Chapter 10 Chapter Nine The Last Elegy

Between the Acts is Woolf's last complete work.When the author wrote this book, World War II had already broken out.After the book was completed, the author committed suicide before careful revision.In the process of writing, the author's heart is always shrouded in the shadow of war and death, which makes the novel have a sad and sad tone and a color of irony.The entire plot of this book is compressed into one day in June 1939. However, the age as a frame of reference is almost infinite, and it can be said that it includes the entire history of Britain.Its central content is contained in a symbolic historical drama, and at the same time it is interspersed with the daily life of several main characters.Woolf often reveals her creative intentions in her diaries, and the records of "Interlude" are particularly detailed.In order to better understand this highly experimental work, here are a few examples:

The lesson of "Here and Now" is that a writer can use all kinds of forms in a work.So the next step is likely to be poetry, reality, comedy, drama, narrative, psychology, all rolled into one. Will another work emerge?If so, what kind of work?The only clue I have now is that it's going to be dialogue; and poetry; and prose; it's all pretty unique. Why not call it Points House; have a center; discuss all literature together with humor in real, small, jarring life; and anything else that comes to my mind; but to Eliminate "I"; replace it with "we"; should it finally beckon to "us"? "We"...the whole made up of many different elements..."We" are all life, all art, all individuals discarded by society-a loose, changing, and yet unified overall.

From the diaries quoted above, we can obtain at least the following information: First, the work begins not with characters, plots, or moral lessons, but with the idea of ​​an art form and the different aspects of life it can contain.In her important paper "The Bridge of Narrow Art" published in 1927, Woolf once imagined that the future novel may be a poetic, dramatic, impersonal, and comprehensive art form. "Interlude" is the final crystallization of this bold idea and years of experimental innovation. Second, not only is the narrative subject of the book impersonal, but the object it represents (ie, the subject in the book) is also impersonal.The protagonist of this book is not "I" but "we", all British people, all human beings, and all living beings.The majestic historical scenes in the book are a means of "summoning" "us" composed of many factors.In this sense, every character in this book has a double identity: he represents himself, and also symbolizes a certain factor in the whole human being composed of many factors; Heirs of the collective subconscious of their ancestors.

The core characters in the book are the Oliver family, whose grandparents and grandchildren lived in the country house "Points Mansion" near London for three generations.The parent is Bartholomew Oliver (aka Bart).His family includes his widowed sister Lucy (Mrs. Swithin), son Giles, daughter-in-law Isabella (Isa), and grandsons and granddaughters.In addition to these family members, there are cooks, maids, servants, Mrs. Manresa, William Dodge, Miss Trouble, Mr. Strifield and other supporting roles. Isabella is very cultured, she is withdrawn and indulges in fantasy.She hates this chaotic, vulgar, hypocritical, and formal real world, and yearns for a romantic imaginary world composed of wild swamps and bright moonlight.She feels that only in this fantasy world can there be freedom and truth.She wants to transcend daily life and fly to an ideal world, where there is no painful separation, where people can communicate with each other by knowing each other with their eyes.Her fantasies have no sympathy or understanding from her husband.Therefore, she wrote poems secretly, and bound the poems into an account book, so as not to be noticed by her husband.Her feelings have been thwarted, and her psyche needs healing and compensation.She is the same age as this century, and she is a kind of symbol of this chaotic era.

Giles has a more outgoing and down-to-earth personality.He has no romantic fantasies.What concerns him is the change in the political situation in Europe.He saw "guns and guns everywhere, and airplanes showing off their might", and he felt very disturbed.He was outraged by the indifference of his family to the threat of war.He ignored Isa's delicate feelings, but was attracted by Mrs. Manresa's sex appeal. Mrs. Ralph Manresa, the neighbor, is a middle-aged woman with heavy makeup. She has sexual charm, pursues sensual stimulation, is energetic and unscrupulous, and is a "child of nature".

Another neighbor, William Dodge, was a slightly nervous gentleman with the airs of a poet or artist.He is self-inhibited, introverted, and detached, a "spiritualist" who imagines more than acts. The personalities of these characters each represent an aspect or an element of the diverse whole of humanity.Therefore, the relationship between them has both its opposite side and its complementary side. The structure of this novel is unique.Rather than a linear narrative of the fates of these characters, it reveals aspects of their lives in fits and starts during several intermissions of a historical play.In other words, the picture of life is embedded in the framework of the drama, forming a special three-dimensional intersection structure.

