The idea of divine inspiration in V.

Woolfs novel To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is considered V. Woolfs most accomplished work. Daughter of Sir Leslie Steven, an author himself, she is considered by some the most important of English novelists , a tireless experimenter in whose hands the novel turned to become something different. Some of her most important fictional narrative works are: Night and Day(1919), Jacobs Room( 1922), Mrs. Dalloway ( 1925), To the Lighthouse ( 1927), Orlando( 1928), The Waves ( 1931), and The years(1937). To the Lighthouse, published in 1927 is considered V. Woolfs masterpiece and also an autobiographical work. She succeeded in combining recollections of her mother, her father and her childhood with her poetic technique and the final result was the reconciliation between life and art. Frank Bradbrook said that the themes of the novel are those of Shakespeares sonnets: time, beauty and the survival of beauty through the means of art which never dies. Writing for V. Woolf is a kind of refuge or an antidote for madness, through writing she evinces the existence of another personality and the value of feelings and emotions. ( In her diary she redefines the concept of personality in terms of feeling and emotion). With Woolf the concept of value is related to an inner world, to consciousness and to intuition, a quality belonging especially to women. She has a feminine consciousness which perceives reality in terms of intuition. In her novels consciousness flows, not only backward and forward in time and space, from this place tot that, but among and above the characters, who often share a strange intuitive relation to some common symbols: the lighthouse, the waves, etc. Virginias sense of significance depends on her own sensibility because to her the whole reality of things is annihilated, materiality disappears and everything is reflected in the mind, (as in Platos rationalism) the intelligible world ( Kosmos noetos), the world of the eternal truth as Plato calls it which is represented by God. Plato made imitation the general principle of art; dancing, music are regarded as imitative arts. What V. Woolf conveys in her novels is not so much the object perceived, but the reaction of the mind 1

faced to it ( Platos golden forms). There is a lot of feeling in her work, which Virginia considers to be: a) a sort of perception in terms of intuition ( which is feminine) b) a sort of perception in terms of intellect ( which is masculine) Aristotle adopted the same idea, making a distinction between the sensible world ( physics ) and the unchangeable world of intelect, of Ideas ( metaphysics), between which is the same relationship as that between a copy and its original, the light and its reflection. Plato was with the metaphysics, with what is beyond things, and at the back of it there is the idea of divinity. Man does not come from nature creation ( the monkey), but hes the creation of God. On the contrary, Aristotle believed in the physis while Plato was an idealist. Critics in a traditional society called Virginias philosophy kitchen table philosophy because they said it derived in To the Lighthouse from her impossibility to imagine life as an abstract notion, but she proved through her works, essence ( Platos world of ideas) relies in appearance ( Platos sensitive world of real things Kosmos aisthetos), in what seems trivial or everyday life in her universe. Her novels are not only based on the internal component ( the mind ), but also on the external component ( the things outside the mind the real world), where there are seeds of conflicts, events, acts, gestures, reactions. The projection of the mind into the materiality of things makes them aquire souls and human existence. But because value relies only in the inner world, and the external level expectations are never fulfilled, chaos is suggested. Plato too, considers that the external world , the sensitive world is a pale copy of the world of ideas, that is, Virginias world of mind. The sensitive world is changeable, insecure, unstable while the world of ideas ia a stable knowledge, its the truth that doesnt lie in sensations, but in notions. Ideas exist only in the human spirit. They turn into a stable real existence in comparison to which the sensitive world and the sensation are only fancy and almost nonexistence. Ideas are the ultra- sensitive essence of things, the prototype of the sensitive world, the eternal copy of the world of change. This is Platos world of ideas versus the sensitive world. He states that there are as many ultra-sensitive ideas as there are things. First, Plato admitted ideas about things made by man ( bed, chair), then he reduced the number of ideas to those representing natural things, excluding the artificial ones. Ideas are also principles of moral actions. Between the world of eternal ideas and the sensitive world there is a tight relation of communication, but this presence of ideas explaining the 2

