What a wonderful talk. Glad to see Professor Lee still going. I loved her biography of Virginia Woolf, and this is only adding to my interest in her work. Much thanks for your tireless efforts and deep insights. All the best.
Not wonderful - A sham - You had better do a little reading of great writers - Read Richard Steel, Bacon, Swift, Plato, FR Leavis, 9:50 Lionel Trilling, Lamb, Not William Faulkner, Not Gore Vidal, Not J. Austin
Thank you for this Dame Hermione; much appreciated. I am a Birkbeck London University English graduate and studied Woolf in the early 1980's. I am also bipolar myself; you said Dame Hermione once on a TV programme ages ago that Woolf's novels aren't so great as many people consider them to be; and that Woolf had a profound insight into the creative imaginative mind; I totally agree. However, Woolf is too idealised politically as a writer to satisfy more and more people I now think. Professor Barbara Hardy of Birkbeck said in a lecture I attended that Woolf's novels were nebulous; this was probably almost a dismissal of Woolf due to Woolf's lack of societal structuring from multi-form angles. Virginia Woolf never escaped from the prison of her upper class ideas; she was a snob; she had a definite and profound aversion to ordinary people - especially the working classes. Her room of one's own was essentially her room and you needed a private income to live in that protected room. Woolf never managed to fuse body and mind - she had a near dread of her body and waste products. I was once totally a profound admirer of Woolf - but my views now have changed. I regard her novel To the Lighthouse as an exquisite work of literary art; and some of her essays interest me. Woolf is still I think held to be a feminist icon; I am a man - a well educated man - and I find the early Victorian writer Emily Bronte far more of a icon; Bronte did fuse mysticism with violence and the earth; she was not terrified of existence - but faced it bravely; Emily Bronte - if she had lived longer - would have become a major European writer; Virginia Woolf will never be this I think. This is not an all-out attack on Virginia Woolf; I am a male intense admirer of a limited amount of Woolf's creative work. One can stay in bed as Lamb and Woolf might have done if one is nursed and paid for by others - most people had to work and they did. I have experienced a bipolar illness since the age of 18 and I am now 73. And this little personal estimation of Woolf I have definitely condensed without looseness - or made the attempt to do so; nebulous being is self-being all-inclusiveness - one understands why Woolf drowned herself in the waters near her privileged home - for in many ways nothing is more totally one symbolically I think than the seas; I have listened to Woolf's vision of a language she could construct to suit herself - a speech is available from a radio programme that Woolf broadcast once - and it seems a somewhat grandiose vision at least to me. Sadly, I think Woolf's new language she would have pushed as the acceptable language of an elite. If only she had the dual world experience of Emily Bronte - Woolf may then have become a major writer; Woolf is not a genius; very brilliant; and not as original as most readers think.
You had better do some reading of significant essayists - read Lamb - then wait a couple of weeks and re-read what you have read - the re-read it. Read Swift - with care - read Lionel Trilling - Read FR Leavis - read Bacon - read Seneca - read Plato - find a couple of passages of Plato and read those passages over and over - Read Plato’s “Gorgias” - Read Henry Fielding - Read Collingwood - read FH Bradley’s “Ethical Studies”, particularly ‘Essay III’ - read Bradley slowly and carefully - and re-read him - read just one page of Bradley per day.
What a wonderful talk. Glad to see Professor Lee still going. I loved her biography of Virginia Woolf, and this is only adding to my interest in her work. Much thanks for your tireless efforts and deep insights. All the best.
Wonderful .... Thank you Dame Hermione.
Not wonderful - A sham - You had better do a little reading of great writers - Read Richard Steel, Bacon, Swift, Plato, FR Leavis, 9:50 Lionel Trilling, Lamb, Not William Faulkner, Not Gore Vidal, Not J. Austin
Thank you for this Dame Hermione; much appreciated. I am a Birkbeck London University English graduate and studied Woolf in the early 1980's. I am also bipolar myself; you said Dame Hermione once on a TV programme ages ago that Woolf's novels aren't so great as many people consider them to be; and that Woolf had a profound insight into the creative imaginative mind; I totally agree. However, Woolf is too idealised politically as a writer to satisfy more and more people I now think. Professor Barbara Hardy of Birkbeck said in a lecture I attended that Woolf's novels were nebulous; this was probably almost a dismissal of Woolf due to Woolf's lack of societal structuring from multi-form angles. Virginia Woolf never escaped from the prison of her upper class ideas; she was a snob; she had a definite and profound aversion to ordinary people - especially the working classes. Her room of one's own was essentially her room and you needed a private income to live in that protected room. Woolf never managed to fuse body and mind - she had a near dread of her body and waste products. I was once totally a profound admirer of Woolf - but my views now have changed. I regard her novel To the Lighthouse as an exquisite work of literary art; and some of her essays interest me. Woolf is still I think held to be a feminist icon; I am a man - a well educated man - and I find the early Victorian writer Emily Bronte far more of a icon; Bronte did fuse mysticism with violence and the earth; she was not terrified of existence - but faced it bravely; Emily Bronte - if she had lived longer - would have become a major European writer; Virginia Woolf will never be this I think. This is not an all-out attack on Virginia Woolf; I am a male intense admirer of a limited amount of Woolf's creative work. One can stay in bed as Lamb and Woolf might have done if one is nursed and paid for by others - most people had to work and they did. I have experienced a bipolar illness since the age of 18 and I am now 73. And this little personal estimation of Woolf I have definitely condensed without looseness - or made the attempt to do so; nebulous being is self-being all-inclusiveness - one understands why Woolf drowned herself in the waters near her privileged home - for in many ways nothing is more totally one symbolically I think than the seas; I have listened to Woolf's vision of a language she could construct to suit herself - a speech is available from a radio programme that Woolf broadcast once - and it seems a somewhat grandiose vision at least to me. Sadly, I think Woolf's new language she would have pushed as the acceptable language of an elite. If only she had the dual world experience of Emily Bronte - Woolf may then have become a major writer; Woolf is not a genius; very brilliant; and not as original as most readers think.
There can be no such thing as ‘bi polar’.
I do SO hope that Ms. Lee will one day turn her formidable attention to Emily Dickinson, another “eccentric”.
You had better do some reading of significant essayists - read Lamb - then wait a couple of weeks and re-read what you have read - the re-read it.
Read Swift - with care - read Lionel Trilling - Read FR Leavis - read Bacon - read Seneca - read Plato - find a couple of passages of Plato and read those passages over and over - Read Plato’s “Gorgias” - Read Henry Fielding - Read Collingwood - read FH Bradley’s “Ethical Studies”, particularly ‘Essay III’ - read Bradley slowly and carefully - and re-read him - read just one page of Bradley per day.
Yes, l agree.Just started reading Emily Dickinson- a real Challenge.
Oxford has been a wasteland for 20 years
Phoney - Superficial - Devoid of Sentiment - Enotionally immature- Incompetent - Lackey - Petty
Read someone competent! This is shallow commentary! Empty! Immature! Think for yourself!