ISSN 0258–0802. LITERATÛRA 2005 47(4)

VIRGINIA WOOLF’S AESTHETICS OF : SEARCH FOR FORM IN A SHORT STORY “”

Linara Bartkuvienë Vilniaus universiteto Literatûros istorijos ir teorijos katedros doktorantë

To develop a better understanding of Virginia impressionist writing which manifests Woolf’s Woolf’s aesthetics of modern fiction, the early aspirations to discover a new literary form complexity of Woolf’s pursuit of form, her to reveal a different kind of realism, i.e., a realism experimentation with narrative, and ambitions of emotion, rather than surface, what it feels like to pursue a technique able to push beyond the from the inside of the mind in the process of the socio-descriptive Victorian fiction, this paper (de)construction of the meaning of reality. will focus on the British formalist aesthetics and Although, as Woolf writes, the Post-Im- its influence on Woolf’s literary practice – her pressionist movement was confined to painting2, shorter fiction and literary criticism. Professor I tend to argue that it did enter the house of Ann Banfield, a critic who will play a prominent literature, however, not in the form of a unified role in the development of the argument, suggests theory, but in the form of a narrative experiment, that namely the formalist aesthetics of the as no mainstream theory of the influence of Post- Bloomsbury painter and critic Roger Fry, and Impressionism upon literature was ever worked the Bloomsbury writer and philosopher of art out. Woolf’s essays and literary criticism, Clive Bell, had a crucial influence upon the however, manifest her overriding concern for formalist structures of Woolf’s writing1 as their the need for a new aesthetics as the traditional theories supplanted visual arts, as well as Woolf’s narrative form was inadequate in the attempt to aesthetic principia of “modern fiction”, with describe the unobserved world; literature was, theoretical structures of the formally significant. therefore, in need of “new forms for new The article will also seek to argue that Woolf’s sensations”3. short story “The Mark on the Wall” (1918), as Woolf felt that the formal ontology of the well as her 1917–1921 shorter fiction in corpore, novel’s literary realism was outmoded as it integrates the key principles of her aesthetics of disabled the writer to be free, to write what he modern fiction, and is part of literary post-

2 , Roger Fry. A Biography, HBJ 1 Ann Banfield, The Phantom Table. Woolf, Fry, Book, 1968, 172. Russel and the Epistemology of Modernism, Cambridge 3 Virginia Woolf, The Crowded Dance of Modern University Press, 2000. Life, Penguin Books, 1993.

7 chose, not what he must. Victorian Realism convey “life” in its true form: a form which disabled the writer to write in a language resembles a pattern of a “luminous halo, a semi- “appropriate to the sensibilities of the modern transparent envelope surrounding us from the outlook”4. In one of her most often quoted beginning of consciousness to the end”9. passages Woolf writes: “If he [the writer] could Materialism, as Woolf understood it, was base his work upon his own feeling and not upon concerned with the fabric of the novel construct, convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, solid in its craftsmanship, and, although, the no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the strict formal conventions of the novel were accepted style”5. Another early piece of Woolf, inadequate to encode subjective experience, the too, observes that modern consciousness writer, nevertheless, goes on “perseveringly, necessitates the demand to “liven the faded conscientiously, constructing our two and thirty colours of bygone ages” and, therefore, “fresh chapters after a design which more and more and amusing shapes must be given to the old ceases to resemble the vision in our minds”10. commodities”6. Woolf aptly marks that any new To write modern subjective realism, the writer “peculiar substance” implies a new form of must abandon the tyranny of convention and narrative: “you can say in this shape what you pursue a form that can resemble the mental cannot with equal fitness say in any other”7. reality, to pursue a form which would enable Since for Woolf reality lies in individual percep- the writer to eschew materialism and convey the tion, in subjective experience of consciousness, varying, unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, she willingly accepted the post-impressionist “whatever aberration or complexity it may scheme to abandon realism, or, as she put it, display”11. “materialism” which, as Woolf saw it, was Woolf held that “modern fiction” should concerned with the body rather than the spirit, find a way to reveal the unobserved world, “the writing of “unimportant things”, spending flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes “immense industry making the trivial and the its messages through the brain”12. Modern transitory appear the true and the enduring”8. fiction should by no means be a reproduction of (It is useful to remember that Post-Impressio- the surface appearance of things “making the nism in painting, and Cézanne in particular, was trivial and transitory appear the true and the mostly preoccupied with the underlying struc- enduring”13, it should be based on a mental tures of natural forms rather than surface journey “within” the “unobserved”. Woolf’s appearances; Gauguin and van Gogh, too, sought well-known passage reads: “Look within ... a more personal, spiritual expression of human examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an experience.) “Materialist” writing failed to ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all 4 Christopher Reed (ed.), “Refining and Defining”, sides they come, an incessant shower of A Roger Fry Reader, The University of Chicago Press, 1996, 129. 5 “Modern Fiction”, The Crowded Dance of Modern Life, Penguin Books, 1993, 8. 9 Ibid., 7–8. 6 “The Decay of Essay-Writing”, Virginia Woolf, 10 Ibid., 8. A Woman’s Essays, Penguin Books, 1992, 5. 11 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 6. 12 Ibid., 9. 8 “Modern Fiction”, 7. 13 Ibid., 7.