shadow of peoples existence, doesnt reach the unity and indestructibility of eternal ideas. So, according to Plato, the mind controls external reality. Virginia, too, has a great intuition that nothing outside the mind can exist. The vision of the novel To the Lighthouse is an optimistic one. Out of the multiple oscillations between life and death, joy and sorrow, light and dark, ebb and the flow of the sea, there is an expressed belief in the survival of the human spirit. Because it is only the human spirit that contains the multitude of ideas objects of real knowledge, according to Platos philosophy. In To the Lighthouse, Woolf points out that the two women ( Mrs. Ramsay and Lily), each in her own way are artists. Both of them are beautiful and, in Platos opinion, a beautiful soul is the symbol of divine unseen beauty. In front of this kind of beauty we have the feeling of immortality and ecstasy we get out of love, a sign that we are in front of eternal reality or in front of the golden forms. To the Lighthouse has a symbolic design, which gives coherence to the form of this abstract novel. Each and everyone of its sections has a significant meaning: The Widow symbolizes integration. The first and the third sections of To the Lighthouse concentrate on the subjective life of the mind; the second creates a style not so much objective by bringing objects themselves to life. The second part is associated with a nightmare which deepens the reader in terror. The unconscious level, including the war, can be interpreted as a testament or as a warning. The first chapter is pervaded by light when Mrs. Ramsay is alive and by far the greatest personality of her family, even though she may be a domestic wife. The middle section deals with the life of things, which Mrs. Ramsay used to love or touch. There is a growth of chaos at the material level and this section is pervaded by darkness. Mrs. Ramsay is physically dead but metaphorically, she is still alive as if she were a presence among her family going every day to the lighthouse. Her memory is so vivid with Lily Briscoe because she is painting Mrs. Ramsay in her picture. The lighthouse suggests rebirth. The idea of rebirth is also suggested by violets and daffodils, which reappear every year. The sea has the meaning of darkness and at the same time the waves which are familiar suppose a reiterative cycle and, of course, rebirth. The wave, up to a certain point, represents a progress, by the way, it is formed, it reaches a climax and then it curves down upon itself to break and to return to the whole mass of water. In Platos philosophy, we also found the theme of immortality of the soul. Peoples soul is immortal because it preexists before their birth and it will have an 3

existence beyond their death. Immortality is a natural consequence of the existence of ideas. The soul nourishes itself from the idea of life in such a manner that it can be mixed up with it, so the soul is life. The soul can never die, the wise mans life on Earth is only a preparation for the endless life beyond death. The light-dark-light pattern of the novel resembles with the beam from the lighthouse, which functions centrally in the novel, both as a literal place and as a symbol. The novel begins with a desire to visit the lighthouse and concludes with the journey to it, so the lighthouse is bound up with the journey theme of the novel. There is a paradox of solitude and identity that characterizes all of Woolfs characters. Physical descriptions are almost absent. Identity is conferred mostly by giving the name, sometimes the age. Mrs. Ramsay is the central character of this novel, being both a symbol and an individual. She is the mother of eight children, a beautiful woman who finds a great pleasure in matchmaking, always trying to build bridges between people, practical nurse and noble hostess. Mr. Ramsay is a different person from his wife, representing a kind of embodiment of the masculine principle: self-centred, objective, and melodramatic and in constant need for love. Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay represent for the author two opposing approaches to life and authority. He is the cynical realist while she has warmth and intuitive power to understand life and people. The limitation and failure of Mr. Ramsay are reflected in the fact that he fragments knowledge in an alphabetic arrangement, lacking the wisdom of an integrated view of life. According to Plato, if an idea is fragmented into many things, it looses its unity or it may keep its unity but remains isolated of the sensitive things, whose existence cannot be understood. So, Mr. Ramsays approach of life is not the right one. When interpreting V. Woolfs work the reader is asked to focus on the symbols used: the wave, the lighthouse, the drop, the matches struck in the dark, striking clocks. All these symbols lead the reader towards the main themes of her work: life, death, the passing of time, and also life beyond death either through art( Lilys Briscoes paintings) or through memories ( Mrs. Ramsays memories). The meaning of symbols in To the Lighthouse is directly related to V. Woolfs concepts of human values and reality. She considered that the most important thing about any person is his quest for the meaning of life and for identification. Her characters are always searching for reality and they achieve their moments of perfection and insight by 4

