Reality and Representation in Virginia Woolf - Part 1
As someone who has not read much modernist literature, it is
Virginia Woolf’s narrative style that perplexes me most. At first, I find it unnecessarily
difficult. I don’t know who is being talked about, whether a sentence is a description
of the scenery or of someone’s thought. Transitions are so seamless, that I can’t
tell know where one thing ends, and another begins. I find beautiful and
genuine thoughts and descriptions, but I do not understand how these integrate into
the overall narrative.
Yet reading it over a few times I do manage to piece
everything together, and I’m delighted with it. Still, I wonder whether the
confusing style is necessary and whether I will get used to it. If it is necessary
for what she expresses, how does it aid this expression?
This leads me to wonder how her style means to represent reality.
Is it supposed to be accurate and realistic? What of reality does it represent?
It certainly does not contain absurdities or exaggerations like fairy tales or
romantic literature do. Nor is it very abstract or allegorical (in In the
Lighthouse at least); when there is symbolism and abstraction, this is
almost always descriptive of a character’s perceptions or thoughts.
Yet, it is also quite different from the realism of Dickens
or Tolstoy. There is no crystallized reality, which we view from an omniscient
narrator. We take mostly a personal view. At first it may seem that this would
make Woolf more realistic, since we are not omniscient, so we should connect
better with a personal view.
Why though does it feel so natural to read Tolstoy? Perhaps
though we don’t possess the extent of knowledge that Tolstoy’s narrator does,
we do attempt to construct a definite picture of reality. When we think of
other people, we are not thinking of how we are perceiving them, but about how
they really are. Though our perceptions may be too incomplete to arrive at this
essence, we strive to grasp it. Reading Tolstoy is so satisfying because we
find in his narrator someone who has grasped the reality around them, who sees
what we try to see. Still, no one ever truly achieves the view of an omniscient narrator.
Tolstoy only grasps this complete picture of reality, by placing together disparate
true perceptions and forming a fictional world out of them.
Tolstoy then is realistic in the sense that he discloses
reality, rather than in the sense that he honestly reflects experience. Yet, if
we believe in an external, meaningful existence of reality, which our thoughts and
perceptions attempt to grasp, then he is also honest to experience in that his
writing is directed toward the same object that experience is directed toward.
If you do not assume this connection between experience and
reality, it is perceptions and thoughts themselves which are “real”. To be “realistic”
would then mean to accurately represent how someone is thinking or feeling. For
“realistic” to have any meaning, one would still assume that there is an
objective structure or logic or tendency to how people think, feel and perceive
(which would also take people’s constitutions and situations into account). This
is perhaps the approach that Virginia Woolf takes. One could still deny this objective
structure of experience, but then representation of experience would simply
mean creating something that is interesting or beautiful. Yet, Woolf is not just
interesting or beautiful to me, but feels true. She is talking about real
people who I can relate to, because I see parts of them in myself or in people I
know.
Hello Mr. Brauneis! Great stuff. I have some words in response.
ReplyDeleteMr. Venkatesh commented on one of Mr. Gamarra's previous posts:
"Since we actually live in stream-of-consciousness and can get no point of view from outside it, and since therefore the notion of an objective narrator is really only fictional, why not only write narratives in this way?"
It seems you raise a similar question. Woolfe's style aptly depicts human consciousness, but when one reads Dickens or Tolstoy, one doesn't feel that their writing is unrealistic. You say that Tolstoy "discloses reality, rather than....that he honestly reflects experience." You then say that if one looks beyond one's perception in order to grasp an external reality, "then [Tolstoy] is also honest to experience in that his writing is directed toward the same object that experience is directed toward."
If I understand you correctly, you would answer Mr. Venkatesh's comment like this:
From the limited perspective one has within one's own consciousness, one cannot directly perceive the true nature of the world. Sensual and emotional perceptions alike distort the world, bending all objects out of their natural forms, and confounding all authentic purposes. But, humans still desire to grasp the world as it really is; we wish to view unbent forms and know unconfounded purposes. Tolstoy can present a satisfying, if unnatural, account of the real, undistorted world beyond perception. He provides the sensual and emotional perceptions of his characters, while simultaneously announcing the true forms of the objects of those perceptions. For instance, a new epoch in Prince Andrei's soul may be stirring, unbeknownst to the Prince, but known to the reader. Other times, Tolstoy tells his readers that both French and Russian historical interpretations upon the war of 1812 are mere conjecture, and that the real reasons for Napoleon's ruin and Moscow's destruction are in fact quite different than these historians suppose. By writing of an extra-sensual reality, Tolstoy asserts that a common truth unites humans, whether or not they know it. One can then connect all of these events, all of these battles and deaths and loves and sufferings, into a universal history which exists outside of perspective. Tolstoy is able to tell an immense yet logical story by gesturing to a uniting truth. This uniting truth is partly fictional, in that it stretches beyond the experience of a singular human being, but it also attempts to be fact. If one believes that there is such an external reality, as do all historians, and if one can only reach that reality through writing, then one had better try to write about that reality.
But, Mr. Brauneis, you also acknowledge that not everybody believes in an extra-sensual reality. Woolf, perhaps, does not. She describes a reality which is simultaneously more direct, in that it is the human mode of perception, and more evasive of description, in that it is prior to language. Through this realm of pure sensual and emotional perception, we face the world which lies before our eyes and in our heads, not the world in the pages of books. Unlike Tolstoy, Woolf placed that first world in a book, perhaps to put words to a thing which words seldom catch. I suspect that one of the reasons for the rarity of this style of writing is its sheer difficulty. But when it goes right, it "feels true."
Maxfield Fleishman
I would briefly add:
DeleteMy comments gloss over the nuance of both Tolstoy and Woolf. Tolstoy sometimes turns to an inner monologue without including the "real feelings" which the monologuer is unaware of, and Woolf dictates the actual passing of events without the warped lens of an individual observer.
But, you know what I mean. It's hard to write something short and true!
Beautifully expressed, Mr. Brauneis and Mr. Fleishman. I wonder if Woolf's underlying narrative point of view is like that of Adam being suddenly created whole out of nothing and then thrown into the midst of things. Everything would be seen new, and one can no longer take for granted how things relate. At one moment everything looks like a Monet painting; at another, like Montaigne talking to himself. There is no pre-framing, for example by narrative chronology or linear causality. Difficulty only arises when one expects there to be. It's a bit like listening to Webern or Schoenberg: it's only difficult if we expect it to be organized by, say, melody.
ReplyDelete