The Waves

 

Virginia Woolf's book 'The Waves' is not the first stream of consciousness book that I have read. Hjalmar Söderberg’s book, ‘Dr. Glas' and 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner are great examples of this genre. Having read 'The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf, I thought I knew what my experience would be in reading 'The Waves.'

During this reading experience it was as if I had a veil over my eyes. Nothing seemed to be clear. I found myself suddenly pondering past events in my life. It was as if by reading 'The Waves' I had entered my unconscious, and things became unveiled. It isn’t easy to describe because it has been unlike any reading experience I have had before. 

After a death in the book, the language Woolf used to describe grief is poetic and mystical:

"I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the

 incomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people go

 to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among

 phrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty

 enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all,

 yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so

 unspeakably lonely."

Louise Glück, in her poem, 'Averno' wrote about the veil. 

'.. and now the mortal spirit 

seeking so openly, so fearlessly---

To raise the veil,

To see what you're saying goodbye to.

The poem is not grieving the loss of a loved one. Instead, the desire is to raise the veil to understand what life was. What had been kept hidden? She desires to know what was behind the veil before she dies.

 

Julian of Norwich also uses the metaphor of the veil. She acknowledges this same veil

that Glück desires to remove before death: 'We may have fleeting glimpses of the cosmic design and see that it is good. But then the veil drops again and we forget.' Does the veil protect us from what we cannot yet see or do we get busy with life and fail to see what is before us? 

 

After Moses spent time with God in Exodus, God put a veil over his 'shining' face to protect the people. Only when he was in the presence of God was the veil removed. This veil leads the reader to wonder if the people were not ready to see the truth. God protected them.

 

In my life, I often do not see clearly. Reading has caused me to question, wonder, probe, and see, but not yet fully. At times the veil has dropped as Julian of Norwich suggests. My different reading groups have helped me on this journey of 'raising the veil.' For them I am grateful!

Image of Lake Superior

Currently Reading:

• Don Quixote (1605) by Cervantes
• Psalm (5th Century Bc) by King David and Solomon
• Averno (2006) by Louise Glück
• Kajsa Kavat (1950) by Astrid Lindgren
• The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf

Completed:

• The Correspondence (2017) by J.D. Daniels
• What Unites Us (2017) by Dan Rather
• Proverbs (8th Century BC) by King Solomon

Journey of the Heart

The Little Prince (Lille Prinsen) in Antoine De Saint-Exupéry's children's book leaves his planet because he does not feel loved. He sets off on a journey; life must be better elsewhere. As he travels planet to planet, he discovers that adults get caught up in what they think they must do. They do not really see where they are; they do not really live. He is disappointed by what he finds. The most beautiful lesson he learns from the fox goes right to the heart of the book. 

’Det viktigast går inte att uppfatta med ögonen’ 

’Men ögonen är blinda. Man måste söka med hjärtat.’ 

(I read the book in Swedish, something I am pretty proud of!) He realizes that to really find life, he must do it through the heart.  

 

Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift, is another type of journey. Swift published Gulliver's Travels in 1726. His satirical account exposes England by pulling back the curtain of what the society was and how it worked. He pulls back the curtain by using outrageous language and stories. Swift's accounts of Gulliver's travels to various unknown places give him a tool to describe societies, governments, customs, and values. In each of his travels, Gulliver seems to find the perfect place, yet he is dissatisfied by the end of his stay. Until the last chapter. 

Little Prince discovered that he could only find life through his heart. For Gulliver, life could only be found by reason. Gulliver discovered that reason makes us human, and without reason, what are we? (You will find out in the last chapter!) He states:

'Reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature.'

'Because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.' 

It is striking that Gulliver learned his lessons the same way that Little Prince learned his lessons, through the heart. Gulliver discovered through the relationships that he developed in his travels other ways of doing, being, and thinking. Reason is what makes us human, and we learn this through the heart.

Living in Sweden has made this lesson poignant for me. Settling into a place completely different from what I have known has changed me in a manner that traveling and reading could not. There are times I crave the safety of the surroundings of what I know. One day as I was reflecting on this, I wrote:

                                     

 Looking out the window,

     Seeing a city,

     One I don't know,

     Language unrecognizable,

     Maybe the people too.