means of psychic itself. Therefore, a perfect world is gained only with the help of the mind, of the human spirit, of ideas. The three parts of the novel are reproducing a lighthouse beam with its long flash of light, then an interval of darkness, and finally a short flash. Last, but not least, the lighthouse stands for two opposing attitudes towards life, those of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. The lighthouse symbolism has a private meaning to each character in the novel. It represents first of all a quest for values, which are mirrored both in Lilys art and Mrs. Ramsay effort to create order out of disorder and chaos. Reaching the lighthouse seems to signify the establishment of warm, personal relationship with other people. We can associate Mrs. Ramsay with Platos supreme Idea of Good. The idea of Good is considered the idea of ideas, the universal principle, because the universe is orderly and harmonious, and harmony supposes justice: we cannot view the harmony of the world without the ideas from which comes the order and the justice of the world the Idea of Good. This Idea of Good is in fact God, the creator of the world. God is in fact the golden form, which has no substance. It is God who makes the substance, gets a form thanks to motion. God is primum movesis (1) of the world, he does not create the world which is eternal, but he only organizes it. God is immobile, he moves the world indirectly through the sympathy that he has upon it. The world is attracted to God by the feeling of love. The sea is a frequent symbol in V. Woolfs novels and stands for the external flux-flow of time and life. It changes often; sometimes it has a shooting coming influence, and other times, a ruthless destructive power. The sea surrounds the island where the story unfolds and it surrounds the lighthouse. The idea of time seems to be the obsession of the 20th century writers. In Woolfs works, time external is given versus time internal or value versus non-value, chaos versus meaning. Life seems to be engulled into external event, but life passing is obsessive. Time changes everything, only art and soul win the battle with time. Therefore, Mrs. Ramsay stays alive through her soul and through Lilys painting in which she appears. Time as value or intensity of living takes two divergent directions: a) external flow of the clocks ( sometimes the strokes of Big Ben); b) time as lived internally which has value and is important. From this classification of time we can go on and find 2 types of death: a) physical death by which a hero breathing and which is totally unimportant; 5

b) a metaphysical death by which a hero may go on breathing but he/she is emotionally dead and this is extremely important. The whole novel is a reiterative document from facts to language. The characters Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay the representatives of male and female are associated, the former with an analytic rationalist mind and the latter with an intuitive, holistic, creative, imaginative mind. This difference determines two ways of reaching the lighthouse in the third section: Mr. Ramsay, who is anchored in contingency goes to the lighthouse accompanied by his children while Mrs. Ramsay, who is dead, reaches the lighthouse from a spiritual point of view her memory is transcendent and she remains in Lilys painting as a sitter and as a form of inspiration. According to the imitative theory, art is an imitation of something. Because imitation now has pejorative associations, it is well to think mimesis (theory of imitation) not only imitation, but re-creation (2) or representations (3). The imitative instinct, of course, is not the artists private possession. This natural tendency to imitate is combined with a tendency towards rhythm or pattern, and the result can be a work of art. Art is superior to history, because although history must stick to facts, art refines nature. The artist is a sort of greenhouse keeper, producing not the rose that grows wild, but the rose that has fulfilled all its potential, the rose that is more a rose that any wild rose. The artist, in short, does not imitate, the artist re-creates reality and presents it to us in a fashion in which we see its essence more clearly. Because the artists imitation is more than a copy of what is apparent to every eye. The imitation is in some measure a creation. It is imaginative and interpretive; it reflects a special view of reality. Lilys intuitive vision of truth symbolized by her ability to finish the painting is synonymous with harmonious relations between parents and children. As we can see, there are many symbols from Platos philosophy in Virginia Woolfs masterpiece To the Lighthouse, the writer opposing the immortal values of art to those changeable, perishable elements outside the human mind and soul.

Selective biography

1. Banta, Andrei English Romanian Dictionary, Teora Publishing House, Bucharest; 2. Barnet, Sylvan; Berman, Morton;Burton, William An Introduction to Literature, Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Little Brown ant Company, Boston, Toronto, 1985, p.3-5; 3. Florian, Mircea ndrumare n filozofie, Ed. Fundaiei, Bucureti, p. 73-87; 4. Platon Dialoguri, Editura pentru Literatur Universal, Bucureti, 1968, p. VII XXVI.

1. Florian, Mircea ndrumare n filozofie, Ed. Fundaiei, Bucureti, p. 73-87; 2. Barnet, Sylvan; Berman, Morton;Burton, William An Introduction to Literature, Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Little Brown ant Company, Boston, Toronto, 1985, p.3-5; 3. Idem 2