In order to obtain a macro vision and symbolic effect, Woolf introduces drama into the novel.In doing so, she was obviously influenced by the poetic drama of the Elizabethan era.She wrote in her diary: "My 'higher life' is almost entirely Elizabethan drama." She believes that "the prose novel easily collects mundane details, and the poetic drama condenses with stricter techniques. Summarize and improve." Therefore, in the novel "Interlude", she combined the dense symbols of poetry with the vivid language of drama, and combined the organic rhythm of poetry with the specific roles of drama to achieve the art of poetry and drama. Effect.

The historical drama as a structural framework accounts for about one-seventh of the book.Woolf uses several dramas full of sorrow and joy to express several important eras in the history of English literature, so as to trace the entire history of Britain.The play was staged on the platform of the "Points House," and the actors and audience were the inhabitants of the village. At the beginning of this historical play, a little girl stepped onto the stage, symbolizing the birth of England.Then came the Age of Chaucer.A group of villagers crosses the stage, symbolizing the Pilgrims of Canterbury.In this scene, medieval Old English is used.

The second act is the Elizabethan era.A "play within a play" is performed on the stage, just like a real Renaissance play, and the actors on the stage are also the audience, enjoying another play.Due to this complicated layout, the real audience under the stage can hardly grasp the plot of the play.In this scene, the colorful dramatic language of Elizabethan poetic drama is used, which is a metered rhyme. The third act is the age of Anne.The characters on the stage imitate the comedies of the Restoration, full of love, money, intrigue, and so on.In this scene, the elegant lyrical prose of the eighteenth century is used.

Act Four is Victorian.On the stage, it showed the polarization of British society at that time.On the one hand, poverty, prejudice, hypocrisy; on the other hand, reform, prosperity, progress.The language used in this scene is that sentimental or exaggerated cliché that prevailed in the Victorian era. The final scene is "Modern Times, Ourselves".The audience in the audience waited patiently, feeling "caught and caged" and feeling "unmasked".The author and director of this historical drama, Ms. La Troube, tried to perform "ten minutes of modernity", revealing the current real life in front of the audience.At this time, it suddenly rained cats and dogs.This rain, "is the tear of all mankind, the tear that weeps for all".It symbolizes "sudden and widespread" grief.After the rain, the lawn smelled of fresh earth.Miss Trouble believes that nature has "played its part".At this time, a group of children from the village ran onto the stage with mirrors in their hands, allowing the audience to take a look at their own faces.People looked up to the stage, only to see a nose, a skirt, a pair of shorts, a face... . "Is this who we are? That's cruel. Before we have time to pose, our image is reflected... and it is a fragmented partial image... This is distorting the truth, turning black and white, and it is absolutely unfair. "For this kind of self-portrait that has not been rehearsed and beautified, most audiences cannot accept it. Only Mrs. Manresa is still very proud to paint in the mirror.Finally, Mr. Strifield, the curate in the village, sums up the significance of the whole play.He is the mouthpiece of all mankind, "their symbol, themselves, the object of mockery in the mirror, a bumpkin." He speaks in fragmented modern language.

