It is Woolf’s humour that strikes me most forcibly in the first volume of The Common Reader; not the solemnity later attached to her name.
Writing of John Evelyn: “Ignorant, yet justly confident… Evelyn dabbled in all the arts and sciences, ran about the continent for ten years, gazed with unflagging gusto upon hairy women and rational dogs.”
Of Margaret Cavendish: “We seem to hear her, as the thoughts boil and bubble, calling to John, who sat with a pen in his hand next door, to come quick, ‘John, John, I conceive!'”
Even in her severities, the wit glimmers. “The second-rate works of a great writer are worth reading,” Woolf writes, “because they offer the best criticism of his masterpieces.” And then, with the full weight of her attention: “Literature is stern. It is no use being charming, virtuous, or even learned and brilliant into the bargain, unless… you know how to write.”
Stern, yes. But the sternness is joyful. One hears it in the rhythm of her sentences: the pleasure she takes in precision, even when the precision cuts.
>Yes, I remember reading Woolf's comments on Ulysses and kissing the pages as if they were her very feet! Nothing better than masters on masters… Cheers, K
>Kevin – I've yet to find any opinions Joyce voiced of Woolf. To add to the masters on masters theme, Eliot tried very hard to change Woolf's opinion of Ulysses but she remained intransigent.