منتديات منابر ثقافية - اعظم 100 كتاب في التاريخ: ما سر هذه العظمة؟- دراسة بحثية

منتديات منابر ثقافية (http://www.mnaabr.com/vb/index.php)

سلمان رشدي

لم اطلع حتى الآن على مذكرات رشدي، لكني أتصور انه عاش حياة اقرب إلى اليتم إن لم يكن يتيما حقا، والمعروف ان بطل رواياته أطفال منتصف الليل يتيم وظن بعض المحللين انه اقرب إلى سيرة ذاتية لكنه نفى ذلك في إحدى المقابلات. على كل حال أن ظروف نشأة رشدي وطبيعة العائلة التي عاش فيها ثم إرساله إلى بريطانيا للدراسة وهو في سن الرابعة عشرة ومعاناته هناك من التمييز العنصري وصدمته في الهوية حيث أدرك انه ليس بريطاني وليس شخص مقبول حتى من البريطانيين ، ثم عودته بعد ذلك إلى باكستان بدلا الهند لان الأسرة انتقلت إلى هناك كل هذه الظروف تجعلني اقو لان رشدي إن لم يكن يتيم فعلي ، فهو يتيم اجتماعي بسبب المدرسة الداخلية في بلد آخر عاني منه التمييز العنصري ،وعلى الاقل يمكننا ان نقول انه شخص عاني كثيرا من ازمة في الهوية وكل ما كتبه وكل ما يقوله يعكس أزمة الهوية تلك فهو في تقدير شخص يصرخ لعل أحدا يعترف بوجوده.

مأزوم أزمة هوية.

Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891)

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing

موبي ديك
(بالإنجليزية: Moby Dick) هي رواية من تأليف الروائي الأمريكي هيرمان ملفيل أصدرت في 18 أكتوبر 1851، تدور حول صراع تراجيدي بين حوت وإنسان تتخذ من هذا الصراع الضاري وسيلة لتأمل الوضع البشري وعلاقته بالوجود كما تحوله إلى كيان رمزي معقد وحكاية الليغورية عن كيفية العيش مطلق عيش وعن المشروع الاميركي الذي وجد في عمل ملفيل شكلا من اشكال التعبير عن نفسه في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر أي حين كانت اميركا تكتشف ذاتها كقوة كونية وامبراطورية إمبريالية أمريكية بالقوة والإمكان. فكانت رواية موبي ديك وروايات ملفيل الأخرى بمثابة نبوءة لما ستصير اليه هذه القوة الكامنة.

مكانتها في الأدب العالمي

تحتل القصة مكانة مرموقة بين كلاسيكيات الأدب العالمي، فهي إضافة إلى كونها الملحمة الكبرى المكتوبة عن، مر على صدور "موبي ديك" للمرة الأولى زهاء المئة وخمسين عاما لاقت الرواية خلالها من الاهمال ما جعل نفس كاتبها تمتلئ باليأس والاحساس بالعجز ليصرف بقية حياته موظفا في سلك الجمارك الاميركية ويموت مهملا مجهولا في العقد الأخير من القرن التاسع عشر. ولم يلتفت إلى الرواية وينظر إليها بصفتها أحد الكتب العظيمة سوى عام 1907 أي بعد وفاة صاحبها بستة عشر عاما، عندما تم ادراجها ضمن سلسلة "ايفري مان لايبراري" الشهيرة التي تنشر الكلاسيكيات الكبرى ولم يهتم النقد بالرواية الا في العشرينات من القرن الماضي حين بدأ الباحثون والنقاد واساتذة الجامعات يكتبون عن هذا العمل الروائي المدهش الذي طور شكل الكتابة الروائية في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر وجعل الرواية الاميركية تحتل مكانة متقدمة في تاريخ الرواية العالمية.
ولقد قام الممثل الكبير جريجورى بيك بتمثيل تلك الرواية فى فيلم حمل نفس الإسم حيث قام بأعظم أدواره على الإطلاق فى تمثيل شخصيىة البحار الباحث عن غريمه موبى ديك عبر البحار
==

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by Herman Melville, first published in 1851.[2] It is considered to be one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge.
In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and the metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the journey of the main characters, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God are all examined, as the main characters speculate upon their personal beliefs and their places in the universe. The narrator's reflections, along with his descriptions of a sailor's life aboard a whaling ship, are woven into the narrative along with Shakespearean literary devices, such as stage directions, extended soliloquies, and asides. The book portrays destructive obsession and monomania, as well as the assumption of anthropomorphism—projecting human instincts, characteristics and motivations onto animals. Moby Dick is ruthless in attacking the sailors who attempt to hunt and kill him, but it is Ahab who invests Moby Dick's natural instincts with malignant and evil intentions. In fact, it is not the whale but the crippled Ahab who alone possesses this characteristic.
Moby-Dick has been classified as American Romanticism. It was first published by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851, in an expurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and weeks later as a single volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. The book initially received mixed reviews, but Moby-Dick is now considered part of the Western canon,[3] and at the center of the canon of American novels.
"Moby-Dick" begins with the line "Call me Ishmael." According to the American Book Review's rating in 2011, this is one of the most recognizable opening lines in Western literature.[4]