The symbolism of this historical drama is obvious.It embodies the dramatic cycle of life: younger generations replace their elders, new plays replace old plays, new styles replace old ones, new languages ​​replace old ones.This continual replacement is endless.Human history is the cycle of day and night, life and death, civilization and chaos.Thus, a journalist in the audience wrote in his notebook: "Civilization . . . is destroyed; through human effort . . . it is rebuilt." During the first intermission, the audience went to the barn for refreshment.William Dodge noticed that Isha played different roles in front of her son and husband, and her facial expressions changed at any time.Mrs. Manresa thought Giles was a handsome man, and she compared him to the hero of the play, and herself to the queen of the play.She quickly draws him to her.Isa saw clearly the game between Giles and Mrs. Manresa.Her own feelings had been thwarted, but she was willing to let others be thwarted as well.Issa shows William Dodge around her family's glass conservatory.William notices Isa's reaction to her husband's flirtations with Mrs. Manresa.He felt that he and Isha were able to talk freely because their closeness was spiritual and there was no underlying sexuality creating tension. The second intermission is shorter.Part of the audience is still sitting there.Giles invites Mrs. Manresa to visit the glass conservatory, though he realizes that something might happen. During the third intermission, most of the audience's conversations revolved around the historical drama, because the content of this scene was relatively close to their lives.The audience's parents or grandparents were Victorians, while the older members of the cast grew up in the late 19th century. There is no clear line between the last intermission and the last act of the historical drama.The "modern" scene on the stage is both the end of the historical drama and part of real life.After the curate gave a speech, the audience went home one after another, the actors removed their make-up and changed their clothes, and Mrs. Manresa and William also left.La Trobe sits in a tavern and conceives a new play: "It should be midnight; there are two characters; . . . the curtain is about to rise." After Oliver's family had supper, Giles and Isa retired to their bedroom.They were about to perform the first act of Miss Trouble's new play: "Lonely, naked hostility; and love. Before they sleep, they must fight; after they fight, they embrace. Through that embrace, another new life will be born.” Like a vixen and a coyx or a burrowing savage, they fight before they can unite.Finally, "the curtain rose. They spoke." The novel ends. The meaning of these intermissions is obvious.In life, love and hate are intertwined.Love unites people, creates life, and creates civilization.Hate divides people, kills life, and destroys civilization.This tension between love and hate echoes the cycle of history. The symbolic world in historical dramas and the real world of everyday life, these two clues are intertwined to form a symphony.Symbolism and reality become the first and second themes of each movement respectively.What runs through the whole song is a feeling of loss and sadness, a lament of "the setting sun is infinitely beautiful, but it is only near dusk". In this complex symphony, drama and life, symbol and reality, human and nature, are closely integrated and inseparable.If the historical drama on the stage is regarded as a drama, then the real life off the stage is its interlude.If we regard the joys and sorrows off the stage as a drama of life, then the historical drama on the stage is its interlude.The current life is history for future generations.Therefore, there is no clear line between history and reality.Giles and Isa are real people and symbols of an element of the human whole.There is also no clear boundary between symbol and reality.In that historical play, the characters on stage were played by the inhabitants of the village.In the last scene, the images of the audience are reflected in the mirrors on the stage.After the historical drama ended, Giles and Isa became the protagonists of a new play.Even the language of the historical drama melts into the language of the audience, giving it a tinge of rhyme.All this emphasizes the close relationship between life and drama.The historical drama was performed on the open-air platform of the "Points Mansion". The audience could hear the crowing of birds, cows, wind and thunder, and see flowers and trees, insects, fish, birds and animals, clouds, rain and sun, and feel that human history and reality are in harmony with nature. naturally connected. The work emphasizes the cycles of history and the intrinsic connections between people of all ages.The village chorus, which appears in every act of the historical drama, points to this theme: Digging, digging... The earth is always like this: cold comes and summer goes, winter goes and spring comes; All gone but us; all changed...we will always be. In his concluding remarks, Mr. Strifield pointed out that the hidden meaning of this historical drama is the inherent unity of human beings: "Every human being is a part of the whole. . . . We play different roles; yet we are The same people. . . . How dare we ... confine our lives to ourselves?" Mrs. Swithing also believed that there had never been any "Victorian characters" who were "just you and me and William in different clothes."People's clothing changes but their nature remains the same, which became the topic of the audience during the intermission. The extension of life and the change of human nature are one of the basic themes of this book.Bartholomew Oliver realizes that the child born to Isa continues his life, giving the Oliver family a future.He noted Madame Manresa's intense sensuality, and he "blessed the power of the human body that would make this world productive."Those villagers have lived in this place for three centuries, and the names of their ancestors are recorded in the "Doomsday Book".If the editor of that old census roll had called his name on the stage of a historical play, half the audience would have responded, "Here I am, in the place of my grandfather or great-grandfather." Their lives, too, resembled those of their ancestors. , a historical drama is staged every year.The topics they talk about historical dramas have not changed, and