    

Sitting from a distance,

    Imagining it to be the same,

    Entering today with my protection,

    Vulnerable, unknown.

    Walking through it, not in it.

Somedays I would rather look out the window.

When my book club, Reading i Sverige, first started, I was amazed at what I discovered. I have been in book clubs before, with Americans. Now I was hearing ideas and thoughts different from mine or my American friends. These were from my new friends, who came from different countries. As I listened, my own small world was expanding beyond what I could have imagined. Now I take these experiences for granted, for I understand that I am on a journey with my heart. 

These lines from Louise Glück's poem 'Parable of the Dove' are encouraging to me:

            So it is true after all, not merely a rule of art;
                Change your form and you will change your nature,
                And time does this for us.

The reviews are in the February link above.
 
February Books:
·       Hexaëmeron (370 AD) by Saint Basil of Caesarea
·       The Midnight Library (2020) by Matt Haig
·       Exodus (6th century BCE) tradition ascribes Moses as the author
·       Job (6th century BCE) tradition ascribes Moses as the author
·       Breath (2020) by James Nestor
·       Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
·       Lille Prinsen (1942) Antoin De Saint-Exupéry 

           Translated to Swedish by Bengt Samuelson
·       Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
·       Beowulf (6th century) translated by J.R.R. Tolkein

Audio:

·           Ribbons of Scarlet: A Novel of the French Revolution’s Women (2019)

         by Kate Quinn, Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, E. Knight, Sophie Perinot, Heather Webb, 

         Allison Pataki (forward)

 

Grounding

Louise Glück, the 2020 Nobel prize-winning poet, writes in her poem, From a Journal, 'And I feel, sometimes, part of something, very great, wholly profound and sweeping.' That line represents much of what I read this January. For a Christmas gift, my parents sent me Prairie in Her Heart by Barbara Witteman. The book is about women who homesteaded in my home state of North Dakota in the late 1800s. This book hearkened me back to my grandparents' stories, born in 1911 in North Dakota. It reminded me of my history. The book Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger is not the type of book I like, and I am not sure why I purchased it, but I did. The book is a murder mystery set in southern Minnesota. The author tells, down to the minute detail, about being a child in the '60s, drinking Kool-Aid and Tang, eating Jell-O salads, and riding banana seat bikes. Every time he mentioned one of these '60's cultural treasures, it brought memories of places, people, events, and ordinary life. Each one of us has our unique storyline, a story that nobody else has. When I recognize it and become aware of how it impacts me every day, it gives me strength. When I see the faces and remember the stories of my history as I navigate my everyday problems, I know I belong. I understand I am apart of something 'wholly profound and sweeping.' I am anchored. 

The books I have read this month have reminded me of my grounding and my country's history. During January, as an American, I have felt a deep sadness to witness the division in my country and the tearing apart of families. The book Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster tells of the terrible copper mine disaster in 1917 in Butte, Montana. This book caught my attention because I have driven by this vast mine many, many times. In reading the historical account of this disaster, I read about conspiracy theories, stolen elections, distrust of the media, and distrust of authorities. I am discovering that the United States was founded on these things, too. To understand where we are going, we must know where we have been. The issues and struggles of today are similar to those in the past. What anchors us as a country? Thomas Hobbes states in Leviathan, 'that a kingdom divided in itself cannot stand.' 

Dostoyevsky unveils in Crime and Punishment a quality of being human, 'we need to see them as good, trusting, so that is how we see them. Slowly, slowly reality creeps into our vision. We think we are disappointed, hurt by the other. In truth, it is ourselves.' I have discovered that I need to see people for who I need them to be, not for who they are. The truth of reality is not on the other person; it is on me. As Terry Eagleton puts forth in his lectures at Yale, which became a book, 'is not reason in the end what is most fundamental about us?'. When reality seems too painful to face, it drifts, changing shape into something more comfortable, we think, to absorb. This drifting is mine to set right. For, I am anchored. As Psalm 130 says,' Hope is in the Lord.'

Books finished in January
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Book of Psalm by David
Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate 

by Terry Eagleton
The Seven Ages by Louise Glück
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
Prairie in Her Heart by Barbara Witteman
Audio:
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: 

The Battle that Shaped America’s Destiny by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger
Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster by Michael Pun