The Waves: The Virginia Woolf Library Authorized Edition

Schöne Ausgabe

Deceptive title. Not really about waves. 10/10

stupid that one has to write ! a minimum amount of words to give an evaluation... bloody silly, silly, silly!!!

The Wavesは、単語一つ一つの音にも神経を使った詩だ、ということが朗読を聴いても分かるのだが、この朗読は早口すぎるし、やや粗雑な感じがする。 また、六人のモノローグなのに、一人で全編を読むのは違和感を覚える。 たとえば、英語関係の資格試験のリスニング対策に、BGMとしてかける分には良いかもしれないが、朗読自体は聴いていて特に心地よい、というものではない。

I have been a devoted fan of Virginia Woolf since I was a teenager and first discovered the brilliance of her writing in "To The Lighthouse"... after which I devoured everything she had written, including her diaries and essays. There is nothing else like The Waves in the whole of English literature, before or since. The best summary of it I have ever heard was the author Jeanette Winterson's comment that it represented "a 200-page insult to mediocrity". Indeed it does. Six characters, followed from childhood to old age, narrating what they see, think and feel, always in the present tense. As with her other novels, Woolf's insights into the individual's inner realm of emotion and thought are keen and complex. But the true magic of the book lies in the writing and the way all this is expressed. The language is uniquely lyrical; Woolf's words almost paint pictures on the page. This is not to say that The Waves is for everyone. So try this simple test: pick it off the shelf in a bookstore and read the first dozen or so pages. You will likely have one of two reactions: either that it is extraordinary, magical prose poetry, or a less prosaic "Huh?" If you're in the latter category, don't read the rest... and if you're still curious about Woolf, start with To The Lighthouse or Mrs Dalloway, both of which are more conventional in their form (though Woolf's work can rarely be termed conventional). I return to this book every few years as I myself advance in age and can relate more directly to a different part of the characters' lives. The old dinner party question about which three or four books one would take to a desert island finds, for me, one of its answers here in this wonderful, unique novel (for the record, the others would be Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, some good trash - maybe James Clavell's "Shogun" - and an anthology of poetry of my own choosing).