they repeat the same old tune every year.Things change only on the surface.In the "Points House", there is still a small church before the Christian Reformation in the 16th century.Although it is now used as a food storage room, the structure of the house has not changed at all.People's behavior has changed.Today old Oliver shook hands and bowed in greeting Mrs. Manresa.In the past, he would lean over and kiss her hand.However, the basic feelings and needs of human beings, as well as the mutual relationship between human beings and nature, have not changed in essence. There is a sense of unity and wholeness in this historical drama.It is a source of peace.The director, Ms. La Trobe, spent a lot of effort to make the characters on the stage into a whole, so that the audience in the audience and the drama on the stage become one.At the end of the historical drama, people are reluctant to leave the mysterious symbolic world that brings them peace and tranquility.The record on the phonograph sang the epilogue of the script: "We once came together, but now we are scattered....Let us preserve forever everything that creates a harmonious atmosphere." The audience in the audience responded immediately.They thought, "Ah, let's... stay united, because there is joy in the collective, sweet joy." They had come together, temporarily removed from the chaos of everyday life, gained in the drama of history. Instant peace and tranquility.Just like relatives, friends and guests in the novel, a temporary peace and tranquility were obtained at Mrs. Ramsay's banquet. However, this peace and tranquility is temporary and short-lived.The plot in the novel takes place in a time of peace. The land is full of birds and flowers, but the sky is covered with dark clouds of war.Bombers rumbled overhead, disrupting the historical drama.Giles felt that the cannon scattered across the European continent would plow the land into ravines at any moment and tear the world he loved into pieces.From Isha's point of view, the root of the war is not far away in the European continent, nor does it lie in a specific country or a specific political party, but lurks in people's hearts.She believes that love and hate are universal human emotions.The tension between love and hate, is perpetual.The hostility between individuals is not far from the hostility between nations.Villagers with ancient surnames see the scars left by military operations throughout history; remnants of British, Norman and Napoleonic invasions can be seen everywhere.Perhaps their descendants also have the opportunity to add some new scars to the earth.The period of peace they lived in was but an interlude in the violent drama of history.For those audiences who feel that the war is imminent, thinking that although there are many catastrophes of war in history, human life continues to stretch, and human civilization still exists, so the hope in their hearts will not be wiped out.That's the little comfort they get from that historical drama. In this novel, Woolf uses and develops her modern novel techniques accumulated through years of writing practice. Perhaps the most striking of these is the use of symbolism.Just like and, the title "Interlude" is full of symbolic meaning.First of all, "intermission" refers to the break between two acts on the stage.She unfolded the drama of life in the intermission of the historical drama, making a strong contrast between the infinite shadow of history and the short flash of life, showing the small and ordinary daily life in front of the majestic historical background.Second, "Interlude" symbolizes the temporary peace and tranquility between the two violent dramas, implying that Britain was in the middle of the two world wars at that time.Again, "Interlude" means rest and waiting, which is like "Waiting for Godot". No one knows what the next act of the drama they are waiting for will look like. history. The work "Between the Act" has extremely rich allegorical images, metaphors and symbols.The author is good at embedding implicit meaning into obvious facts.She often uses a real location as a symbol to allude to an empty reality devoid of life.We have been impressed by the symbolism of Jacob's empty house and Mrs. Ramsay's empty house.In this work, Woolf uses the image of the empty house again.In the room that symbolizes life, there is a vase that symbolizes art. The author uses this as a metaphor for the emptiness in human history and reality: Empty, empty, empty, quiet, quiet, quiet.The room was a shell that sang of all that had been; and in the center of the room stood a vase, white, smooth, and cold, which contained the essence of silence drawn from the emptiness of silence. Woolf is particularly fond of various imagery related to water.In "Points Mansion", there is a fish pond. "For hundreds of years, rainwater has accumulated in this fish pond, on a black cushion made of silt, accumulated four or five feet deep." People are like fish, under the water surface, in the silent realm , quiet and comfortable.However, they occasionally come to the surface to feed.On the surface of the fish pond, they have to communicate with each other.Therefore, the author uses the imagery of fishing to summarize the interconnection between people, and uses the different levels of water and mud in the fish pond to symbolize the different levels of consciousness and language. It is worth noting that in all Woolf's works, only in this novel do some violent, disgusting and painful images appear.For example, blood-stained tennis shoes; prison bars; a snake devours a frog, which dies in the snake's mouth, choking the snake's throat.In addition, Isha reads a story in the newspaper about a soldier raping a woman, which becomes a horrific symbol of the violence of war. Woolf develops her stream-of-consciousness technique in the novel Between the Acts.She embeds the characters' stream-of-consciousness into a traditional omniscient narrative, bringing the two approaches together seamlessly.For example, there’s a scene in the book where Isa and Bart are in the library and Lucy walks in and puts the hammer and nails back in the cupboard.All this is the author's direct objective narrative.In the following passage, the omniscient author recounts to us the childhood scenes of the two old men, and then turns to the present reality, when Isa's stream of consciousness suddenly interjects: She tapped