Street Haunting: A London Adventure;Including the Essay 'Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car'

Product Information

Finally, we have the shortest essay, The Death of the Moth. Watching a moth beat against a window on a beautiful day, the narrator is moved to pity for the insignificant life before her, and then by the insignificant death. The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We're

The next story, Lappin and Lapinova, may be the most traditional/accessible of the collection, but it's also the most subversive. A newlywed has a difficult time adjusting to life as a wife - until she invents a fantasy world for the couple to inhabit. This is a distinctly feminist story with layers of depth, and yet it is also universal and understandable without analysis. It's currently one of my favorite short stories in this or any other collection. My two favorite stories, Solid Objects and Lappin and Lapinova, explore characters who try to escape this cycle. John simply drops out of the political rat race, choosing to explore a hobby that gives him pleasure. Rosalind constructs a false world to cope with the cage of marriage. Neither option works. Both characters find themselves cut off from others, alienated from friends and family. They have forfeited their futures in the attempt to thwart death, much like the moth who rallies valiantly at the window but finds himself overcome at last by the "oncoming doom." Lopate, Phillip. The Art of the Personal Essay : an Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.

Street Haunting Essay Summary By Virginia Woolf-Through her lyrical prose, Woolf captures the essence of the city, painting vivid pictures of its streets, shops, and foggy atmospheres. She intertwines her observations with imaginative musings on the lives of the people she encounters, delving into their thoughts and emotions. In doing so, she emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals and the endless stories that unfold in an urban landscape. The narrator explores this imaginative act of dipping in and out of people’s minds as they move through the city’s wintry, twilight streets. Woolf reflects on the absurdity of it all. Nature created man. Did nature intend for man to be the spectator or the walker? Which is his true identity? Does an occupation define a person, or can wandering “mystic” be just as valid of a life? The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird’s, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd. For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer, it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions.” –Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863

A short essay about Virginia Woolf walking through the city, and observing the people and buildings around her. She reflects on the nature of the city and the human experience. She muses on the ways in which the city shapes and influences its inhabitants, and how the experiences of one person can be vastly different from those of another, even when living in the same city. Virginia Woolf is now recognized as a major twentieth-century author, a great novelist and essayist and a key figure in literary history as a feminist and a modernist. Born in 1882, she was the daughter of the editor and critic Leslie Stephen, and suffered a traumatic adolescence after the deaths of her mother, in 1895, and her step-sister Stella, in 1897, leaving her subject to breakdowns for the rest of her life. Her father died in 1904 and two years later her favourite brother Thoby died suddenly of typhoid. Through the use of stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, Woolf provides insights into the thoughts and emotions of her characters, exposing the inner lives that often go unnoticed. “Mrs. Dalloway” is considered a groundbreaking work of modernist literature for its innovative approach to storytelling and its exploration of themes such as identity, time, and the impact of societal norms on individuals. It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure - mysterious, unknown, useless as it is - is enough.”That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 2006. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. https://www-proquest-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/encyclopedias-reference-works/baudelaire-charles-1821-1867/docview/2137915067/se-2?accountid=14553. Woolf begins "Street Haunting" by positing that sometimes we can say we need to buy a pencil as an excuse for wandering the streets of London. According to Woolf, the best time to travel through the city is during the evening in winter. Once outside, people are able to shed the contents of the self and all the memories associated with the individual. On the street and outside the home, "all that vanishes" (3), and we can travel through London as a detached entity that does not look at anything too deeply. We can admire the bustling life around us as long as we do not stop to contemplate the individuals who compose it. If we start to speculate about the personal lives of those we encounter, "we are in danger of diffing deeper than the eye approves" (5). Instead, Woolf argues, we must obey the eye instead of the mind, though it is inevitable that we will fall into contemplation eventually, asking questions like, "what is it like to be a dwarf?" (6). Farsi prendere per mano da Virginia Woolf e seguirla - quando si riesce - nel mondo della letteratura, passando da Jane Austen ai problemi derivanti dal leggere gli autori russi in traduzione, imparando Come dobbiamo leggere un libro e riflettendo sullo sviluppo del romanzo negli Stati Uniti, oppure passeggiando per le strade di Londra alla ricerca di una matita e della visione di scorci di vita cittadina, è un piacere enorme. L'acutezza del pensiero e della visione dell'Autrice è fenomenale, e lo stile è magistrale. Purtroppo, ma la colpa è del lettore, non sempre si riesce a seguirla, soprattutto perché non si conoscono gli autori e i testi di cui parla. La stella mancante è imputabile al procurato senso di ignoranza e conseguente imbarazzo. Lauren Elkin, A Tribute to Female Flâneurs: the women who reclaimed our city streets (Guardian, 2016) https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets Today, we’ve highlighted a few works in the library’s collection, both historical and contemporary that explore this lesser-known image of the flâneur in literature. Why not be transported somewhere new today?Street Haunting: A London Adventure” is a beautifully crafted essay by Virginia Woolf that delves into the experience of venturing into the streets of London. Woolf’s exploration of urban solitude, the power of observation, and the subjective nature of human perception captivates readers and encourages them to reflect on their own experiences in bustling city environments. Rebecca Solnit, The Solitary Stroller and The City, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Penguin: 2001) The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful'. In such conditions, Virginia Woolf takes to London's streets in search of a pencil. The account of her journey - the people, the places, the pleasure - soon becomes one of the great paeans to city life. This collection also includes other wonderful essays, such as 'How Should One Read a Book?' and 'The Sun and the Fish'. From prime ministers to the homeless, the narrator examines the city’s inhabitants and the spaces they occupy. ‘What greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality’, the narrator asks, to feel ‘that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others’. The essay is also notable for its exploration of the relationship between the inner world of the individual and the outer world of the city. Woolf suggests that the physical environment can have a profound impact on the inner lives of individuals, and that the city can serve as a source of inspiration and creative energy for writers and artists.

Raccolta di saggi, di argomento prevalentemente letterario, tratti dai due Common Reader, da The Death of the Moth e da The Moment, con come corollario il celebre Una stanza tutta per sé.

SparkNotes—the stress-free way to a better GPA

Many of the books that explore the figure of the flâneur traverse the line between fiction and memoir, and Tapei is no exception. Based on the author’s own life, Tapei is an undeniably modern take on the figure of the flâneur—providing an unvarnished portrait of the way we live and love today. The novel follows Paul from Manhattan to Taipei, Taiwan as he navigates his artistic ambitions alongside his cultural heritage. As relationships bloom and fail, the novel’s characters devote much of their time to drugs and screens, numbing agents that distract from the by turns bleak and absurd realities of modern life. While opinions about Tao Lin and his work vary, Taipei is undeniably effective in distilling the tedium, the excitement, and the uncertainty of being alive, young, on the fringes in America. She reflects on a time that she bought a piece of china and how it marked a memory for her in Italy. Items throughout one’s home help record experiences and define a person. This all vanishes once a person leaves their home and joins the masses on the streets. Woolf takes in the sights and sounds of London winter, falling leaves, and palely lit streets. She imagines the life of an office worker, thumbing through papers and answering correspondences. Woolf decides that she needs to take an excursion through the streets of London with the pretext of needing a pencil. It’s really just an excuse to escape her room and solitude. The ideal time for a walk in London is in the winter evening. There’s no heat to hide from in the shade, and one can take their time ambling along. By joining the vast multitude of pedestrians, one becomes anonymous.