To the Lighthouse

--"The subject of this brilliant novel is the daily life of an English family in the Hebrides." That's the copy description on the back cover of my edition of "To the Lighthouse." I found it hilarious. I laughed for five minutes. --So it's an inadequate description of the novel? --Inadequate is an inadequate word to describe just how inadequate it is. --So what is "To the Lighthouse" about? --Well that's just the thing. To say it's about a family vacationing by the shore, about the delicate relationships between them and their friends, about how time changes them and their relationships between each other...is to miss the point entirely even if it is perfectly accurate. --As I understand it, this is a novel in which ten years passes in about fifteen pages, while the rest of the novel meticulously describes two days. --Yes, exactly. Like Proust, Woolf begins with a childhood incident that will echo down through the years. Like Joyce, she concentrates on the epiphanic moment. Reading "To the Lighthouse" is a bit like viewing a painting in which the characters move...but very slowly. Woolf passes from character to character, inhabiting each of their minds in turn, seeing the world through their eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and their flawed but enduring marriage are the central bodies around which the rest orbit and Lily Briscoe, a spinsterish amateur painter, ostensibly stands in for Woolf herself, but it is hard to say that any of the characters are less or more important than any of the others--this is essentially the genius of Woolf's handling of psychological perspective. Everyone has a point of view and each point of view is essential to attain a vision of the whole. --But it is a novel essentially about family relationships? --And relationships between men and women, men and society, women and society, human beings and the inescapable fact of their mortality. Again and again, Woolf asks the question, "What does life mean? What is it for?" --Does she have an answer? --Yes. And no. --It's ambiguous. --It's provisional. But it's enough to help Lily make it through the dark storm of life to use a perfectly horrible metaphor. It's her lighthouse. --Woolf has a reputation as a difficult author to read. --And it's well-deserved. She is a difficult read for the majority of readers, who, let's face it, are awaiting Dan Brown's new novel as if it were a major event in world literary history. What happens in "To the Lighthouse," when anything happens at all, isn't as important as how it affects each character internally. That is to say, Woolf's focus is on the fleeting but all-important impressions that the world leaves on us and that ultimately make us who we are. Her greatest gift is to capture these gossamer-thin states in a language of exquisite accuracy--capturing in words the flavor of fleeting emotions seldom if ever described before, even as they evaporate on the tongue. --You would have to love language, then, to fully appreciate her work. --Indeed. Her sentences don't move the story forward; they move the story deeper. She writes a poetic prose that many contemporary readers might mistake for unnecessarily flowery and overwrought--when, in fact, it is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel and cuts to the heart. And yet for all its surgical accuracy, it is the sensuous prose of a writer for whom language is like a box of brilliant colors is to a painter, for whom sentences are like caresses to a lover, except that in this case what is touched are the most potently orgasmic areas of our brains--needles to say, the ones most difficult areas to reach. --But Virginia Woolf reaches them? --You might say she's a master masseuse. --Ha ha. Does she provide a happy ending? --No, not exactly. But it's a deeply satisfying experience all the same.

Each sentence in To the Lighthouse is so alive that, like toys at night in a haunted room, they wake up, change into strange things and go still again. The illusion is part due to its layering and weave - dense as poetry, light as air, not a word accidental. And part due to the structure of the novel, its great invisible solidity fixed under imagery and detail moving over it like transparent veils. Its parts are elemental: water, air, sunlight, seaweed - frilled strips pinned to the attic walls, or later trailing around Cam's fingers in the water when the sails fill. Part of the pleasure in reading To the Lighthouse is the revelation of its interlocking structure, how the macro-structure of the novel is reflected everywhere on the micro-scale. An example: the three sections of the novel and their pace are seen again in the trajectory of the sailboat across the bay in the final section, where the wind takes it, then dies down, then moves again. The passages describing Lily Briscoe at work on her paintings seem to reflect a kind of rapture in which Woolf must have written this novel: "...with all her faculties in a trance, frozen over superficially but moving underneath with extreme speed." "It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to tears..." And "She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen." But some of them describe the novel itself, which has all the feel of a ghost story: "It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath; and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses." In fact, much of the novel - like the light and dark of the lighthouse beacon, or waves crashing in and back out - works in a balanced opposition: Crowdedness and the lack of privacy juxtaposed against the condition of utter aloneness. The bond between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay counterbalanced with their awareness of what they've cost one another. The collusion of the children, their secretiveness and wildness, but then their docility and vulnerability. Trapped thoughts that can't be told, but are then understood without saying, as the same reflection - like quantum tunneling - might wind from one point of view to the mind of a different character. In part II the sound of bombs falling in the distance is described as "the measured blows of hammers on felt." There are lines like that, which come in so lightly, but their impact on landing is powerful: the novel itself explodes in your heart like a silent H-bomb. One example is the last line in paragraph #3 in chapter XII of part 3, which I won't give away. (And don't sneak ahead: it won't mean anything unless you've arrived there in the right order!) And this one about James, belonging as he does to the unspecified "great clan" mentioned on page one: "He was so pleased that he was not going to let anyone share a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think that he was perfectly indifferent. But you've got it now, Cam thought." Many of the details in To the Lighthouse you might not even notice on first read, but when you go back they surprise you. This is part of the secret of the novel's geode-like quality, where you never guess what's contained inside it until you've seen the whole thing and it opens for you, then you see it. Another Amazon reviewer was right in saying this: you have to read it twice. Although a short novel, To the Lighthouse contains so many themes: vision and seeing, nature at odds with human life, time and its nonlinear movement, community and individual isolation. It's about what Mr. Ramsay knew: how "...our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness" and what James knew: "That loneliness which for both of them was the truth about things." It's about things you want, and do or do not get: whether you want to go to the lighthouse, or whether you don't want to go; whether anyone will get to Sorley, the lighthouse keeper, with tobacco and newspapers, or whether he'll remain isolated out there; whether Lily will capture what she sees on her canvas; whether Paul Rayley will find Minta's lost brooch. What Mrs. Ramsay wished for was the impossible. It was guessed by Lily Briscoe: "Life stand still here."

