To the Lighthouse. By Virginia Woolf. London: The Hogarth Press. Pp.320. 7s. 6d.
One hopes not to fumble unforgivably in dealing with a book so fine in workmanship as Mrs. Woolf╒s, so delicate in such intentions as we have divined. The background in Skye, with the natives negligible, the canvas being peopled by the Ramsay family and their visitors, a sophisticated and cultivated set. But the subtle lonely land and sea scape counts; for it isolates them, giving them more significance, perhaps, than might be their due were they merely characters in a story. They have another use. The book is a study of sensitives by sensitivists. Minds are opened ╤ especially Mrs. Ramsay╒s and the plain spinster Lily Briscoe╒s ╤ for us to watch the hints, impressions, reflections, flashes from other minds and beings, now dancing up and down like a swarm of gnats, again for a moment fixed and coloured spectrum-wise before the final rapid blend of sympathetic comprehension. Thus Mr. Ramsay, the vain egotist, albeit pathetic and of a fiery un-worldliness, we know chiefly through the brilliant intuitions of his beautiful, clear-souled, and indulgent wife, a non-intellectual; and her we are vividly aware of mainly through the partial intuitions of devoted friends, who helplessly see her victim yet content. But Lily, unlucky in life and as an artist, is the most gifted with this uncanny power. She has the compensation, if it be one, that her mind is all alive with human experiences, enlightenments, and humours ╤ that she owns her world if she cannot bend it to her will or fantasy. As we look at the party grouped friendliwise in their summer quarters, though humour is playing about them lightly all the time, we receive an impression of the intense loneliness of each.
There may be more than one symbolic meaning attached to the lighthouse of the title ╤ and of the opening and closing incidents. Is it the isolated watching mind? Is it the thing remote, so passionately desired, which turns to nothingness when we are forced to pursue it by the arrogant will of another? A deep and reticent homage to beauty speaks under the recorded irritations and frustrations of the passing day; while an austere resignation follows hard on natural yearnings after the permanent and the perfect, for ╥our penitence deserves a glimpse only, and our toil respite only.╙
