Orlando: A Biography

Ascoltato in audiolibro con lettore Sandro Lombardi (buono e appassionato interprete.
Uno scritto piuttosto onirico, coi pregi e i difetti dei romanzi della Woolf. La prosa ariosa di cui è maestra a volte si contorce troppo, ma non perché non la sappia controllare: è proprio il testo che è talmente sognante e irreale che a volte, pur avendo una trama, pare avvolgersi fine a se stessa, senza aggiungere azioni utili allo sviluppo fattuale, incagliandosi invece in mille rivoli di percezioni, tangibili o sentimentali. Nei saggi l'ho ammirata, nei romanzi ha una maestria tutta sua nel descrivere l'ambiente esterno e interno dei protagonisti; in questo scritto è Orlando che viene per così dire vivisezione nei suoi sentimenti, a volte show more quasi in modo esagerato.
Nello stesso tempo però la Woolf non fa quello che io chiamo l'effetto Proust: non perdo mai il filo, riesco a seguirla nel ragionamento logico e poetico (mentre con Proust mi perdo inevitabilmente dopo tot paragrafi senza una frase principale identificabile). E l'ironia, i giudizi storici e letterari, l'acutezza psicologica sono quelli tipici di una grande artista.
La storia è nota: Orlando, protagonista maschile dell'età Elisabettiana, attraversa i secoli rimanendo giovane e soprattutto subendo una metamorfosi improvvisa da uomo a donna. Se ne descrivono non tanto i cambiamenti interni (Orlando dentro è sempre Orlando) ma quelli indotti dalla società. Insomma, se da uomo era stato cortigiano e ambasciatore e aveva amato senza troppi legami una donna di origine russa, da donna non ha più alcuna rilevanza politica, si limitano a invitarla nei salotti, tratta di letteratura in modo superficiale e pare non essere ritenuta all'altezza di scrivere, tanto che anche lei stessa alla fine deve imporsi di ricominciare a scrivere il poema a cui lavora lungo i secoli. Soprattutto, mentre la Donna pare che sappia per la mentalità corrente soltanto amare, Orlando si innamora molte volte ma alla fine per conoscere l'amore non può farlo liberamente: deve soggiacere al matrimonio e alla maternità. Queste due vicende però nella trama complessiva hanno una importanza relativa molto inferiore rispetto ad altre tematiche intime: il desiderio di fama, la nobiltà e la buona società, l'amore, la libertà, la natura che fa da contrappunto... Orlando non è una madre, non è una moglie se non marginalmente: appare come scrittrice, soprattutto. E quello desidera: scrivere e farsi conoscere, avere fama. Desiderio che poi apparirà la fine vano, perché quello che cercano gli uomini alle donne spesso non basta.
Il marito se ne va per inseguire i propri sogni e non torna più se non alla fine, com'è tipico dell'uomo borghese i cui affari si svolgono fuori da casa. Ma un rapporto a distanza viene accettato, come può venire accettata anche l'infedeltà; l'importante invece è che la donna "non pensi". L'ingegno, la scrittura sono monopolio maschile. In compenso, la donna riesce a dare una profondità particolare alle suggestioni che ricava dal suo essere rinchiusa nel proprio buco nero interno, come se fosse un occhio aperto sull'irrazionale.
Merita? È di sicuro un buon libro, ma in certe parti si percepisce un eccesso di solipsismo, un rallentamento estremo dell'azione, e le parole si avvitano troppo su loro stesse. Non è sicuramente un libro facile. Ma se si persevera un poco, il messaggio arriva, solo ci vuole pazienza: va digerito poco per volta, a volte sopportando il flusso di coscienza troppo lento, perché nascoste qua e là ci sono delle perle di concetti che rappresentano un pensiero estremamente attuale. Avremmo tanto bisogno di una Woolf oggi. show less

What a novel! What a writer!

This is my first time reading Woolf. I had the impression that reading her would be a dour "but important" slog and so had taken my sweet time getting around to reading her. But, whoa, this novel was flat-out an intellectual romp! Made more so because Woolf was a serious writer who, among other writers and artists at that time, wanted to inject the Arts with a new vigor to reflect the complexities of the 20th century.

Orlando is heavy and it is light. It is satire, magical realism, and philosophy.

It is a history and critique of English literature (including biographies; its title is, after all, Orlando: A Biography). It delightfully critiques literary critics too.