8 innumerable atoms; and as they fall, they shape asks whether there is “some secret language themselves into the life of ”14. which we feel and see, but never speak, and, if Woolf believed that the emphasis should lay on so, could this be made visible to the eye?”22 “the dark places of psychology”15, i.e., on the Whereas in “The Mark on the Wall” (1918), mind, that in Woolf’s discourse, as professor one of Woolf’s early exercises with narrative and A.Banfield writes, is “sensitized to the atomi- “visual language” that fully accords with the zation of the world, led by the dancing atoms in tenets of the Post-Impressionist paradigm random directions”16. Therefore, “at once a mentioned above, Woolf engages in a practical different outline of form becomes necessary”17, experiment with texture23 and sets out to incomprehensible and difficult to grasp, a new discover what arrangements and underlying “visual language of imagination” becomes structures of form are potentially able to stir the necessary to produce such a form. imagination, and to “arouse emotions which are The post-impressionist paradigm in painting normally dormant”24, as is implied in Roger at large, and in Fry’s and Woolf’s aesthetics, Fry’s, and Clive Bell’s, formalist scheme. When therefore, made it imperative to produce a form at the very onset of the story the narrator, who “to arouse emotions which are normally cosily sits by the fire on a winter’s day, spots the dormant”, to evoke “our latent perception” of mark (“Perhaps it was the middle of January in things and “enable us to grasp their imaginative the present year that I first looked up and saw significance”18. But what measures should be the mark on the wall”25), her “dormant” taken to reach this objective? In Fry’s aesthetics emotions are aroused, her “latent perception” of “pure form”, the graphic arts had to discover is evoked, and the imagination is stirred. The “the visual language of the imagination”, “to narrator admitts being pleasantly amused by the discover what arrangements of form and colour thought of “how readily our thoughts swarm are calculated to stir the imagination most upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants deeply through the stimulus given to the sense carry a blade of straw feverishly, and then leave of sight”19 since the world of imagination, as it”26. The mark on the wall awakens the narrator’s Roger Fry saw it, was “essentially more real than imagination and unlocks her mind to let it the actual world”, because it had “a coherence and unity which the actual world lacks”20. In 22 “The Cinema”, The Crowded Dance of Modern Woolf’s literary Post-Impressionist aesthetics, Life, 57. too, the need for “the visual language of the 23 Fry immediately recognized the emergence of imagination” which she calls a language capable Woolf’s personal style in the short story “The Mark on the Wall” when it first appeared in 1918 and particularly to record “the atoms as they fall upon the admired her preoccupation with the texture of prose. mind”21 is reaffirmed. In “The Cinema”, she He wrote to tell her of his impressions: “I’ve re-read it twice and like it better every time and am more and more delighted with it. Of course there are lots of good 14 Ibid., 8. writers […] but you’re the only one now who uses 15 Ibid., 10. language as a medium of art, who makes the very texture 16 Banfield, 2000, 182. of the words have a meaning and quality”; quoted from 17 “Modern Fiction”, 10. Frances Spalding, Roger Fry: Art and Life, University 18 “Expression and Representation”, A Roger Fry of Sussex, 1980. Reader, 69. 24 “Expression and Representation”, 68. 19 Ibid., 100. 25 “The Mark on the Wall”, Virginia Woolf, Selected 20 Ibid., 107. Short Stories, Penguin Books, 1993, 53. 21 “Modern Fiction”, 8. 26 Ibid.