Woolf’s third novel is a literary marvel that is an important hallmark of modernist writing and early twentieth century philosophical introspection. Innovative in literary technique and complex narration, forgive me that my only reason for not thinking more highly of it is that it simply lacks the passion and purpose that I find necessary in everything I read. To the Lighthouse is bleak, wearisome, and focused on the purpose of life, death, art, perception, etc. It is a significant work exploring psychological realism in its commitment to portraying its characters and their multitude of perspectives and how they experience reality and living. Her contemporary James Joyce uses stream of consciousness in a less psychological way, where events are presented much more objectively and the characters are considered and analyzed in a more intellectual and scientific method. You spend an entire narrative building up to moments of individual ‘epiphanies’ and thematic reflection, whereas Woolf will write long passages demonstrating the actual process of reaching those significant moments of development for her characters. Instead of spending an entire novel building up to a moment, she builds small clusters of realization and she will have the reader experience the tumultuous mental evolution it takes to get there. However, in the case of this novel, so much time is spent disregarding the plot and expanding on literary techniques that none of it landed and resonated. What did I read? What was there to say? Although it was beautiful to explore the psychology of her characters and how subtly she conveyed their experiences, an enormous aspect of literature for me is having something to walk away from the text with, something that continues to ruminate and expand on what I have experienced before and will experience after. While I immensely respect the skill and talent of her craft, there is not anything that I can take away besides appreciation for a beloved and respected author. Beautiful writing and narrative, but there is no heart to personally connect with amongst all the bleak. I adored Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and I hope there will be a novel amongst Woolf’s body of work that will likewise latch onto mine sensibilities.

To The Lighthouse is one of the greatest novels produced in the 20th century. I have read it several times and get more out of it each time I read it. It is is divided into three parts. The first takes place before WWI and reveals the great influence Mrs. Ramsay has on her family. The second part takes place during the war and covers the death of Mrs. Ramsay and one son who was killed in battle, and the third part is about how the remaining members of the family adjust to their losses and carry on. Even though she is dead, Mrs. Ramsay's actions, beliefs, and attitude continue to have great influence on the family. The book only has 209 pages, but it reveals more about life than many books double or even triple its length. I would also recommend Mrs. Dalloway and Waves by Virginia Woolf as well. They are also supreme masterpieces.

Best book in the world. Worst copy of it. It's awful to see the formatting and spelling of this masterpiece so slap dash. Woolf would not approve. Don't recommend this copy.

