HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

To the Lighthouse (1927)

by Virginia Woolf

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
16,970257288 (3.88)790
Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse.… (more)
1920s (20)
AP Lit (103)
Romans (30)
100 (56)
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 790 mentions

English (232)  Dutch (5)  Spanish (4)  Catalan (4)  Italian (3)  Swedish (2)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Hungarian (1)  French (1)  Hebrew (1)  Norwegian (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (256)
Showing 1-5 of 232 (next | show all)
no one is on par with woolf’s writing. never fails to leave me in awe. ( )
  femmedyke | Sep 27, 2023 |
Hard to read, it would have been worth it if it had not been so depressing ( )
  farrhon | Sep 15, 2023 |
Happy birthday note to Mom from Jamie to Mom dated Nov 11, 1993
  JimandMary69 | Sep 2, 2023 |
People I cared about, described as only Woolf can. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 12, 2023 |
Beauty will save the world (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

To the Lighthouse is a ghost story. Mrs. Ramsay’s feast derives its magical quality from its mythical resemblance to the Dionysian feast for the soul of the dead… (xxxiv)

The lost safe-house and garden are the traditions of writings from which the new writer has to travel, out into formidable space. But the new writing keeps trying to find its way back into the past, so there is an old tension in the book between the experimental and the nostalgie. (xxxviii)

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is to-day? (48)

… all had to be deprecated and concealed under the phrase ‘talking nonsense’, because, in effect, he had not done the thing he might have done. It was a disguise, it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like - this is what I am; (51)

Lily Briscoe went on putting away her brushes, looking up, looking down. Looking up, there he was - Mr. Ramsay - advancing towards them, swinging, careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a hypocrite? she repeated. Oh no - the most sincere of men, the truest (here he was), the best; but, looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself… (52)
Lily Briscoe had looked up at last, and there was Mrs. Ramsay, unwitting entirely what had caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every trace of wilfulness abolished, and in its stead, something clear as the space which the clouds at last uncover - the little space of sky which sleeps beside the moon. (56-7)

Indeed he (Mr. Ramsay) seemed to her (Mrs. Ramsay) sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle’s. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notices the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. … He would sit at the table with them like a person in a dream. (77)
And looking up, she saw above the thin tree the first pulse of the full-throbbing star, and wanted to make her husband look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But she stopped herself. He never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little world. which one of his sighs. (78)

She had done the usual trick - been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr. Bankes) were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere. (101)

And all the lives we ever lived.
And all the lives to be.
Are full of tree and changing leaves. (129)

… how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its clear image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor. (141)

The spring without a leaf to toss, bare a bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders. (143)

Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, condoned his menness, and acquiesced in his torture. That dream, then, of sharing, completing, finding in solitude on the beach an answer, but was a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken. (146)

What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of nature? (150)

Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs. Beckwith, Mr. Carmichael, and Lily Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving thei thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bolt upright in bed. Awake. (155)

What does it mean then, what can it all mean? Lily briscoe asked herself…
For really, what did she feel, come back after all these years and Mrs. Ramsay dead? Nothing, nothing - nothing that she could express at all. (159)

And he (Mr. Ramsay) shook his head at her (Lily), and strode on (‘Alone’ she heard him say, ‘Perished’ she heard him say) and like everything else this strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. (160-1)

Certainly she (Lily) was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr. Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult with space, while she modelled it with green and blues. (174)

What is the meaning of life? That was all - a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying ‘Life stand still here’; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) - this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. ‘Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!’ she repeated. She owed this revelation to her. (175-6)

She rammed a little hole in the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the perfection of the moment. (187)

She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably - how ‘you’ and ‘I’ and ‘she’ pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. (195)

James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? (202)

It was some such feeling of completeness perhaps which, ten years ago, standing almost where she stood now, had made her say that she must be in love with the place. Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays. (208-9)

One must keep on looking without for a second relaxing the intensity of emotion, the determination not to be put off, not to be bamboozled. One must hold the scene - so - in a vice and let nothing come in and spoil it. One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy. (218)
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (Magritte, 1928)

Mr. Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about, extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds - that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things. (219)

Lily reflects that “nothing stays, all changes; but not words, not paint.”
The truth, according to this assertion, rests in the accumulation of different, even opposing vantage points.
Nevertheless, Lily continues on her quest to “still” or “freeze” a moment from life and make it beautiful. (Sparknotes)

Notes: Sein und Zeit by Martin Heidegger (1927) & To the Lighthouse (1927) & Will You Please Forget Freud, Please? (I'm so sorry, Mr. Carver!) & The Lighthouse = Da-sein.


( )
  NewLibrary78 | Jul 22, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 232 (next | show all)
How was it that, this time, everything in the book fell so completely into place? How could I have missed it - above all, the patterns, the artistry - the first time through? How could I have missed the resonance of Mr Ramsay's Tennyson quotation, coming as it does like a prophecy of the first world war? How could I not have grasped that the person painting and the one writing were in effect the same? ("Women can't write, women can't paint..." ) And the way time passes over everything like a cloud, and solid objects flicker and dissolve? And the way Lily's picture of Mrs Ramsay - incomplete, insufficient, doomed to be stuck in an attic - becomes, as she adds the one line that ties it all together at the end, the book we've just read?
 
"To the Lighthouse" has not the formal perfection, the cohesiveness, the intense vividness of characterization that belong to "Mrs. Dalloway." It has particles of failure in it. It is inferior to "Mrs. Dalloway" in the degree to which its aims are achieved; it is superior in the magnitude of the aims themselves. For in its portrayal of life that is less orderly, more complex and so much doomed to frustration, it strikes a more important note, and it gives us an interlude of vision that must stand at the head of all Virginia Woolf's work.
 