9 unfold in random order that turns into a kerian” precedency, i.e., order of fiction resting fragmentary collage of unfinished vignettes. And both on the progression from cause to effect, as it turns, it produces a series of multifarious and on the two organically inseparable corre- introspections on the nature of life and the latives - plot and character. The “plot” of “The weight of reality, the future of literature and the Mark on the Wall”, therefore, seems to be testing commitments of the writer, the social order of the digressive method of the “time-shift”, also male–governed and military-oriented hierarchic known as “looping chronology”, so as to depart society etc. As the narrator follows the line of from the conventionally linear - sequential her thought, the narrative not only discards the development of the story. And although Avrom representative element in the narrative dis- Fleishman suggests that “The Mark on the Wall” course, it does away with most of the conventions has a controlled linear form (i.e., a form that – plot, character, setting - which are commonly starts at one place of time or motif and moves observed by the novelist, and concentrates on through a number of others, arriving at a place, the workings of the mind at large, on the eyless, time, motif distinct from those with which they i.e., on “the flickerings of that innermost flame begin)30, I tend to argue that the narrative of the which flashes its messages through the brain”27. story has a circular form – a form which begins To trace and (re)produce them, the narrative of and ends with the same or similar elements. The “The Mark on the Wall” tends to clearly defy story begins with the narrator’s noticing of the the accepted form of “gig lamp symmetry”, to mark on the wall (“Perhaps it was the middle of leave the description of reality out of the January in the present year that I first looked up framework of the story, and to attempt at and saw the mark on the wall”31), and so does it conveying the “varying, this unknown and end (“Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or snail”32). Moreover, throughout the narrative of complexity it may display”28. Woolf aimed at the story Woolf’s narrator does not follow an non-representationalism and wanted to move upward linear path: the action of the narrative away from both the established order of fiction loops forward and backward through narrative and the established order of society which was time to illustrate “the inaccuracy of thought”, based on the standard, as Woolf says, set by “the mystery of life”33. The narrator catches the Whitaker’s Table of Precedency: “The Arch- first idea that passes34, scrutinizes it, dispenses bishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High Chancellor is 30 “Forms of the Woolfian Short Story”, Virginia followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity, University of California, Los Angeles, London, 1980, 53. follows somebody, such is the philosophy of 31 “The Mark on the Wall”, 53. Whitaker; and the great thing to know is who 32 Ibid., 60. 33 Ibid., 54. 29 follows whom” . Leaving the description of 34 Cf. “The Room of One’s Own”: The narrator sits reality outside the premises of the story, Woolf on the banks of a river at “Oxbridge” musing over the issue of women and fiction. She represents her musings attempts at distancing herself from the traditio- metaphorically in terms of fishing: “thought... had let nal narrative form largely based on “whita- its line down into the stream” of the mind, where it drifts in the current and waits for the tug of an idea. As soon as she gets a bite, however, she is interrupted by a 27 “Modern Fiction”, 9. university security guard who enforces the rule by which women are not allowed to walk onto the grass. She returns 28 Woolf, 8. to the gravel path, however, she had lost her “little fish” 29 “The Mark on the Wall”, 59. of an idea.