Background

Moby-Dick was published in 1851 during what has been called the American Renaissance, which saw the publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) as well as Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), and the first edition of Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855).
Two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820, after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America.[5][6][7] First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex.
The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have twenty or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds [8] in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly Magazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described:

This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength. From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature... a singular consequence had resulted - he was white as wool![8]

Significantly, Reynolds writes a first-person narration that serves as a frame for the story of a whaling captain he meets. The captain resembles Ahab and suggests a similar symbolism and single-minded motivation in hunting this whale, in that when his crew first encounters Mocha Dick and cowers from him, the captain rallies them:

As he drew near, with his long curved back looming occasionally above the surface of the billows, we perceived that it was white as the surf around him; and the men stared aghast at each other, as they uttered, in a suppressed tone, the terrible name of MOCHA DICK! "Mocha Dick or the d----l [devil],' said I, 'this boat never sheers off from any thing that wears the shape of a whale."[9]

Mocha Dick had over 100 encounters with whalers in the decades between 1810 and the 1830s. He was described as being gigantic and covered in barnacles. Although he was the most famous, Mocha Dick was not the only white whale in the sea,[10] nor the only whale to attack hunters.[11][12][13] While an accidental collision with a sperm whale at night accounted for sinking of the Union in 1807,[14] it was not until August 1851 that the whaler Ann Alexander, while hunting in the Pacific off the Galapagos Islands, became the second vessel since the Essex to be attacked, holed and sunk by a whale. Melville remarked:

Ye Gods! What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to say is short & pithy & very much to the point. I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster.[15]

While Melville had already drawn on his different sailing experiences in his previous novels, such as Mardi, he had never focused specifically on whaling. The eighteen months he spent as an ordinary seaman aboard the whaler Acushnet in 1841-42, and one incident in particular, now served as inspiration. It was during a mid-ocean "gam" (rendezvous at sea between ships) that he met Chase's son William, who lent him his father's book. Melville later wrote:

I questioned him concerning his father's adventure; . . . he went to his chest & handed me a complete copy . . . of the Narrative [of the Essex catastrophe]. This was the first printed account of it I had ever seen. The reading of this wondrous story on the landless sea, and so close to the very latitude of the shipwreck, had a surprising effect upon me.[16]

The book was out of print, and rare.[17] Knowing that Melville was looking for it, his father-in-law, Lemuel Shaw, managed to find a copy and buy it for him. When Melville received it, he fell to it almost immediately, heavily annotating it.[18]
Moby-Dick contains large sections—most of them narrated by Ishmael—that seemingly have nothing to do with the plot but describe aspects of the whaling business. Although there had been a successful earlier novel about Nantucket whalers, Miriam Coffin or The Whale-Fisherman (1835) by Joseph C. Hart.,[19] which is credited with influencing elements of Melville's work, most accounts of whaling tended to be sensational tales of bloody mutiny, and Melville believed that no book up to that time had portrayed the whaling industry in as fascinating or immediate a way as he had experienced it. Early Romantics also proposed that fiction was the exemplary way to describe and record history, so Melville wanted to craft something educational and definitive. Despite his own interest in the subject, Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:

I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this.[20]

There are scholarly theories that purport a literary legend of two Moby-Dick tales, one being a whaling tale as was Melville's experience and affinity, and another deeper tale, inspired by his literary friendship with and respect for Nathaniel Hawthorne. These merged into the latter, the morality tale.[21][22] Hawthorne and his family had moved to a small red farmhouse near Lenox, Massachusetts, at the end of March 1850.[23] He became friends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Herman Melville beginning on August 5, 1850, when the authors met at a picnic hosted by a mutual friend.[24] Melville had just read Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection, titled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", was printed in the The Literary World on August 17 and 24.[25] Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black".,[22] and dedicated Moby-Dick to him:

In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.[26]

Plot

The narrator, Ishmael, is an observant young man setting out from Manhattan who has experience in the merchant marine but has recently decided his next voyage will be on a whaling ship. On a cold, gloomy night in December, he arrives at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and agrees to share a bed with a then-absent stranger. When his bunk mate, a heavily tattooed Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg, returns very late and discovers Ishmael beneath his covers, both men are alarmed, but the two quickly become close friends and decide to sail together from Nantucket, Massachusetts on a whaling voyage.
In Nantucket, the pair signs on with the Pequod, a whaling ship that is soon to leave port. The ship’s captain, Ahab, is nowhere to be seen; nevertheless, they are told of him — a "grand, ungodly, godlike man,"[27] who has "been in colleges as well as 'mong the cannibals," according to one of the owners. The two friends encounter a mysterious man named Elijah on the dock after they sign their papers and he hints at troubles to come with Ahab. The mystery grows on Christmas morning when Ishmael spots dark figures in the mist, apparently boarding the Pequod shortly before it sets sail that day.
The ship’s officers direct the early voyage while Ahab stays in his cabin. The chief mate is Starbuck, a serious, sincere Quaker and fine leader; second mate is Stubb, happy-go-lucky and cheerful and always smoking his pipe; the third mate is Flask, short and stout but thoroughly reliable. Each mate is responsible for a whaling boat, and each whaling boat of the Pequod has its own pagan harpooneer assigned to it. Some time after sailing, Ahab finally appears on the quarter-deck one morning, an imposing, frightening figure whose haunted visage sends shivers over the narrator. One of his legs is missing from the knee down and has been replaced by a prosthesis fashioned from a sperm whale's jawbone.

