffered from long periods of mental and somatic illness, so she in no way lacks sound knowledge of dealing with sickness, be it physical or psychological.
If you can cope with a somewhat meandering style and unusual changes of topic, you will certainly appreciate this little book. It rewards repeated reading and taking one's time to contemplate all the author is suggesting.
If you can cope with a somewhat meandering style and unusual changes of topic, you will certainly appreciate this little book. It rewards repeated reading and taking one's time to contemplate all the author is suggesting.
July 24, 2023
I liked this well enough however 2 stars because:
Woolf says that Illness isn't well represented in literature. She says literature mostly concerns itself with the mind, but there is no record of the daily drama of the body, musing that Novels would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache.
"Those great wars which the body wages with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth.
Novels, one would have thought, would have
been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache. "
... Virginia Woolf hadn't read The Magic Mountain when this was published.
Woolf says that Illness isn't well represented in literature. She says literature mostly concerns itself with the mind, but there is no record of the daily drama of the body, musing that Novels would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache.
"Those great wars which the body wages with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. Nor is the reason far to seek. To look these things squarely in the face would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth.
Novels, one would have thought, would have
been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache. "
... Virginia Woolf hadn't read The Magic Mountain when this was published.
October 31, 2020
Me parece que estos textos ayudan a entender la relación de Woolf con la enfermedad mental
August 24, 2017
I liked the subject matter and the connection/metaphor/mention Woolf makes with nature and flowers, but after reading it straight through I was left a bit confused and had to reread a few passages to make sense of Woolf's point/claim.
March 12, 2021
That was absolutely incredible.
June 3, 2025
dreamy, revelatory, thought-provoking, approachable, indispensable. my first woolf (how???) but will absolutely not be my last
September 27, 2025
"Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."
"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you—is all an illusion."
"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you—is all an illusion."
April 12, 2020
2015:
Me gusta pensar que lo que se lee y el ambiente son uno mismo y no creo que otra de mis lecturas recientes pueda ilustrarlo mejor.
Leí este breve ensayo a a mitad de mi guardia en la sala de urgencias, entre las personas que se dejaban arrastrar por la enfermedad en medio de la noche. En tiempos de Virgina -retomando algo de sus palabras- la enfermedad se obviaba y salvo algunas excepciones no era una temática literaria recurrente. En los últimos tiempos la pérdida de cierta solemnidad y el acercamiento a lo cotidiano han hecho posible el surgimiento de una gran variedad de literatura que aborda la enfermedad desde distintos puntos. Me gusta frecuentarla, pero no demasiado porque sucede que me saturo del contenido de mis días.
Pienso en los poemas y textos varios que he visto nacer durante mis prácticas en el internado médico y de cómo ha surgido una poética a partir de la exposición. El grito y la coartación de la vida se contagian, en el mejor de los casos se vuelven letras. Pienso también en el acto de biopsiar la intimidad de los pacientes: si digo que la enfermedad es suya, ¿las palabras son mías? Es más cómodo escribir sobre la enfermedad cuando acontece dentro del cuerpo propio, sin embargo, estoy más interesada en las muchas voces, en los muchos pronósticos, en la paliación y la sublimación - como mecanismo de defensa- a través de la palabra. Dejar rastro del cuerpo enfermo en un papel es un ejercicio sincero, no hay célula eterna -de momento- en ninguno de nosotros, tampoco existe letra que dure lo suficiente. Es la necesidad de traducir la humanidad la que permanece.
Me gusta pensar que lo que se lee y el ambiente son uno mismo y no creo que otra de mis lecturas recientes pueda ilustrarlo mejor.
Leí este breve ensayo a a mitad de mi guardia en la sala de urgencias, entre las personas que se dejaban arrastrar por la enfermedad en medio de la noche. En tiempos de Virgina -retomando algo de sus palabras- la enfermedad se obviaba y salvo algunas excepciones no era una temática literaria recurrente. En los últimos tiempos la pérdida de cierta solemnidad y el acercamiento a lo cotidiano han hecho posible el surgimiento de una gran variedad de literatura que aborda la enfermedad desde distintos puntos. Me gusta frecuentarla, pero no demasiado porque sucede que me saturo del contenido de mis días.
Pienso en los poemas y textos varios que he visto nacer durante mis prácticas en el internado médico y de cómo ha surgido una poética a partir de la exposición. El grito y la coartación de la vida se contagian, en el mejor de los casos se vuelven letras. Pienso también en el acto de biopsiar la intimidad de los pacientes: si digo que la enfermedad es suya, ¿las palabras son mías? Es más cómodo escribir sobre la enfermedad cuando acontece dentro del cuerpo propio, sin embargo, estoy más interesada en las muchas voces, en los muchos pronósticos, en la paliación y la sublimación - como mecanismo de defensa- a través de la palabra. Dejar rastro del cuerpo enfermo en un papel es un ejercicio sincero, no hay célula eterna -de momento- en ninguno de nosotros, tampoco existe letra que dure lo suficiente. Es la necesidad de traducir la humanidad la que permanece.
March 14, 2017
VW's thoughts into words on the inadequacy of language to capture what it is to be unwell, unfit, ill. Her mother too, before her, a regular at sick beds all the while raising her own and stepchildren nursing those in need and recording her bedside accumulated practical knowledge for palliative care. Taken together this volume gives look to what has always been difficult to grasp human need for comprehension of the as yet unknowable realm of suffering. Empathy is as close as can get but still lacking in actual understanding. All empathy is approximation. Woolf does however relate the offshoot of illness as an affinity to the unspoken base level of being in the world at an almost plantlike rootedness in concert with soil, air and sunshine soaking luxuriously in photosynthesis. Being outside a painful inwardness. She was the patient, her mother the caregiver, and together they laid down a framework of reaching out to bring comfort and understanding to the human condition for all time.
January 16, 2013
Virginia Woolf's article "On Being Ill" is paired with her mother's guide to amateur nursing, "Notes From Sick Rooms." Hermione Lee and Mark Hussey provide wonderful accompanying essays on the context in which these pieces were written and the interesting ways in which reading them together assists in understanding Woolf, Stephen, and illness. I loved the writing in Woolf's "On Being Ill" (I had to pause every paragraph just to savor the words) and found Stephen's guide to be a lovely historical artifact. Both Stephen and Woolf view the ill as being very sensitive to sensation and imagination, but Stephen is more focused on how to make them comfortable, while it seems that Woolf posits the impossibility of understanding or truly commiserating with the ill, and so concentrates instead on how it feels to be ill and therefore solitary and alienated.
January 8, 2022
While it is stated that there is humor in this essay, I found it to more profound than humorous. Woolf stresses the interplay of language and illness: there are no words to adequately describe illness, then she flips everything around and shares how when one is ill, one cannot comprehend prose and long stories, but rather is more able to understand poetry.
July 15, 2023
This is the lowest I've ever rated Virginia Woolf's work. I still enjoyed it, it was still beautifully written but something was missing. I just didn't feel... that special "something" that I always do, while reading her. Nothing really "moved me" in that usual way and that's probably the main reason I can't give it more than 3 stars.
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