WHAT TIME IS IT? (Mrs. D pt 2)
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The leaden circles dissolved in the air… my leaden truths seem to dissolve along with the time within this text!
I feel a change coming about in the air. I do not mind saying what I feel as I used to. Those who understand what I mean will know.
So little has happened… So little, you know, but there’s only forty pages or so left of the novel. So much has happened. Oh dear. My mind is exhausted – I must admit, one must be honest – this work of art has taken me to the point of exhaustion. Here I am running, one foot in the present, almost tasting the future, but then, out of nowhere a sound, a sight, a memory catapults me back into the past!
I would be a skeptic, those who know me would know I would typically sigh such art aside, with a laugh and the common, “time travel doesn’t exist.” Woolf, however, has stirred something within me. This concrete knowledge, this universal, ultimate truth, — Time. What of it? What if the mere sound from the tower dissolves? What are we left with then?
I’m sure there would have been a time where my bones would have shuddered to have such a thought… but now… I feel… inspired, you know? I realize, knowing that I know not the answer, makes me know more than those who think they do know! By Jove… Have I gone mad?
Looking back at the text, I could not help but be in awe from all of the brief connections I could make from other texts we’ve read in class.
• pg. 26: “Horror! Horror! She wanted to cry”
o Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
• pg. 28: “how moments like this are buds on the tree of life”
o Did this go on to inspire e.e.’s I carry your heart (1952)?
• pg. 36: “….plunged into the moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings, seeing the glass, the dressing table, and all the other bottles afresh, college the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass),…”
o Lady of Shalott, Tennyson
• pg.76: “To see your own sister killed by a falling tree…”
o D.H. Lawrence’s The Fox
Just a few connections I’ve made thus far—I’m sure there are many more that I’ve missed. If anyone has made any more, be a chap and let me know!