You are tasked with choosing a subject(s) that could be deemed an anniversary from the past, present and/or future and translating it into a piece of typographic wonderment.
This is my process.
part one,
dearest.
1941 Virginia to Leonard.
On March 28th, 1941, shortly after the dawn of
Having suffered with tremendous bouts of depression
the Second World War, author Virginia Woolf
her whole life, she had attempted suicide multiple
filled her overcoat pockets with rocks and walked
times throughout her illness. In wake of her final, and
into the River Ouse behind her house.
successful, attempt, she left a letter to her husband.
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. -V
I owe all the happiness of my life
to you.
One month after Woolf ’s death, The Sunday Times ran
She saw it an an insult to those left at home, to
an incredibly self-righteous evisceration by a woman
the people who were ‘hiding their agony of mind,
named Kathleen Hicks. Hicks stated that Woolf had no
suffering bravely and carrying on unselfishly’.
right to take her own life when men were giving their
She concludes by imploring people to rethink any
lives selflessly for the greater good of the country.
sympathy towards ‘this sort of “I cannot carry on”’.
To add further controversy to this extremely frustrating melting pot, Leonard was provoked to compile a rebuttal in an attempt to claw back some semblance of truth, for his and Virginia's sake.
I feel that I should not silently allow to remain on record that Virginia Woolf committed suicide because she could not face the “terrible times” through which all of us are going. For this is not true. The newspapers give her words as: “I feel I cannot go on any longer in these terrible times.” This is not what she wrote. The words which she wrote are: “I feel that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times.” She had had a mental breakdown about twenty-five years ago; the old symptoms began to return about three weeks before she took her life, and she felt that this time she would not recover. Like everyone else, she felt the general strain of the war, and the return of her illness was partly due to that strain. But the words of her letter and everything which she has ever said prove that she took her life, not because she could not “carry on,” but because she felt she was going mad again and would not this time recover.
However, despite being so clear in his response, Leonard's
Thus infuriatingly, not only was Woolf's original
letter too was taken out of context. Published under the
letter misquoted, but this famous ‘I cannot carry
already misleading headline I Cannot Carry On, the article
on’ is a phrase that had been entirely coined by the
continue to replace the phrase 'those terrible times'
media and existed only to present Woolf's suicide as
(Virginia’s reference to her first acute bout of depression)
an act of cowardice rather than a personal tragedy.
with 'these terrible times', changing the meaning entirely.
This continued in the press for over a year.
part two,
vanessa.
a domestic narrative in the public eye
‘Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by her
Artist France Lise McGurn spoke about her work spilling
Writings’ was an exhibition held at the Tate St
out and across boundaries akin to the way in which
Ives. All the work that was included used Woolf ’s
Woolf wrote. Additionally, the majority of her work is
writing as a way of structure, and her approach as
painted directly onto walls and floors, providing a clear
a creative woman as a means of methodology.
connection to Charleston and the Bloomsbury group.
Vanessa Bell
France Lise McGurn
This reserach allowed me to come to conclusion that
I also wanted to convey the diverging opinions of
I wanted to reflect on the contrast between the fluid,
the public and the press. To achieve this, I intended
stream-of-consciousness style of her writing, and the
to create a dynamic typographic piece that would
disjointed nature of her mind in her final years.
provoke the empathy that was missing in 1941.
part three,
the waves.
I am rooted, but I flow
To punctuate the moving type, I needed a suitable
It comes from the score was written for Wayne
soundscape to match. I decided to use a piece
McGregor’s ballet, Woolf Works. The ballet
of music by Max Richter called ‘Tuesday’ which
weaves the narrative of Virginia Woolf ’s
was directly inspired by Virginia Woolf ’s death,
life with her novels, beginning with Mrs
and her highly acclaimed book ‘The Waves’.
Dalloway and ending with The Waves.
I now, I then
Tuesday
The music is composed of a repetitive harmonic
This wave motif becomes faster and faster as it
frame which is gradually populated with
moves up and down the line, until the density
additional layers, creating a build up which seems
of waves increases and a new, wordless, soprano line is
inevitable. It begins with what seems like empty
introduced. Unlike the wave like sounds, this is more of a
space, except for a single note which moves up
sigh; a falling line which eventually submerged under and
and down to create the illusion of a wave.
among the waves. This is the voice of Virginia Woolf.
Accompanying the music is the only known recording of
As she speaks, the words flash up onto the screen until
Woolf ’s voice. It is an article about the meaning of words
she begins to discuss the notion that it is natural for
and how they live in our society, discussing the very
words to change. At this point the words on the screen
problems which clouded the judgment of her suicide.
stop correlating with the narration in the background.
Words are highly sensitive, easily made self-conscious. They do not like to have their purity or their impurity discussed. If you start a Society for Pure English, they will show their resentment by starting another for impure English – hence the unnatural violence of much modern speech; it is a protest against the puritans. They are highly democratic, too; they believe that one word is as good as another; uneducated words are as good as educated words, uncultivated words as cultivated words, there are no ranks or titles in their society. Nor do they like being lifted out on the point of a pen and examined separately. They hang together, in sentences, in paragraphs, sometimes for whole pages at a time. They hate being useful; they hate making money; they hate being lectured about in public. In short, they hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change. Perhaps that is their most striking peculiarity – their need of change. It is because the truth they try to catch is many-sided, and they convey it by being themselves many-sided, flashing this way, then that. Thus they mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to the next. And it is because of this complexity that they survive.
As you begin to read the suicide note, it is clear to see that Woolf ’s truth has changed in the public eye.
part four,
sink and settle.
In response to France-Lise’s comment on using
As the reading goes on, the water moves more and more
Woolf ’s writing as a methodology, I wanted to
rapidly, making it harder to read the intended message.
use water - a trope that featured in almost all of Woolf ’s writing- as a medium that would physically distort the narrative I was trying to portray.
there was no freedom in life,
and there was certainly none in death.