10 with it, and moves on to other reflection, for that Nelson drank out of – proving I really don’t instance: “let me catch hold of the first idea that know what”38. Such interruption manifests a passes … Shakespeare … Well, he will do as verbal lack of symmetry, and is characteristic of well as another. A man who sat himself solidly spoken language or interior thought, and thus in an arm-chair, and looked into the fire so – A suggests those domains when it occurs in writing. shower of ideas fell perpetually from some very Another figure of interruption that Woolf high Heaven down through his mind. […] – But employs is aposiopesis: when the narrator breaks how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn’t off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon a when he/she is overcome with emotion; for pleasant track of thought”35. Woolf’s employing example, the narrator of “The Mark on the Wall” of these “digressions” serve the purpose of em- reflects on Shakespeare but, all of sudden, she phasizing the nature of the fluid states of mind, leaves her reveries of Shakespeare aside, breaks to temporarily dissolve time in the conscious- off suddenly in the middle of her reflections, ness of her narrator, letting associations of ideas and says she wishes she could “hit upon a – stream-of-consciousness – prevail. Woolf’s pleasant track indirectly reflecting credit upon stream-of-consciousness narrative rests on her myself, for those are the pleasantest thought”39. own devised method of interruptions36 intended Woolf’s method of interruptions also largely to disrupt the conscious thought construct of rests upon her close attention to rhythm, syntax, her narrator, and, at the same time, to slow down accented syllables. Her use of poetic effect – or speed up the plot and enhance the narrative, rhythm and its variations – gives power upon to shift the emphasis from action to awareness the shape of the sentence, the rise and fall of its of action, from experience of life to reflection cadences, the moments of accented intensity and and analysis. Her method of disruption incor- fluid forward movement. For instance, punctua- porates an occasional use of several figures of tion – numerous ellipses and dashes, semi- interruption, such as anacoluthon, i.e., a colons, exclamatory and question marks – helps rhetorical mannerism when the beginning of a to manouvre the narrative action: to slow it down sentence implies a certain logical resolution, but or to speed it up. To manouvre the narrative is concluded differently than the grammar leads vehicle of the story, Woolf also uses the one to expect. For instance, “There will be oppositions of “static” versus “dynamic” blocks nothing but spaces of light and dark, intersected of passages, e.g., the passage dominated by the by thick stalks, and rather higher up perhaps, static objects – “possessions”, “things”, “solid rose-shaped blots of an indistinct colour – dim furniture” – preceeds the paragraph abundant pinks and blues – which will, as time goes on, in flux and dynamic motion – “the Tube”, “fifty become more definite, become – I don’t know miles an hour”, “hair flying back”, “a race-horse” what”37. Another example reads: “a handful of etc. – which, in its turn, is followed by another Elizabethan nails, a great many Tudor clay pipes, fragment dominated by “static” nouns – “thick a piece of Roman pottery, and the wine glass green stalks”, “the cup of the flower”, “the roots of the grass” and so on. Interestingly enough,

35 Ibid., 55. 36 Lucio Ruotolo, The Interrupted Moment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986. 38 Ibid., 58. 37 “The Mark on the Wall”, 55. 39 Ibid., 55.

11 Woolf builds the construct of her narrative not cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon only on the basis of the contrast between “static” the burning coals, and that old fancy of the and “dynamic”, but also on the groundwork of crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came the antithesis of “low” and “high”. For instance, into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of she juxtaposes “the roots of the grass” with “the red knights riding up the side of the black toes of the Giants” etc. Moreover, the use of rock”42. The mark on the wall, as the element exclamatory marks as well as the choice of the of “setting”, is also the element of place and time verbs expressing motion as much as the which gives us more or less specific point of assonance and the consonance contribute much spatial and temporal reference. Throughout the to the impression of fast speed gained throughout development of the story it brings us back to the the narrative. The sounds [th], [f], [h], [p], [t] point of the beginning of the story and does not create and reinforce the impression of haste and allow us to grope in the flow of thought. The rapidity: “if one wants to compare life to mark is the departure point where the narrator’s anything, one must liken it to being blown mental journey starts and periodically returns through the Tube at fifty miles an hour – landing to. It is the gateway to the “reality behind”43, the at the other end without a single pin in one’s world of “unobserved sensibilia”44. Woolf uses hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! it to create a single vision out of two realities, to […] With one’s hair flying back like the tail of a unite the visible to the eyeless. Woolf echoes race-horse”40. Another passage, which is largely Fry and reiterates, as professor A.Banfield based on repetition, and the use of commas and suggests, what Post-Impressionists aimed at ellipses, produces an opposite impression, i.e., reaching: “Post-Impressionism must reach the an impression of a smoothly flowing thought: unseen world of persisting objects, of enduring “The tree outside the window taps very gently forms, to complete Inpressionism’s Cartesian on the pane … I want to think quietly, calmly, project with design”45. spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have Post-Impressionist imperatives expected the to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one artist to discover the truths by constructing the thing to another, without any sense of hostility, object from different elements, from the sense- or obstacle… I want to sink deeper and deeper, data of different perspectives. “The Mark on the away from the surface, with its hard separate Wall” reiterates what Cézanne insisted on: “If fatcs”41. in this abstract world these elements are perfectly In Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative, co-ordinated and organized by the artist’s with its method of interruptions, the mark on sensual intelligence, they attain logical consis- the wall – the controlling motiff of the story – tency”46. In “The Mark on the Wall” a multi- remains the axis of the story, the physicall farious structure of different reveries –elements background against which the story is projected. are, too, coordinated and organized by the It helps to arouse and sustain our thoughts and feelings, and calls into play our visual ima- 42 Ibid., 53. gination: “I looked up through the smoke of my 43 See Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philo- sophy, 1912: online:www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html 44 Banfield, 2000, 52. 45 Ibid., 274. 40 Ibid., 54. 46 Roger Fry, Cezanne: A Study of His Develop- 41 Ibid., 55. ment, University of Chicago Press, 1969, 58.

