Chapter 8 Chapter VII

But his son hated him.James hated him coming up to them, hating him stopping to look down at them; (because he stood there, forcing their attention to him); and what he hated above all was his father's tremulous nasal voice, which vibrated around them and disturbed the innocence, innocence, and beauty between mother and child. relation.He kept his eyes down on the book, hoping it would make his father go away; he pointed a word with his finger, trying to draw his mother's attention back.He was annoyed to find that as soon as his father stopped walking, his mother's attention was lost immediately.But he was wasting his time.There was nothing to make Mr. Ramsay go away.There he stood, demanding their sympathy.

Mrs. Ramsay, who had been sitting lazily with her son in her arms, braced herself, turned sideways, as if about to struggle to get up, and at once sent a shower of energy into the air, a spray of water. she looked alive and alive, as if all the energy in her body was being melted into power, it was burning and glowing (though she sat peacefully and picked up her socks again), and the lack The hapless male of vital force plunges himself into this luscious fertile spring and mist of life, like a beak of bare brass, sucking desperately.He needs sympathy.He's a loser, he said.Mrs. Ramsay shook the steel needle in her hand.Without taking his eyes off her face, Mr. Ramsay repeated that he was a loser.She contradicted what he said. "Charles Tansley thinks . . . ," she said.But he wasn't satisfied with that.He needs something more.He needs sympathy, first to affirm his genius, then to let him into their circle of life, to give him warmth and comfort, to restore his reason, to transform the emptiness of his soul into abundance and abundance, and to make the whole house Every room in the house was full of life--the drawing-room; the kitchen behind the drawing-room; the bedroom above the kitchen; the nursery above the bedroom; they all had to be furnished and filled with life.

Charles Tansley considered him the greatest metaphysician of our time, she said.But he needs something more.He needs sympathy.He wants to be assured that he is at the center of life; that he is what people want; not just here, but all over the world.She swung the gleaming steel needle, straightened her body with confidence, and transformed the living room and kitchen into a new look, so that he could relax there, pace in and out, and be at ease.She is smiling and knitting.James, who stood between her knees, did not move, only felt that all the power suddenly burning in her body was being sucked desperately by the brass bird's beak and mercilessly chopped down by the mean male machete, Again and again, he asked for her sympathy.

He's a loser, he repeated.So, take a look and feel it.Shaking the gleaming steel needle in her hand, she looked around, looked out the window, looked at the interior, looked at James, without the slightest doubt, with her cheerful laughter, poised demeanor, and abundant energy (like a nurse holding through a dark room with a lamp to reassure a stubborn child), to assure him that all is real;If he trusts her absolutely, nothing can hurt him; no matter how deep he drills (in the academic field) or how high he climbs, he will find that she has not left him for hardly a second.So boastful of her own power to follow, to care, that Mrs. Ramsay felt she had left hardly a recognizable shell of herself; Well, standing upright between her knees, feeling that she has been sublimated into a leafy, fruitful, red-flowered fruit tree, and that brass beak, that bloodthirsty scimitar, His father, the selfish man, swooped in and sucked and felled desperately, demanding her sympathy.

Hearing enough of her comforting words, like a child sleeping contentedly, restored to his strength and reborn, he looked at her with humble, thankful eyes, and at last agreed to play a game of ball; Watch the kids play cricket.he's gone. In an instant, Mrs. Ramsay shriveled like a flower after full bloom, petal close to each other, and her whole body was exhausted and limp, and (in a state of extreme exhaustion) she had only a little With a little strength, she could still move her fingers to read the Grimm's fairy tales, she felt a throbbing, like a beat of a pulse, which had reached its climax, and now slowly stilled, she felt the ecstatic throbbing of successful creation. move.

As he walked away, each beat of the pulse seemed to unite her and her husband, and to give them both a comfort, like two notes, one high and one low, at the same time. , Let them resonate harmoniously to produce the same effect as the foil.Nevertheless, when the harmony of the harp died away and Mrs. Ramsay returned to the Grimm's fairy tales, she felt not only physical fatigue (not only now, but she had often since), There was also an unpleasant feeling of other origin in her fatigue.When she was reading the fisherman's wife's story aloud, she didn't know exactly where the feeling came from, and while turning the pages, she paused and heard a dull splash of the sea, with an ominous Now she understood the cause of her dissatisfaction, but she would never allow herself to put it into words: she did not like to feel superior, not even for a moment, to her husband; Not only that, but when she talked to him she couldn't bear to be absolutely sure that what she said was true.The need for him, the need for him, the immense importance of his lectures and books--she never doubted for a moment; She, it disturbed her; for then people would say that he depended on her, when in fact they should know that he was the incomparably more important of the two of them; Contribution, compared with his contribution, is insignificant.And, there was another point—she was often afraid to tell him the truth, for example, that the repair of the greenhouse roof might cost fifty pounds; mentioned, lest he would guess that his new book was not his best, and she had a little doubt that it was not a masterpiece (she had heard it from William Banks); The little things of everyday life, too, have to be slyly concealed, the children see this happening, and become a burden to their spirits--all this weakens the whole, pure joy of the harmony of the harpsichord, which makes it The resonant music dissipated in her ears in a sombre monotony.

A figure was projected upon the page; looking up, she saw Mr. Augustus Carmichael, shuffling past just at this juncture; Inappropriate, remembering that the most perfect things are flawed, remembering that she could not bear the test: she had a matter-of-fact nature, and she had to go against the truth in order to love her husband; she felt that exaggeration and lies prevented her from being of any real use—just as she was so unseemly annoyed by the perception of her own superiority, Mr. Carmichael slouched by in his yellow slippers, and Some spirit in her made her think she must say hello to him:

"Going into the house, Mr. Carmichael?"