him on the shoulder and said, "I've nailed that notice board to the barn wall." This sentence is like the first few rings of a harmonious set of bells.When the first bell rang, you heard the sound of the second bell; when the second bell rang, you heard the sound of the third bell.So when Isa heard Mrs. Swithing say, "I've nailed that notice board to the barn wall," she knew she was going to hear the following sequence of conversations: "That's an announcement for acting." Then he will say: "Today? My God! I forgot about it." "If the weather is fine," continued Mrs. Swithing, "it will be played on the platform." "If it rains," Bart said, "play it in the barn." "So what?" asked Mrs. Swithin, "is it raining or is it sunny?" So they both looked out the window.This happens every year, and this is the seventh time in a row. In the example above, the transition between the omniscient narrative and the stream of consciousness is fluid and natural.In and , there are many continuous internal monologues (both direct and indirect) and almost entirely composed of internal monologues.In "Interlude," long, entire monologues disappear, and short streams of consciousness intersperse the objective narrative, sparkling like pearls on a ring. Woolf stated in her diary: "I feel a little smug about this book. It's an interesting attempt at a new approach, I think. It's more refined, I think, than my other books. It More distilled. It's a richer mode, certainly a fresher mode than that poor Days." In the three later works, "Years" and "Interlude", the author tries to establish a comprehensive novel form and observe life from a macroscopic perspective.If we compare these three works, we will find that, leaning towards the poetic imagination, "Years" is close to the ordinary fact, while "Interlude" achieves a certain balance between these two opposite tendencies. The Soviet critic Mikhalskaya believes: "According to the author's conception, "Years" should be able to symbolize the fate of several generations of a middle-class family, and "Interlude" symbolizes the fate of the English nation and the fate of all mankind. However, , with the means she employs, it is impossible to realize these ideas. Her view of life and of people is too narrow to be the basis of great generalizations." In my opinion, Mikhalskaya's evaluation is inappropriate.Woolf said that readers or critics must first understand the perspective method used by the author before they can grasp and appreciate the work.Because the perspective methods used by different writers are different, and the perspective methods used by the same writer in different periods are also different.In these three later works, Woolf uses a macro perspective method, which is a symbolic and abstract method. Its generalization of life is abstract rather than concrete, general rather than personal. of.Mikhalskaya's measurement standard is the microscopic perspective method of traditional realistic novels, and its generalization of life is specific and personal.If we use this standard to measure, we will naturally accuse Woolf's later works of emptiness, abstraction and superficiality.However, I think this accusation is unfair.Just as we look at a freehand Chinese painting, we can only judge its quality from the artistic conception of the painting, and we should not accuse it of lacking the correctness of specific details like meticulous painting. To illustrate the fundamental difference between the two methods of perspective, allow me to quote Woolf's own account of this novel novel: The main difference between it and the novel with which we are now familiar is that it will take a step back from life and stand a little further.It will, like poetry, offer only the outlines of life, not its details.It will make little use of that astonishing capacity for realism that is one of the novel's hallmarks.It will tell us very little about the housing, income, occupations, etc. of its characters; it has little kinship with that kind of social and environmental fiction. . . . it will not, as the novel hitherto has done, describe merely or chiefly the relations between men and their common activities; it will express the relation of the individual mind to common ideas, and the Inner monologue in silence. … We crave certain more impersonal relationships.We long for ideals, dreams, imagination and poetry. It is clear that what Woolf's later novels want to express is by no means personal joys and sorrows, but the general concept of the universe and life, the ideals and dreams of the whole nation and mankind.This is a long-distance, macroscopic and abstract generalization.In this sense, "Interlude" is indeed "the most ambitious and perfect novel", "its strange splendor, characters, scene design, and the human world seen through the eyes of a gifted woman The symbolic form will last forever in the reader's memory." Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf's swan song, is "a nostalgic look back at British history" and an end point in her own writing career.It is hard to imagine that she would write a book with a deeper understanding of human nature, or a work more pathetic and grim.This song of elegy before the death of the swan can be described as euphemistically sad and soul-stirring. Woolf wrote in her diary on September 23, 1940: Now that the historical drama is done—or is it called The Points House? —(probably started April 1938), I began to write the first chapter of the next book (not yet titled) with a rush of ideas.It will be called Annon. Annon is a work that will describe the history of English literature.This book was dedicated by Woolf to Bloomsbury's friend Duncan Grant.She wanted to explain to Duncan the development of English literature.According to Woolf herself, the book was difficult to handle, and at one point she had to explain Shakespeare's achievements.Shakespeare's genius is all-encompassing, hence the length of the book. Before the book was finished, Woolf left the notes of the first chapter and the drafts of the other two chapters on her desk, and quietly left the world.Therefore, we cannot speculate on the nature of this book.Perhaps I can only say this: Virginia Woolf's creativity is not exhausted. If she hadn't ended her life prematurely, she would have created a more novel and unique art form, showing her love for the universe and life. Again, her readers are amazed by a deeper insight.