12 narrator who keeps bringing the mark on the detachment of aesthetic appreciation from other wall into the field of her perspective: “If that sorts of interest we might have in an object. mark was made by nail, it can’t have been for a According to Bell, art must be divorced from picture”, “but as for that mark”, “and yet that real life: “For to appreciate a work of art we mark on the wall”47 etc. Gathered into a whole, need bring with us nothing from life, no the reveries attain the form of logical consis- knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity tence, required by Cézanne. “The Mark on the with its emotions. Art transports us from the Wall”, too, testifies to the narrator’s wish to world of man’s activity to a world of aesthetic discover the truths by constructing the frame- exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from work of the form of the narrative from a variety human interests; our anticipations and me- of sense-data viewed from different perspectives, mories are arrested; we are lifted above the i.e., the mark on the wall, which not only serves stream of life”53. He used to repeat that a work as the narrator’s point of departure which is of art is a world with emotions of its own. Within eventually ultimately transformed in her Bell’s aesthetics emotion had little to do with contemplatve vision, but also is an essential feelings of love, hate or humanity, but was element of formal design, it helps to assemble limited to an intellectual response to form - one the “vision’s shimmering particles”48, to discover purified rather than “clogged with unaesthetic an “intellectual form in chaotic sense-data”49 so matter (e.g. associations)”54. as to accomplish what Post-Impressionists sought The narrative of “The Mark on the Wall”, to achieve – to cut away “the merely represen- therefore, engages in the post-impressionist tative element in art to establish more and more pursuit for disinterestedness, and forces the firmly the fundamental laws of expressive form reader into detached and impassioned contem- in its barest, most abstract elements”50. plation in the course of which random reveries The narrative of “The Mark on the Wall”, “which are normally dormant”55 begin to therefore, seems to be testing what Fry in “The crystallize into one harmonic whole. The Artist’s Vision” urged the artist to attempt at: narrator aims at what Post-Impressionists he urged the artist to “contemplate the object sought – they sought to explore and express “that disinterestedly”51; he believed that if the artist emotional significance which lies in things, and relies more upon the detached and impassioned is the most important subject matter of art”56. vision, “the (aesthetically) chaotic and acciden- Professor Banfield extends the argument and tal conjunction of forms and colours begin to suggests that in the theory of knowledge which crystallise into a harmony”52. Clive Bell in his Moore and Russel formulated (and which had a theory of “significant form”, too, stretched the profound effect on Woolf’s conception of reality), the objects of sight are dual: “There are sense-data seen with the body’s eyes. There are 47 “The Mark on the Wall”, 53–57. also directly apprehended abstract objects: 48 Banfield, 2000, 274. 49 Ibid. 50 “The Grafton Gallery–I”, A Roger Fry Reader, 87. 53 Clive Bell, Art, Perigee, 1964, 25. 51 Roger Fry, Vision and Design, Chatto and Windus, 54 Ibid., 26. 1929, 48. 55 “Expression and Representation”, 69. 52 Ibid., 51. 56 “The Post-Impressionists”, A Roger Fry Reader, 82.

