HOME COMING!
I'm extremely happy to report my return to this blog site from which I have been absent for a very long time.
Let us review our acquaintance with this entry from a long-neglected region of my thoughts. I was entranced by the concept of the liberal arts, and wondered at their ability to capture human thought from a wide variety of sources.
In reading Virginia Woolf I was struck by her vision of the scope of the art of writing. I had been reading her novel To The Light House, in which the art of discourse is mirrored in the art of painting.
Can a novel, a work that is woven in words, be matched in a work of color and light?
Can a painting be captured in words?
In To The Light House, Virginia Woolf poses Lilly Briscoe’s efforts to center the elements of a complex human community on Mrs. Ramsey over a period of time. Can a wave of human experience be mirrored in a painting, a work of color and light?
It was this question, which occupied me long ago, that occupies me still today!
Here is the essay in which I attempted to frame this question as a student a year or so before joining the faculty of St. Johns College.
It seems to me now Virginia Woolf answers the question by using words to envision Lilly Briscoe’s painting. It appears to me now that Virginia Woolf finds it essential to include the power of envisional artistry, in order to balance the promise and despair of the human experience.
I invite the reader to offer comments for my consideration and pleasure.
Vanessa Bell’s cover for the first edition of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"