The waves

Woolf, Virginia

Bibliographic data

Collection Object

Persistent identifier:: 1587378836253

Title:: The waves

Author:: Woolf, Virginia

Publisher:: The Hogarth Press

Place of publication:: London

Year of publication:: 1963

Extent:: 211 S.

Language:: english

Structure type:: Monograph

Physical location:: Bibliohtek der Institut für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Stuttgart

Shelfmark:: VEN7--WOO2/29

License:: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/deed.de

Collection Object

Title:: The Waves

Structure type:: Chapter

THE WAVES »7 let the door open, the glass door that is for ever turning on its hinges. Let a woman come, let a young man in evening- dress with a moustache sit down: is there anything that they can tell me? No! I know all that, too. And if she suddenly gets up and goes, * My dear,’ I say, ‘ you no longer make me look after you” The shock of the falling wave which has sounded all my life, which woke me so that I saw the gold loop on the cupboard, no longer makes quiver what I hold. “ So now, taking upon me the mystery of things, I could go like a spy without leaving this place, without stirring from my chair. I can visit the remote verges of the desert lands where the savage sits by the camp-fire. Day rises; the girl lifts the watery fire-hearted jewels to her brow; the sun levels his beams straight at the sleeping house ; the waves deepen their bars; they fling themselves on shore; back blows the spray : sweeping their waters they surround the boat and the sea-holly. The birds sing in chorus ; deep tunnels run between the stalks of flowers; the house is whitened : the sleeper stretches; gradually all is astir. Light floods the room and drives shadow beyond shadow to where they hang in folds inscrutable. What does the central shadow hold? Something ? Nothing? I do not know. “ Oh, but there is your face. I catch your eye. I, who had been thinking myself so vast, a temple, a church, a whole universe, unconfined and capable of being everywhere on the verge of things and here too, am now nothing but what you see—an elderly man, rather heavy, grey above the ears, who (I see myself in the glass) leans one elbow on the table, and holds in his left hand a glass of old brandy. That is the blow you have dealt me. I have walked bang into the pillar- box. I reel from side to side. I put my hands to my head. My hat is off —I have dropped my stick. I have made an awful ass of myself and am justly laughed at by any passer-by. “Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free ; the next, this. Here we 20°

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