13 universals, propositions, logical forms – “that emotional significance which lies in things, “perceptions of relations”57. Peter Hylton adds and is the most important subject matter of that “truths are perceived with the eye of the art”63. Like Shklovsky, and L.Tolstoy, who mind rather than with the eyes of the body”58. believed that the task of art is to defamiliarize, For, in the search for knowledge, it is not enough i.e., to show the reader common things in an to scrutinize appearances: “One must penetrate unfamiliar or strange way so as to enhance the to the forms beneath”59 . In “The Mark on the perception of what is familiar to him, Fry in his Wall”, Woolf produces the narrative which essay on Post-Impressionism (1911) encourages allows both the writer and the reader to look at the artists to misrepresent and distort “the what is deep under the appearances. In her search sensibilia”: “the artist’s business is not merely for knowledge, she penetrates to the forms the reproduction and literal copying of things beneath the surface and observes, as W.Holtby seen: – he is expected in some way or other to puts it, “how far it was possible to write her prose misrepresent and distort the visual world”64. from within, like poetry, giving it a life of its What the narrator of “The Mark on the Wall” own”60. It is “the eye of the mind” rather than does is to misrepresent the snail by giving it an “the eyes of the body” that grows wide at the attribute of “the mark on the wall” and disclosing presence of multifarious forms beneath the it at the close of the story (structurally speaking, appearances of “the objects of sight”; it is “the the relation between the signifier and the eye of the mind” that enables the reader to gain signified is finally established, the meaning gap a perception of, as Roger Fry put it, “the is bridged, as much as the gap between “treeness” of the tree”61. The Russian Formalist consciousness and subconsciousness). It, critic Victor Shklovsky, too, suggested that it is therefore, seems that the artist in Post-Impressio- the mission of art to recover the sensation of life nist discourse of art, and literature, was expected as art exists to make one feel things, “to make to deform reality: instead of going, as José the stone stony”, to resist the paralysis and Ortega y Gasset aptly notes, “more or less automatism of perception as habitualization clumsily toward reality, the artist is seen going devours our belongings, clothes, and so on. The against it. He is brazenly set on deforming reality, purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things shattering its human aspect, dehumanizing it”65. as they are perceived and not as they are known62. “The Mark on the Wall”, as Woolf implies in Roger Fry, as much as Virginia Woolf, thought “Modern Fiction”, goes against what was it was, too, imperative to explore and express expected by “some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant” who had him in thrall, “to provide plot, to provide a comedy, tragedy, love interest”66. 57 Banfield, 2000, 251. 58 Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence But “must novels be like this?”, Woolf asks of Analytic Philosophy, Clarendon Press, 1992, 197. rhetorically, and suggests that “every method is 59 Banfield, 2000, 251. 60 Winifred Holtby, Virginia Woolf, Wishart & Co., 1932, 100. 61 “The Post-Impressionists”, A Roger Fry Reader, 63 82. “The Post-Impressionists”, 82. 64 62 Âèêòîð Øêëîâñêèé, Èñêóññòâî êàê ïðèåì, “Post Impressionism”, 101. 65 Ìîñêâà: Ñîâåòñêèé ïèñàòåëü, 1990, 63. «Àâòîìàòè- José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art çàöèÿ ñúåäàåò âåùè, ïëàòüå, ìåáåëü, æåíó [...] ÷òîáû and Other Writings on Art and Culture, New York: âåðíóòü îùóùåíèå æèçíè, ïî÷óâñòâîâàòü âåùè, äëÿ Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956, 20. òîãî, ÷òîáû äåëàòü êàìåíü êàìåííûì...» 66 “Modern Fiction”, 8.

14 righ, that expresses what we wish to express”67. on Woolf’s own devised method of interruptions, Art, as much as life, offers us a great many infinite i.e., on figures of interruption (or figures of possibilities; therefore, “no ‘method’, no grammar, for example, such as anacoluthon and experiment, even of the wildest – is forbidden”: aposiopesis) so as to manouvre the vehicle of the “’The proper stuff of fiction’ does not exist; narrative to keep up with the pace of thought everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every which in “The Mark on the Wall” assumes a shape feeling, every thought; very quality of brain and of the feminine narrative. The story, too, questions spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes the necessity of all the heavy impedimenta of plot amiss”68. hindering the novelist to reveal the conscious and In “The Mark on the Wall”, Woolf processed subconscious workings of the mind. “The Mark the post-impressionist tenets assimilated from on the Wall” is the early Woolf’s narrative which Roger Fry, and to some extent from Clive Bell. does not not only signify her attempts to radically Her other 1917–1921 stories – “Kew Gardens”, remake the form, but also, as Frank Kermode “The Evening Party”, “Solid Objects” and “Blue says, manifests the tendency to bring it closer to and Green” – also incorporate Fry’s non- chaos, so producing a sense of ‘formal des- “literary” aesthetics and are, too, based on the peration’70. On the other hand, “The Mark on post-impressionist exercise with the form of the Wall” is a response to the need to search for a narrative. Since in Woolf’s aesthetics of modern style and a typology: Woolf’s formalist aesthetics fiction, traditional narrative form was irrelevant owes much to Fry’s, and Bell’s, philosophy of art, to narrate the randomness of life “The Mark on in which, as professor Banfield suggests “the the Wall” can be read as a reaction to a narrative visual meets the invisible and abstract”71. “The that commences cleanly, unfolds a sequence of Mark on the Wall” by Woolf does not report the events logically and evenly, and concludes world, but creates it72 as much as Fry’s philosophy unambiguously. “The Mark on the Wall” takes a of Post-Impressionist art which suggests that Post- form of a post-impressionist “exercise in the Impressionists do not seek to imitate form, but rendering of consciousness”69 which rests on a to create form, not to imitate life, but to find an form of stream of consciousness narrative based equivalent for life.

