Saturday 9 November 1918

It's just possible that Lottie may bring us news that the armistice is signed within an hour. People buy papers at a great rate; but except for an occasional buzz round a newspaper boy & a number of shop girls provided with The Evening News in the train one feels nothing different in the atmosphere. The general state perhaps is one of dazed surfeit; here we've had one great relief after another; you hear the paper boys calling out that Turkey has surrendered, or Austria given up, & the mind doesn't do very much with it; was the whole thing too remote & meaningless to come home to one, either in action or in ceasing to act? Katherine Murry, whom I saw on Wednesday, inclines to think that most people have grasped neither war nor peace. Two or three weeks ago I heard a citizen holding forth to a lady in the train, who asked him whether he thought there would be peace. "I hope not. ... We're giving them everything they want & getting nothing."

Since then it is difficult to see how the most bloodthirsty citizens can squeeze anything more out of Germany. The Kaiser still wears a phantom kind of crown. Otherwise there is revolution, & a kind of partial awakenment, one fancies, on the part of the people to the unreality of the whole affair. Suppose we wake up too?

virginia woolf, diary

Friday 12 July 1918

The Times on 9 July published a long letter from the Duke of Rutland suggesting that the bishops should instruct their clergy to read the Prayer for Rain in church since, in view of the disastrous effect of two months' drought on food crops, [...]

The following day brought a rejoinder from a correspondent who declared that rain was already being prayed for, as few of the clergy needed to wait upon the bishops' assessment of the 'correct meteorological moment'.

virginia woolf, diary

Jürgen Habermas glaubt, dass Siegfried Unseld nie mit einem der mit ihm enger verbundenen Autoren über seine Mitgliedschaft in der NSDAP gesprochen hat. Weshalb ist sich der Philosoph da so sicher?

→

faz

Thursday 24 January 1918

The last day of being 35. One trembles to write the years that come after it: all tinged with the shadow of 40.

virginia woolf, diary

rauchen geht auch, vorsichtshalber aber nur im sitzen.

gestern viel gelesen, heute fehlt mir die muße. surfen, telef., texten etc mit viel spaß; aber der kriegswinter 1917/18 ist auf meiner prioritätenliste heute nicht sehr weit oben:

sehr empfehlenswert. man sollte sich besser mit dieser zeit im UK und den angesagten künstlern/schriftstellern [›bloomsbury group‹ etc] schon etwas auskennen. man kann die alle nachschlagen, aber dann kommt die lektüre nicht in schwung.

... marvelous for the immediacy and lack of self-consciousness with which Woolf transcribes her daily life.... No torment or psychic struggle here; indeed at one point Virginia reflects that she lacks an 'inner life.' But whatever it is she has instead is much more interesting.

Keith Cushman, Library Journal

Tuesday 16 October 1917

[...] She has a good brain, but not enough energy to keep it working.

virginia woolf, diary

terry pratchett: a stroke of the pen

sehr vergnüglich.

Saturday 2 February 1918

The first walk we've had for ever so long. Damp, mild vaporous day. Funeral bells tolling as we went out, & marriage as we came in. The streets lined with people waiting their meat. Aeroplanes droning invisible. Our usual evening, alone happily, knee deep in papers.

virginia woolf, diary

in 2 tagen ausgelesen. schönes buch.