As is the case for every novel, there are characters that one can admire and those that one can detest. This can be by design by the author or by accidental imputation by the reader. This novel does not leave the reader neutral, and in fact does not require neutrality. In this work there is no gallivanting from one chapter to the next, but deterministic linearity between them is absent also. Readers will find no restful equilibrium. Only movement and instability are possible. The personalities of the characters are their thoughts, and if words are absent this is by intent, as a kind of deliberate debasement with no redemption possible. There is the intriguing Lily Briscoe, who stays within the boundaries of the canvas, but is comfortable with changing its surface into oil-ordained permanence. But her personal surface, that which she painted in the presence of Mr. Ramsey, was but a temporary front, not terribly original, but sufficed for the moment. Lily also responds delightfully and negatively to the misogynistic assertion that women can’t write or paint. Then there is James Ramsey, who is homologous to the typical academic, permanently insecure and self-absorbed, hypersensitive to criticism, perpetually requiring praise, with smugness and arrogance being immediate corollaries. This is someone with no rhythm in his personality and stale in his outlooks. He has a sense of life that deems it difficult, but not stoic in his reaction to it. Only in privacy does he feel safe, and he consistently requires sympathy from his wife and eight children. Being happy, or rather appearing to be so, was a vulgar confession, to be classified as nonsensical and trivial. If only this character were more colorful; if only he were a chatterbox of free-flowing language. If only he were not as a piece of Scottish limestone that will break into thin pieces even under the slight pressure and perturbation of criticism. And Mrs. Ramsay, intimidated by change, engaging in false protection of her husband (with purported but unconvincing reverence), but aware of the masks she puts on when doing so, and always seeking comfort and solace in customs, the latter of which serve to quiet the soul, to protect it from the flux of Heraclitus. Happiness to her is a transient phenomenon, and she gladly and consciously accepted her children’s insights, believing that they had the distinct quality and ability to move her into the future. This is a novel par excellence, where the genius of expression, the greatness of articulation, and the beauty of prose have a chance to combine and entangle themselves with the reader, who will after finishing it have one emotion that will stand out and overwhelm the others: astonishment...astonishment....astonishment....astonishment......

The book: 5 stars. This Kindle version: 2 stars. I can't say enough about how much I loved this book. But the Kindle version sold here has a number of mistakes, including even character names (Lily "Ciscoes" instead of Briscoe, William "Banks" instead of "Bankes", Ramsey spelled "Ram sey" (every time), and Rayley "Ray ley" (every time). This Kindle version could use an editor.

I must say that I was amazed when I saw that a novel such as To the Lighthouse has averaged only four out of five stars. That a classic of literature wich has proven the test of time would score only four stars, when many poorly written contemporary novels receive five, is truly an irony of our age. As I looked over the reviews, I noted that there were some that gave the novel only one star! Usually these were from individuals that had a difficult time comprehending the book and could not make a distinction between that lack of comprehension and a piece of world class literature. Although one reviewer did acknowledge that she knew this was a fine twentieth century work, she still went on to give it one star. I think that this type of written review is necessary in order to let other readers know that it will be a difficult read; however, by giving it one star, the reviewer misleads by implying that the book is not worth reading, and this might discourage others from making the effort, and perhaps getting much more out of the novel than its one-star reviewers. To the Lighthouse is worth the struggle if one is willing to put in the time. My recommendation to serious readers is to go to outside sources - either through Amazon, online resources, or the library - that will help in understanding the book. In this way a profound novel will get its due and readers will have the beautiful experience that only this book can afford.

La portada es bonita, y la calidad de impresión es óptima. De la novela: Es densa, con muchos significados y muchas lecturas posibles dentro de su contexto e historia. Tiene un carácter autobiográfico que refleja aspectos vivenciales de la autora, y es una de sus obras importantes.

I began reading “To the Lighthouse” with high expectations given Virginia Woolf’s reputation and my recent reading of “Mrs. Dalloway”. My expectations on this account were surpassed since I found the novel to be extraordinary good. The philosopher G. E. Moore reviewed the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s book “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” as his submission for a PHD at Cambridge. Moore’s one line review began thusly "I myself consider that this is a work of genius;…” I fell that Moore’s review of Wittgenstein could also be applied by me to Woolf and her novel: “"I myself consider that this is a work of genius; …” There is nothing more that really needs to be said The novel approaches the same problems that Wittgenstein approached in “Tractatus”. Mr Ramsey is a professor of philosophy and his work is described by his son Andrew to the painter Lilly Briscoe with the example of a kitchen table.: “Try thinking of a kitchen table when you are not there”. Mr. Ramsey is a philosopher, a writer of books; he is a man of words. Mrs. Ramsey, in contrast, is someone for which words do not come easily. Yet the two of them and others communicate. For me that is the essence of the book and the reason for the stream of consciousness style. It is written with words to describe the communication that cannot be done with words. The type of communication between the Ramsey’s. Woolf’s project in this book mirrors that of Wittgenstein in his philosophy. That is to describe how people construct the reality around them and with that construct their theories about the people around them so as to be able to communicate with each other. Wittgenstein’s work is this an example of genius as is Woolf’s novel.

Very interesting story.

Super merci!

Es un libro triste y difícil de seguir. Hay partes buenas y toca temas interesantes pero me dejó con la sensación de que se dijeron pocas cosas con muchas palabras.