Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Chapter XXII – XXVII, page 309 – 398
Conclusions/Book as a whole

It's difficult for me to picture St John Hirst as a young man, partly because I think of him as Lytton Strachey, and partly because I sense a certain world-weariness. Much to my surprise, he reveals his caring and sensitive side, having hitherto been both cynical and arrogant. He may have been exercising his intellect or playing devil's advocate in the early chapters. I won't quote any passage now, in case you have not reached it. I wondered if my perception as a reader was putting the wrong interpretation on it. However, I believe The Reader is an important character in a book, once it has been launched into the world. I owe this observation to Paul Auster at a BBC World Service Book Club recording in Cheltenham. Having asked a friend what he thought his own book was about, Auster's friend replied, why, it is the reader. Since then, I have found this both helpful and interesting, casting new light on my reading.

Back to Hirst. Poor man, people think they can call him ugly without hurting his feelings, in the mistaken belief that he is made of stone or steel. As for the choice of the names of the two friends Hirst and Hewett, I wonder if it is deliberate?

I was rather fond of this description of Hirst:

He lay back in it, with his eyes half shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned up in a neat grey suit and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign climate which might at any moment proceed to take liberties with him.

Certainly fits with the painting of Strachey on his Wikipedia entry.

Sylvie wrote: "Back to Hirst. Poor man, people think they can call him ugly without hurting his feelings, in the mistaken belief that he is made of stone or steel. As for the choice of the names of the two friends Hirst and Hewett, I wonder if it is deliberate?..."

I really liked the way Virginia gave us the character sketch of Hirst as he helped with the caring of Rachel and reflected upon his own convoluted feelings. Sylvie -- you ask about Hirst and Hewett -- it is almost as if two men were needed to court Rachel. I have a vague recollection that something parallel happened in WV's own life between her eventual husband and the friend who rooted for him while Woolf was still abroad. I, too, wondered what is behind the similar names.

For reasons I am too indolent to trace, I managed to read/listen to Chapter 23 at least three times. Whether from the perspective of a reader or of a writer, both hats which I donned in the process, the chapter has emerged to me as rather a play or a ballet, a pas de deux of two young people as they explore the significance of commitment, of individuality (Terrance versus Rachel), of one art form versus another (music versus literary), of setting (England versus South America), of gender (femininity versus masculinity). My eye can visualize an opening scene just after a dance troupe of vacationers has left the young couple to read and answer the congratulatory notes spilling from a table. Rachel is still playing her beloved Beethoven as Hewett admires and resents, seeking the “Silence” he feels needed to compose his book. In exasperation, Rachel finishes and turns to her love. As they attract and repel each other, they break into a sensuous dance that both challenges the world beyond and affirms their affinity as they overcome the repelling demons they sense. They settle into almost domesticity and dream-like trance towards their place in the larger worlds with which each of them is familiar. Finally, they meld into an intimate pas de deux on an empty stage, half of it illumined as exotic, distant Amazonian, the other as familiar, domestic English, lonely as they bow for the applause.

All of this in a single chapter. No wonder one of you writes of seeped in luscious writing.

But what is “beautiful writing”? What makes it so? Can the eye, the mind, the analytic-self take it apart and still understand? How does one “measure” it against another piece of writing, whether VW’s or others?

Is Rachel’s music a surrogate for Vanessa Bell’s art, as Vanessa fought for her place, her artistic significance in this literary, word-wise family, much as Rachel and Terrance tussle each other?

Lily wrote: "For reasons I am too indolent to trace, I managed to read/listen to Chapter 23 at least three times. Whether from the perspective of a reader or of a writer, both hats which I donned in the process..."

Yes! I can now visualize it as a novel that is composed of words that carry within them music, painting as well as the movement of minds and bodies. For me, the landscape of the imaginary country is as vivid as a real landscape, or more so. The heat is more intense, the effect of it on the senses more immediate, the colours more vivid. To evoke the paintings of Vanessa, which I find quite sensual, is to enrich our reading of the novel.

Sylvie wrote: "...To evoke the paintings of Vanessa, which I find quite sensual..."

It quite surprised me to find a ballet, not in a box, but in a chapter.

This is the start of Chapter XXVI. It's an excellent transition from the turbulent events of the previous chapter.

"For two or three hours longer the moon poured its light through the empty air. Unbroken by clouds it fell straightly, and lay almost like a chill white frost over the sea and the earth . During these hours the silence was not broken, and the only movement was caused by the movement of trees and branches which stirred slightly, and then the shadows that lay across the white spaces of the land moved too. In this profound silence one sound only was audible, the sound of a slight but continuous breathing which never ceased, although it never rose and never fell. It continued after the birds had begun to flutter from branch to branch, and could be heard."

More follows, and it fits in well with the general mood of this section.

@Lily

I'm going to take the risk of assuming that your questions at the end of comment number 5 in this thread are not rhetorical.

Beautiful writing would be that which either enhances/invents connotations or employs denotations with a precision that moves/elevates the mind of the reader outside of their ordinary realm of thought. This may be accomplished through idioms, yes, but also plainspeak via the use of symbols, repetitions, parsimony/brevity/variance/expansion.

The various dichotomies which you traced exemplify Woolf's use of synechdoche —the substitution of the part for the whole— in relation to the entire book as well as the literature/life of 1915. So beautiful writing is also a conceptual thing, but the more we attempt to pin it down, the more fuzzy it seems, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't believe that the sort of beauty to be found in this novel can be properly measured against other writing, whoever the author may be. Part of the charm is in its ungainliness (which is easily mistaken for ugliness).

Rand wrote: "Part of the charm is in its ungainliness (which is easily mistaken for ugliness)...."

"ungainliness" - the perfect word for some of the awkward passages in the book.