70 Frank Kermode, “Modernisms”, Modern Essays, London, 1971. 67 Ibid., 10. 71 Banfield, 2000, 26. 68 Ibid., 12. 72 John Fletcher and Malcolm Bradbury (eds.), “The 69 Virginia Woolf. Introductions to the Major Works Introverted Novel”, Modernism. A Guide to European (ed. Julia Briggs), Virago Press, 1994, 72. Literature 1890–1930, Penguin Books, 1991, 396.

15 VIRGINIOS WOOLF ÐIUOLAIKINËS PROZOS ESTETIKA: FORMOS PAIEÐKOS APSAKYME „DËMË ANT SIENOS“ Linara Bartkuvienë Santrauka

Straipsnyje analizuojamos Woolf naratyvo formos pa- postimpresionistinio naratyvo formà, leidþianèià ne tik ieðkos jos apsakyme „Dëmë ant sienos“, kuris yra atsisakyti prozos „realizmo“ (arba, anot Woolf, „ma- laikomas vienu pirmøjø raðytojos bandymø atitrûkti terializmo“), bet ir praplësti ðiuolaikinës prozos gali- nuo tradicinës Viktorijos laikotarpio prozos, grástos mybes. Siekiant rasti atsakymà á ðá klausimà, remiamasi siuþeto, veikëjo, vyksmo vietos bei laiko koreliacija. britø meno teoretikais ir formalizmo estetikos kûrëjais Apsakymo „Dëmë ant sienos“ tekstas pasiþymi frag- Rogeriu Fry ir Clive’u Bellu, kurie teigë, kad estetiniam mentuota struktûra: „pasakojimà“ formuoja sàmonës meno kûrinio vertingumui turinio tikroviðkumas, idëjið- srauto naratyvas, grindþiamas Woolf sukurtu „pertrû- kumas neturi jokios reikðmës, o svarbiausia mene – kiø“ metodu, t. y. ávairiø stilistiniø figûrø, kaip antai „grynoji forma“ arba „reikðmingoji forma“. Postim- anakoluto ir aposiopezës, vartojimu. Pasakojimo lini- presionistiniame Woolf kûrybos estetikos sluoksnyje jiðkumà pertraukia ir fragmentiðkos naratyvo dalys, taip pat vyrauja nuostata, kad tikroviðkumas bûdingas kurios atskirtos viena nuo kitos svarbiausiu motyvu – realistiniam menui, o ðiuolaikinës prozos siekis – dëme ant sienos. Straipsnio tikslas – iðtirti, kaip atspindëti sàmonës veikimo mechanizmà, rasti tokià tapyboje taikomus postimpresionizmo estetikos prin- naratyvo formà, kuri leistø atitrûkti nuo tikrovës cipus Woolf integruoja á prozos naratyvo laukà ir, atvaizdavimo, psichologiniø ar istoriniø kûrinio apri- tæsdama dialogà su literatûrine tradicija, iðgauna naujà bojimø.

Gauta 2005 10 20 Autorës adresas: Priimta publikuoti 2005 10 30 Literatûros istorijos ir teorijos katedra Vilniaus universitetas Universiteto g. 5 LT-01513 Vilnius El. paðtas: [email protected]

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