尽管仍然有部分伍尔夫的文章作品没有正式发表,但是对于伍尔夫本人的研究已经非常的丰富了,人们把更多的精力放在了引人注目的Bloomsbury Group(布卢姆茨伯里派)一干人(包括伍尔夫)的开放式婚姻、同性恋情和复杂的感情生活上。事实上(或臆想上,倒何必深究),伍尔夫与她丈夫(Leonard Woolf)的婚姻并不一定像大多数人想象的那样“无性”并且完全建立在她丈夫对一个天才的崇拜之上。就像她1937年的日记里写的:“Love — making — after 25 years can’t bear to be separate ... you see it is enormous pleasure being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete.”(爱,让在结婚25年之后的我们,不能承受分离… 你知道那,作为一个妻子,而被需要的极大的快乐。而且,我们的婚姻是完整的。)当然我们也不能断然否认伍尔夫与Vita(女诗人、作家和园艺者)的同性之爱和将近十年(1920年~1930年左右)的亲密关系。但是对伍尔夫私生活的了解程度,并不影响对她的作品的理解程度。当她个人的婚姻与爱情成为争论的话题时,对于一个创作者来说是可悲可笑的。
必须承认,伍尔夫是个非常认真刻苦的作家,她被自己写作欲望不断推进,在不到三十年(从她第一部小说开始)的创作生涯中写出了九部长篇小说、六本短篇合集、两部传记和十四本散文集等(见附录)。她的散文逻辑性强,分析得理性并严肃,展示她渊博的阅读和独特的品位。而小说则是她的创造,她的实验和探索,直到最后几年她还在寻找,她说我可能找到一种新的表述,说我,说非我,说内和外,和其他,却还不能够准确描述。在1939年日记里她还写着,“How interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, and the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; and to detect every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous experience, and not as unconscious, at least in its approaches, as birth is.”(如果能够描述岁月的流逝该多有趣,死亡逐步降临的过程,仿佛他们描写爱情到来的过程。记录每一个故障的症状:但为什么要有故障?然后让苍老过程成为一个与任何经历不同的经历,发掘每个通往死亡的过程及其绝妙体验,不是无知觉的,至少不像出生的过程那样。)生活本身才是她灵感的来源,而知识或阅读只是她理性思考的根据,所以在评论某个作家的时候她也曾不屑的说道,他不了解人性,他是透过书籍了解人的。
在写作上,伍尔夫把Craft(技能、手艺)和Create(创造)分得很清,什么时候是爆发式的创作,而什么时候又只是在做她力所能及的手艺活,她都非常坦诚地写在日记里。只会干燥的手艺,或只有狂热的创作热情的人,大概都不能够突破某种极限,虽然他们同样有机会名留文学史。而即使是“天才”也对即将出版的小说充满不确定,即使已经过了三十次的重写修订。即使是“天才”也会对赞美的评论沾沾自喜,对嘲讽的评论忐忑不安。不安和自我质疑常常使得伍尔夫中断写作和阅读陷入抑郁。她在1983年的日记里说,“I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall.”(背靠墙的时候我做得最好也最有支撑感)。总之她大部分时间还是避开了吵杂的伦敦,营造了一个平和的创作环境,让冒险在头脑中进行。
最后总要说到伍尔夫的抑郁症和自杀。不知道从什么时候开始,抑郁被美化了,好像成了创作者的装饰品。伍尔夫的主要作品都不是在抑郁症发作时候写成的,那是她的创作障碍。在写她的第二部小说“Night and Day”的时候她的确是不太好的,她说她写一句话要一个小时,只是对写实手法的锻炼和尝试。这本小说是个保守的现实主义浪漫喜剧,虽然字里行间流淌着忧郁,但仍与她其它作品不同,倒不失为接近伍尔夫的第一步尝试。她灵感泉涌大多在状态好的时候,看得出她还是渴望人生体验的。在她自杀前三周(二战开始后)的日记里她写到“Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it’s seven; and must cook dinner.”(职业是必须的。快七点钟了这让我很愉快,因为我得去做饭了。)我想说,不能用一个人选择什么方式,在一个时间点结束生命,作为理解她一生的基调。
作品附录:
Novels
The Voyage Out (1915)
Night and Day (1919)
Jacob's Room (1922)
Mrs Dalloway (1925)
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Orlando (1928)
The Waves (1931)
The Years (1937)
Between the Acts (1941)
Short story collections
Kew Gardens (1919)
Monday or Tuesday (1921)
The New Dress (1924)
A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944)
Mrs Dalloway's Party (1973)
The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985)
"Biographies"
Virginia Woolf published three books to which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":
Orlando: A Biography (1928, usually characterised Novel, inspired by the life of Vita Sackville-West)
Flush: A Biography (1933, more explicitly cross-genre: fiction as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; non-fiction in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Roger Fry: A Biography (1940, usually characterised non-fiction, however: "[Woolf's] novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshall a multitude of facts."[27])
Non-fiction books
Modern Fiction (1919)
The Common Reader (1925)
A Room of One's Own (1929)
On Being Ill (1930)
The London Scene (1931)
The Common Reader: Second Series (1932)
Three Guineas (1938)
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)
The Moment and Other Essays (1947)
The Captain's Death Bed And Other Essays (1950)
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Books and Portraits (1978)
Women And Writing (1979)
Collected Essays (four volumes)
Drama
Freshwater: A Comedy (performed in 1923, revised in 1935, and published in 1976)
Autobiographical writings and diaries
A Writer’s Diary (1953) - Extracts from the complete diary
Moments of Being (1976)
A Moment's Liberty: the shorter diary (1990)
The Diary of Virginia Woolf (five volumes) - Diary of Virginia Woolf from 1915 to 1941
Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909 (1990)
Travels With Virginia Woolf (1993) - Greek travel diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Jan Morris
The Platform of Time: Memoirs of Family and Friends, Expanded Edition, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (London, Hesperus, 2008)
Letters
Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters (1993)
The Letters of Virginia Woolf 1888-1941 (six volumes, 1975-1980)
Paper Darts: The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf (1991)
Prefaces, contributions
Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing ed. Alfred C. Gissing, with an introduction by Virginia Woolf (London & New York, 1929)
来自: 豆瓣作者: 歪歪$ 时间: 2012-9-4 15:40
Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941. 她确实只是一个普通读者,随笔评论流于印象,缺乏条理和洞察力,有时又过于偏颇而显得歇斯底里,读来感觉隔靴搔痒,很不痛快。