» Add other authors (55 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Woolf, Virginiaprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Alfsen, MereteTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Öncül, Naciye Aksekisecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bell, QuentinIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bertolucci, AttilioForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bradbury, NicolaIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bradshaw, DavidEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Briggs, JuliaIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Carabine, KeithEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Celenza, GiuliaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dop, Jo FiedeldijTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Drabble, MargaretEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dunmore, HelenIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fastrová, JarmilaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fiedeldij Dop, JoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fischer, PaulCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Foa, MaryclareIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fusini, Nadiasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hoare, D.M.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hoffman, AliceIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Holliday, TerenceIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kaila, KaiTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kidman, NicoleNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lanoire, MauriceTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Law, PhyllidaNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lee, HermioneIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Malago, Anna LauraTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Matar, Hishamsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mathias, RobertCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McNichol, StellaEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Munck, IngalisaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nathan, Moniquesecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pellan, FrançoiseTraductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Phelps, GilbertIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Richards, CeriCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ryall, AnikaForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Stevenson, JulietNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Valentí, HelenaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Welty, EudoraIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Zazo, Anna LuisaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

Awards

Notable Lists

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
Quotations
She was thinking how all those paths and the lawn, tick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, were gone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
A 4-page biographical preface, 36-page introduction, 5-page Note on the Text, 6-page bibliography, 7-page Chronology, 170-page novel, 24 pages of Explanatory Notes.

Μια οικογένεια, μερικοί φίλοι, ένα παραθαλάσσιο σπίτι στις Εβρίδες και ένας φάρος συνθέτουν το πιο αυτοβιογραφικό μυθιστόρημα της Γουλφ, "Μέχρι το φάρο". Ο κύριος και η κυρία Ράμσεϊ και τα οκτώ παιδιά τους είναι η οικογένεια της Γουλφ. Το σπίτι, που από τα παράθυρά του βλέπει κανείς το φάρο, είναι το εξοχικό σπίτι των παιδικών της χρόνων, μόνο που εκείνο βρισκόταν στην Κορνουάλη και όχι στη Σκωτία.
Απελευθερωμένη από την κλασική δομή του μυθιστορήματος, όπως ο Μαρσέλ Προυστ ή ο Τζέιμς Τζόις, η Γουλφ δεν δίνει βάρος στην πλοκή. Η ιστορία της εκδρομής στον φάρο είναι η αφορμή για να αναδυθούν σκέψεις, σχέσεις, κοσμοθεωρίες, συναισθήματα. Δύο μόνο ημέρες - με απόσταση μεταξύ τους μιας δεκαετίας, ενός παγκοσμίου πολέμου και τριών θανάτων - διαρκεί η εκπληκτική διείσδυση της συγγραφέως στους χαρακτήρες και στις συνειδήσεις των ηρώων της. Δεν υπάρχει αμφιβολία ότι η εκκολαπτόμενη ζωγράφος Λίλυ είναι η Βιρτζίνια. Η Λίλυ παρατηρεί την οικογένεια Ράμσεϊ από την απόσταση της φίλης, αν και τα στοργικά της αισθήματα προς την κυρία Ράμσεϊ την επηρεάζουν ψυχικά, τουλάχιστον ως λίγο πριν από το τέλος του βιβλίου. Η μαεστρία της Γουλφ επεκτείνεται στην αναβάθμιση άψυχων πραγμάτων, όπως το σπίτι και ο φάρος, σε σχεδόν αυτεξούσιες οντότητες. Σημαντικό ρόλο επίσης παίζει ο χρόνος και το πέρασμά του. Το παρόν γίνεται αμέσως παρελθόν, σκέφτεται η κυρία Ράμσεϊ. Το μέλλον αγχώνει τον κύριο Ράμσεϊ, όπως και τη Λίλυ, αλλά μόνο ως τη στιγμή της καλλιτεχνικής της ολοκλήρωσης. Ένα από τα αριστουργήματα της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας του 20ού αιώνα.

(εφημερίδα "La Repubblica", Italia)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941.
Μέχρι το φάρο / Βιρτζίνια Γουλφ · μετάφραση Έλλη Μαρμαρά. - Αθήνα : Alter - Ego ΜΜΕ Α.Ε., 2007. - 219σ. · 21x13εκ. - (Το Βήμα Βιβλιοθήκη· Ανάγνωση · 5)
gre
Επανέκδοση: "Οδυσσέας", 1981, 2006. Copyright έκδοσης: Metropoli Spa (Gruppo Editoriale L' Espresso). Εκτύπωση & βιβλιοδεσία: Grafica Veneta Spa, Italy. Ημερομηνία 1ης κυκλοφορίας: 15.6.2007.
Γλώσσα πρωτοτύπου: αγγλικά
Τίτλος πρωτοτύπου: To the Lighthouse
ISBN 978-88-8371-279-1 (Πανόδετο) [Εξαντλημένο]
823.912
Haiku summary

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.88)
0.5 16
1 96
1.5 15
2 177
2.5 37
3 519
3.5 112
4 840
4.5 129
5 946

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Penguin Australia

3 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141183411, 0141194812, 0141198516

Urban Romantics

2 editions of this book were published by Urban Romantics.

Editions: 1909175676, 190917548X

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 194,945,974 books! | Top bar: Always visible