AFTER READING "TO THE LIGHTHOUSE"

While I was studying English at Sussex University, I read Virginia’s Woolf’s novel “To The Lighthouse.” I’ve never been a fan of Woolf’s writing as I find it difficult to become interested in her characters. Woolf uses  many narrative devices that distance me, but I like challenges. 

So, to understand the novel better, I wrote a rhymed 12 stanza poem based on the book. It was a difficult task but it opened up corridors in my mind about what Woolf was trying to achieve. The novel focuses on the Ramsey family and their holiday with some friends on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. In essence, the story explores how the harshness of a Victorian father represses a family. How a boy’s simple request to his father to take them to a nearby lighthouse is only fulfilled ten years after Mrs. Ramsey, James' beloved mother, has died.

It's a difficult novel because the story is told in three sections through the changing perspectives of many different characters. Woolf was interested in exploring perception; in how what we see affects how we think. But for me, the novel also shows how loneliness forces Mrs. Ramsey to use numerous tactics to help her to cope with eight children and an unloving husband.  

 And how when she dies in “Time Passes”, her legacy is the one her son James reveres.

[This poem was published in Pandora’s Books: University of Sussex in 1997.]

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

1.

She was the reflection in his window pane:

A myopic beauty; a chatelaine;

A core of darkness in Poseidon's sphere,

Mother of myth and atmosphere;

Giver of dreams and flights of fancy

And all her life, a soliloquy.

                                  

                                   2.

What lay behind this splendid facade?

Rumours abounded, there was no regard

For truth in the invention of the tales:

A lover was discovered and thus impaled

On the syntax of her silence; his brains blown out

For unrequited love, no doubt.

                                   3.

‘Can we go tomorrow?’ the young child cried

Of course, my darling!' and then she sighed

As she looked at her husband; she knew at a glance

There’d be refusal; there’d be no chance

To recover this moment in the young boy's dreams:

A father - fossilized - without esteem.

                                   4.

Her simplicity fathomed what other falsified.

Dove-like, she alighted on the truth inside

The shell of people and won their hearts,

And the resonance of their souls became a part

Of her internal need for power:

She learned not only to love, but to devour.

                                   5.

Life presented her with patterns:

A strip of fifty years; a radiance;

Eight children and a core of darkness

In which to hide when the subtle abyss

Of Life and suffering became too great.

She swam in depths her husband could not infiltrate.

                                   6.

He was a failure, demanding sympathy:

She was his ‘spray’ of life; his reality.

This arid scimitar of a man

Penetrated her, until the span

Of her life folded itself up

Like a fan through his envelopment.

                                   7.

In the ‘thud of muffled gun-fire’

The family were allowed to retire

From the rigours of the war.

‘Silent apparitions’ explored

The perimeters of their scenery;

And Death only touched them verbally.

                                   8.

Outside the house, things wavered and vanished:

Inside, life was orderly and flourished

Under the aura of her mystery.

She was irresistible in her predatory

Need of people. Boeuf en Daube

Was the weapon she used to absorb.

                                   9.

Her fathomless world was hers alone;

Peace and solitude were the head-stones

Of her life there. She became compacted

Into the essence of things; the cataract

Of her vision was revealed: they would always go back

to this night; to this moon; to this matriarch.

                                   10.

She dies in ‘Time Passes’ in parenthesis,

The fusion of land and sea, an ellipsis

Of her world in its swaying mantle of silence,

Weaving itself to the lilting cadence

Of the crying of the bird; the shouting of the man;

The hooting of the ship - all pawns in her plan.

                                   11.

The sea was stretched like a silken thread

Across the bay, as the boat lead

The Ramsays towards the island.

If only their Father could understand

That here, one thought expanded like a leaf

Inflating the mind with an endless motif.

                                   12.

But no - he  must read and not see;

Tossing page after page and never being

The father they wanted...They were nearly there

At the lighthouse, ten years too late, and sharing

A moment again without him. It would always be,

Thought James, for the moments were hers, for eternity.