The Waves By Virginia Woolf

by Catherine Bernard, Christine Reynier

The Waves reste le roman le plus énigmatique de Virginia Woolf. Porté par une vision symbolique d'une rare densité, tendu entre fragmentation et cohérence, suspendu (selon les vœux mêmes de l'auteur) à la frontière diaphane du roman et de la poésie, il réinvente la représentation de l'existence en redéfinissant l'économie interne de la fiction, en brouillant les repères hérités de la cartographie romanesque. Cette étude vise à éclairer l'esthétique fluide que Virginia Woolf fonde ici et comment, par son travail sur la voix, la temporalité, la perception, le grain même de l'écriture, elle élabore un texte mouvant, aux certitudes précaires qui fait du doute et du renoncement les armes d'une transfiguration de l'expérience.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature

112 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jordyn Southam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very well written for sure and also quite cryptic. I mean it was written by the queen Virginia Wolf herself. However, for someone born in 2001 a novel written in the 1930s is a struggle to understand. Lol.

[valerie jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I already know this is gonna be a DNF. This is a Virginia Woolf hate page. I hate this book. Yeah okay it's cool or whatever because no one ever did something like that before, but if I wanted to hear someone's shroom trip, I would've gone and talked to a tweaker on the street. I do not trust anyone who says they enjoyed this book. Go and read 'A Room of One's Own' if you really wanna read Woolf, leave 'The Waves' in the sea, which is where I would've chucked this book if I hadn't borrowed it from the library because I refuse to spend a single penny on this garbage.

[Nitisha]

Imagery, imagery, imagery! Such a beautiful display of facets of friends as they grow up and how relationships evolve. Modern romanticism is interesting given it touches on the few problems we are aware of today without losing the hues of the romanticism era.

[Meg Shelmerdine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok 👍🏻

[Carol LaHines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. We are embedded in the consciousness of six friends from childhood into late middle age. They speak as one and yet are individuated, a collective and yet disparate, capturing the glories and agonies of life. Woolf captures the ineffability of life itself, striving to convey that "perfect dwelling place," or sense of deep coherence underlying the surface, where "what was inchoate is here stated." The characters represent different aspects of the self--the loners Louis and Rhoda, the conventional Bernard, the earthy Susan, the promiscuous Jinny, etc. At last, the waves break, permitting the characters to reconfigure themselves anew.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woolf samples “thoughts” of six individuals through their lives, illustrating how the identities of each of these individuals might have been forged. "The Waves" is an austere poetic masterpiece.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

People are always going around and ruining ideas. A new idea is introduced that is complicated and requires a lot of care to do successfully, and then careless people who desire simplicity take it and bat it around and sully it and then announce they’ve contributed to the idea, when in actuality they’ve actually hurt it. Like children eager to participate in adult activities but not eager to put in the boring work to do the activities well.

“Experimental” literature as an idea I think went through this process. Artists who wanted to be seen as profound or talented but didn’t want to learn a musical instrument or pay for art equipment could write things with weird formatting or structure or whatever and then, when people criticized the work for being uninteresting, the artist could fall back on the reliable bromide that critics didn’t “get it.” This meant that anyone and everyone could become an experimental writer or poet and that anyone or everyone could free themselves of needing to connect with anyone outside of their circle.

“Experimental” literature as a concept I think is much more limiting than other experimental media. With music, there are a million sounds that could be recorded a million different ways; with visual art, there are a million different colors waiting to be placed in a million different positions; but with literature, you are reduced to less than 100 characters that really need to be put in very specific orders to convey meaning to people. There is not as much space for exploration, and it simply is not as visceral as other media, two characteristics that really hamstring its capabilities with experimentation.

That isn’t to say experimentation can’t be tried. It’s just that whoever chooses to do so should acknowledge the complexities and exercise care to make it effective. And they should also acknowledge the limitations of the written word. But, to the detriment of better literature, a lot of interesting but not very moving pieces of experimental work have been marketed as being transcendently wonderful, as if Burroughs blindly cutting and pasting bodies of text onto a piece of paper while doing or withdrawing from heroin could ever be as moving as a song.

Fortunately, The Waves is a great piece of experimental work. It’s not opaque, but it is different, it takes the normal linear story of characters being alive and growing old but shows it in a series of gigantic thought bubbles over their heads. It felt very visual, with a lot of imagery and poetic language about people and their hamster wheel obsessions of love, death, time, and being liked. Reading it felt like skating over very beautiful smooth ice. I also think Woolf has a very interesting perspective on time. Nearly every novel of hers I’ve read has decades pass from one chapter to the next only to return to the same spot with the same people as if nothing ever happened. It’s not my favorite of hers I don’t think, but I probably should revisit some of her stuff I’ve already read; ultimately I’m just relieved that this is considered her most experimental work, the British always seemed to be a little more grounded and a little more familiar with the trails blazed before them.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful

[Wenshu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know too well - the lingering.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book is written in a very poetic way and it is sometimes very hard to understand. The characters are very emotional and sometimes I think that they should get over themselves. Perhaps I did not get the true meaning of this book, but I feel like it was a waste of my time. And it is way too much to follow 6 friends, it would be better if it was like 4 friends.

[nym ⤹⋆⸙͎۪۫｡˚۰˚☽˚⁀➷｡˚⸙͎۪۫⋆ ༄]

Beautiful book, rich in imagery.

"Like a long wave, like a roll of heavy waters, he went over me, his devastating presence dragging me open, laying bare the pebbles on the shore of my soul."

[Samara Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and almost completely nonsensical

[Ink Ivory Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

A flawless examination of character psychology under the weight of institutional rigidness. The pacing and internal dialogues are masterful.