Thursday, July 28, 2011

Clangour of the Gong


But she stopped.  There was a smell of burning.  Could they have burned the Boeuf en Daube overboil?  she wondered, pray heaven not!  when the great clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of their own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and end on their washing-tables and dressing-tables, and the novels on the bed-tables, and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the dining-room for dinner.

-Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse

A more fleshly bit in To the Lighthouse, but when I was reading it last night, was completely struck by the beauty of it and kept reading it over and over.  Maybe I am just a fleshly person, but it's sometimes the simple things like getting ready or being in the privacy of your own room that I find the most beautiful.

Image: New York Public Library

3 comments:

Victoria Thorne said...

the words sound as tho they had just tumbled from the quietest brook and settled on the page to run you along and can you believe anyone could write like that?

thanks. xo. (wishes for a sweet remarkable august.)

Pamela Terry and Edward said...

No one, absolutely no one, writes like Virginia.

DM said...

VT- She has such a way about her...reading her makes me get that feeling like I'm falling in love or something. Can't describe it.

Pamela- You, my friend, are spot on.