Customer Reviews

Moments of Being

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People who have enjoyed Woolf's novels or diaries will surely find her essay "A Sketch of the Past" deeply moving and helpful in illuminating her other works. In "Sketch," the longest essay in this volume, Woolf recounts her earliest childhood memories--both beautiful (hearing the waves break on the shore at her family's summer home) and sinister (her stepbrother's unwelcome sexual advances when she was a small child). She develops a theory about memory and about transcendent experience in this essay. She discusses her powerful drive to reshape and write about the past: "I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives through from the start." In this essay Woolf proposes that in moments of ecstasy we have a meaningful vision of the world itself: "it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we--I mean all human beings--are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words, we are the music; we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock."

Virginia's genius is all over this volume, esp in A Sketch of the Past. From the first sensations of childhood (waves splashing against the shore) to the tragedy of the death of her mother and sister, it is the most revealing work of creativity ever written. You'll learn about her life, her work, and even how you might become a great writer. Examine the parallels with To the Lighthouse and you'll be amazed. Yes, this is how she come to be what she is; and her life and what she writes.

Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being is one of the great artifacts of literary modernism -- and it also possesses the virtue of being superbly written; few writers are of the caliber of Woolf when it comes to documenting the subtle nuances of human emotion and thought. Her voice is unwavering and clear; it is analytic and critical without every sacrificing its self-effacing quality and humility - and the clarity of its emotional tone. She handles the pain and loss in her life with a kind of imaginative double barreled shotgun: she destroys those that have inflicted pain on her, while exalting those that loved her. But as she hacks away at one and beatifies the other she always places both in very real, very human terms. There are also sparks of real humor here that cannot be overlooked, like the moment in the essay "Old Bloomsbury" when Lytton Strachey walks into the room and seeing a stain on Vanessa's white dressed pronounces "Semen?" and with one word ushers in the 20th centuries fixation with discussing sexual matters. We are to believe that one word carelessly said becomes the hallmark of an entire century.

This collection of autobiographical essays was not published until 1976. They do not supplement the Diaries, but stand on their own as indispensable to an understanding of the novels and thinking of this revolutionary writer. They articulate - as the Diaries do not in an explicit way - her philosophy, and this alone makes the book essentail reading for anyone interested in Woolf or, indeed, modern fiction. But these essays offer more than that. They detail sensitive and at times painful background memories of her death-ridden childhood and adolescence, of the physical abuse by her half-brother, Gerald Duckworth.
To read 'Moments of Being' is not an exercise in the prurient, but to gain an understanding of the inner life of an extraoprdinary artist and human being.

This book kept me reading from day to night. I really got caught up in the life of Virginia Woolf. It was a very realistic look at the life of the author in her own words. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

This biographical work is essential in understanding the author's greatest works. She discusses "scene making" and how it relates to memory. After reading this I plan to reread "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway."

I just finished reading another biography, and so I asked my husband to give me another book - a biography to read. She gave me Virginia Woolf - Moments of Being, edited by Jeanne Schulkind, A Harvest Book.

This is the first book I've ever read written by Virginia Woolf. I have always enjoyed reading biographies, and this book I very much enjoyed.

Reading the introduction was a bit difficult. So I skipped most of it, and started reading the first chapter. And once I started, I couldn't put the book down. I loved the way she wrote her memoirs. I loved her words; her writing voice. I usually couldn't understand metaphors, but the way Ms. Woolf used them were fascinating and understandable.

I plan to re-read this book, after I finish Mrs. Dalloway.