Tue. 18 November 1924

What I was going to say was that I think writing must be formal.The art must be respected. This struck me reading some of my notes here, for, if one lets the mind run loose, it becomes egotistic: personal, which I detest; like Robert Graves. At the same time the irregular fire must be there; & perhaps to loose it, one must begin by being chaotic, but not appear in public like that.

[... ] No doubt Proust could say what I mean-that great writer whom I cannot read when I'm correcting, so persuasive is he. He makes it seem easy to write well; which only means that one is slipping along on borrowed skates.

virginia woolf, diary

Wed. 19 July 1922

Never, for goodness sake, set yourself to read Balzac through & talk about it. If you must do these athletics, do them in the bathroom.

virginia woolf, diary

... of all the chemycal mixtures,
ink is the most dangerous.

jane austen, The Loiterer

Sunday 22 January 1922

The machinery for seeing friends is too primitive: one should be able to see them by telephone — ring up, & be in the same room.

virginia woolf, diary

Saturday 14 June 1919

A very severe review of Murry, a severe review of [TS] Eliot, appeared in the [Times] on Thursday. [...] Poor Murry pretended not to mind, but much like a small boy sticking it out that caning doesn't hurt.

A poem is a very sensitive part to be beaten.

virginia woolf, diary

the diary of virginia woolf

den ersten band fast fertig — 1 riesenvergnügen — aber schonmal einen blick ins vorwort von band 2 geworfen. vielversprechend.

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