It's about poetry. And whole paragraphs and show more pages within it are poetry, written in prose. I adored those passages, especially in the latter half when Orlando's growth has reached its fever pitch. Is that an example of her stream-of-consciousness writing? I hope so! After a few unhappy experiences -- Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Joyce's impenetrable Ulysses -- I considered myself distinctly not a fan of the technique. Wonderful Woolf, please convert me.

Of course the novel is widely known as being not only gender but sexually fluid -- being done just ever so cleverly as to avoid being banned by the ridiculously real laws of the time (and to think there are those zealots, truly they are the dour ones, who would welcome those laws back in 2024!) -- but it is more than that. It is about nothing less than the search for the True Self beyond and outside the reaches of 400 years of society's ignorance. We all can understand we are more, much more than gender labels, right?

It is replete with love. Love of place, love of home, love of nature. And, perhaps the least important (to readers, not to Woolf) it is most famously described as a long love letter to Vita Sackville-West with whom Woolf had a love affair.

It can be read in so many ways. It should be read in so many ways. It is astonishing how much Woolf packed in deliberately, profoundly. When I think about its meaning, for me it can be summarized when Orlando begins to write her longings as "Life and a lover." Then a page later, it becomes, "Life, a lover."

All that, and more, is in this one delightful, romping, improbable, silly, serious, and entertaining novel. Wow you, Woolf.

(Is it normal for readers to cry at the end?) show less

I can't believe this book was published in 1928, almost 100 years ago! It is a fascinating classic, particularly in its views on gender and the roles assigned to women and men in our society. It feels very modern. I felt like it worked more as a discussion of that theme than as a fictional biography of Orlando. I cared more about those thoughts than about how Orlando's life progressed.

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”

“No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

“By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis show more the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.” show less

I'm so happy I reread this. This being: a literary fantasy, a literary joke, a hommage to writers, writing, and history; a feminist manifesto full of sarcasm, a meditation on gender and identity. Orlando is all of the above and more.

One of Virginia Woolf's most creative and lighthearted books is Orlando, a stunning fusion of historical fiction, fantasy, and biography. The novel, which spans more than three centuries, centers on Orlando, a young aristocrat in Elizabethan England who, midway through the narrative, mysteriously changes into a woman and survives into the 20th century with little sign of aging. Woolf uses wit and poetic genius to explore themes of gender, identity, time, and the nature of art through this premise.

Orlando is a 16-year-old poet and courtier in Queen Elizabeth I's court at the start of the book. His travels, romantic relationships, and literary endeavors lead him to, in a fantastical turn of events, awaken as a woman in the eighteenth show more century. From there, Orlando struggles with the limitations placed on women, negotiates changing social roles, and develops as a writer. The story is presented as a parody of a biography, complete with a lighthearted narrator who offers commentary on both the story and the writing process. The fluidity of Orlando's identity and the passage of time are reflected in the book's structure.

Woolf explores the performative nature of gender roles and the fluidity of identity through Orlando's gender transformation. Orlando enjoys freedom and privilege as a man; as a woman, she encounters limitations but also learns new things. Woolf's examination of gender feels remarkably contemporary, questioning social norms and binary ideas. The novel also explores the elasticity of time, as Woolf uses Orlando's long life to make observations about historical shifts from Victorian repression to the modern era to Renaissance exuberance. show less

Virginia Woolf described Orlando as ‘a writer’s holiday’ and you can tell she had fun writing it. It fizzes with playfully transgressive energy and subversive wit. The narrative voice, intoxicated and intoxicating, is deliciously insouciant and deliriously exuberant. It is frequently laugh-out-loud funny.

Orlando is (quite apart from all the other things it is or might be): a love letter to Vita Sackville-West and fantastical reimagining of her life and family history; the first trans novel in the English language; a sensuous and liberating dance to the music of historic and personal time; a ludic fusion of the factual and fictional which initiates post-modernism; an elegant demolition of Victorian patriarchal history and show more biography; a joyous celebration of all the people you are, have been and are yet to be. And it’s serious fun; the most fun you can have with your gender defining clothes on.

Are you afraid of Virginia Woolf? If so, meet Orlando: their polymorphous charm might just cure you of your phobia. show less

“Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”
As this centuries-spanning tale begins, Orlando is a passionate sixteen-year-old nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth I’s court. By the close, three centuries have passed, and he will have transformed into a thirty-six-year-old woman in the year 1928. Orlando’s journey is also an internal one—he is an impulsive poet who learns patience in matters of the heart, and a woman who knows what it is to be a man.

Virginia Woolf’s most unusual creation, this classic of feminist literature is a fantastical mock biography—a funny, exuberant romp through history that examines the true nature of love show more and gender identity. show less