MRS. WOOLF'S DEATH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 41, 16 August 1941, Page 15

MRS. WOOLF'S DEATH

The untimely death of Virginia Woolf marks the end of a period in English literature—one of the strangest in our annals, remarks the "Times Literary Supplement." It was by an unkindly ifate and a geographical accident that Mrs. Woolf's name became associated with a set and a propaganda; and Bloomsbury itself, with its look of solid well-being and respectability, deserves better than that its name should ! become a synonym used in anger or ; derision. It was inevitable that Mrs. Woolf should . have a self-appointed following, for original minds always have, but few of the followers could offer anything resembling her sensitive apprehensions of life, her fleet- , ing impressions of the complexities of existence, her sense of the passing of time, her heroic integrity in pursuing the Heraclitean vision of a fleeting universe. But even Mrs. Woolf's j work itself, probing and intellectually self-conscious, stands for something jwhich sprang from the disorder of | society during the past 20 years and is passing now that that disorder has 'crashed the world into disaster. Her characters tend to be victims merely. | intelligent, sceptical—and adrift. Adrift! In certain loud but unrepresentative circles during the peace that was no peace traditions in social life, in religion, in morals, in literature, broke their moorings; and nowhere did the dislocation find more noticeable [ expression than in "Bloomsbury"—a word which came to be used not as j i-a topographical term, but as the name for a state of mind. j VOGUE OF OBSCURITY. I There were some writers, Mrs.! | Woolf sometimes seemed to be among I them, whose artistic sensitiveness was i alert to the drift, but who reported [ its surface processes not in anger or i in alarm, but in an aloof irony, or in i amused-or sad acceptance, as if the inevitable destiny of lost mankind was nothingness. But there were also | some strange aberrations, though their j victims still held a sort . of uneasy allegiance. These were those who because a real craftsman, such as Mrs ! Woolf, often made their intimations difficult, went in for obscurity. Their legend was that clarity belonged to Victorian days when the soul of man was supposed to be untroubled. Words were strung together in a meaningless concatenation in accord with the writer's faith that experience was without meaning. There was an allied school whose direction was all too plain. Reticence was a creed outworn. New aesthetic enrichment was to &c found m Freudism and man was to gain his freedom by a parade of nakedness. This school lived on a catchy sensationalism and a sophisticated weariness without a grain of humour Its dourness marked the difference between "Bloomsbury" and "Chelsea." The latter could laugh at itself as well as work, and on holiday nights cocken its hat jauntily Propaganda—baleful word for a baleful thing!—was as rife in the new literature as in politics. Never in history have the artists been so busy explaining themselvet and one another. Expression was made, through subtle allegories and esoteric symbols. No poem, no novel, but must have a hidden meaning; indeed, if it had a number of superimposed meanings, one of which might possibly be seen by the doltish British public and the others, the more spiritual ones, only by the initiated, these ' added to the beauty of the work.

Today this mood is passing. It flourished by calling attention to itself. Faced by the shocking reality of war, few human beings can continue to show interest in self-torture. Readers are turning to the writers who could be original without casting away tradition, free while submitting to eternal laws, and aware that poetry and prose lose heart when life loses heart.