He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness... Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.

—Moby-Dick, Ch. 28

Soon gathering the crewmen together, with a rousing speech Ahab secures their support for his single, secret purpose for this voyage: hunting down and killing Moby Dick, an old, very large sperm whale, with a snow-white hump and mottled skin, that crippled Ahab on his last whaling voyage. Only Starbuck shows any sign of resistance to the charismatic but monomaniacal captain. The first mate argues repeatedly that the ship’s purpose should be to hunt whales for their oil, with luck returning home profitably, safely, and quickly, but not to seek out and kill Moby Dick in particular — and especially not for revenge. Eventually even Starbuck acquiesces to Ahab's will, though harboring misgivings.
The mystery of the dark figures seen before the Pequod set sail is explained during the voyage's first lowering for whales. Ahab has secretly brought along his own boat crew, including a mysterious harpooneer named Fedallah (also referred to as 'the Parsee'), an inscrutable figure with a sinister influence over Ahab. Later, while watching one night over a captured whale carcass, Fedallah gives dark prophecies to Ahab regarding their twin deaths.
The novel describes numerous "gams," social meetings of two ships on the open sea. Crews normally visit each other during a gam, captains on one vessel and chief mates on the other. Mail may be exchanged and the men talk of whale sightings or other news. For Ahab, however, there is but one relevant question to ask of another ship: “Hast seen the White Whale?” After meeting several other whaling ships, which have their own peculiar stories, the Pequod enters the Pacific Ocean. Queequeg becomes deathly ill and requests that a coffin be built for him by the ship’s carpenter. Just as everyone has given up hope, Queequeg changes his mind, deciding to live after all, and recovers quickly. His coffin becomes his sea chest, and is later caulked and pitched to replace the Pequod's life buoy.
Soon word is heard from other whalers of Moby Dick. The jolly Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby has lost an arm to the whale, and is stunned at Ahab's burning need for revenge. Next they meet the Rachel, which has seen Moby Dick very recently. As a result of the encounter, one of its boats is missing; the captain’s youngest son had been aboard. The Rachel's captain begs Ahab to aid in the search for the missing boat, but Ahab is resolute; the Pequod is very near the White Whale now and will not stop to help. Finally the Delight is met, even as its captain buries a sailor who had been killed by Moby Dick. Starbuck begs Ahab one final time to reconsider his thirst for vengeance, but to no avail.
The next day, the Pequod meets Moby Dick. For two days, the Pequod's crew pursues the whale, which wreaks widespread destruction, including the disappearance of Fedallah. On the third day, Moby Dick rises up to reveal Fedallah's corpse tied to him by harpoon ropes. Even after the initial battle on the third day, it is clear that while Ahab is a vengeful whale-hunter, Moby Dick, while dangerous and fearless, is not motivated to hunt humans. As he swims away from the Pequod, Starbuck exhorts Ahab one last time to desist, observing that:

"Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!".

—Moby-Dick, Ch. 135

Ahab ignores this voice of reason and continues with his ill-fated chase. As the three boats sail out to hunt him, Moby Dick damages two of them, forcing them to go back to the ship and leaving only Ahab's vessel intact. Ahab harpoons the whale, but the harpoon-line breaks. Moby Dick then rams the Pequod itself, which begins to sink. As Ahab harpoons the whale again, the unfolding harpoon-line catches him around his neck and he is dragged into the depths of the sea by the diving Moby Dick. The boat is caught up in the whirlpool of the sinking ship, which takes almost all the crew to their deaths. Only Ishmael survives, clinging to Queequeg’s coffin-turned-life buoy for an entire day and night before the Rachel rescues him.

Herman Melville
(August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, became a bestseller), but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime.
When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. In 1919, the unfinished manuscript for his novella Billy Budd was discovered by his first biographer. He published a version in 1924, which was quickly acclaimed by notable British critics as another masterpiece of Melville's. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America.

Biography

Early life, education, and family

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819,[1] the third of eight children of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. Herman's younger brother, Thomas Melville, eventually became a governor of Sailors Snug Harbor. Part of a well-established and colorful Boston family, Melville's father, Allan, spent a good deal of time abroad as a commission merchant and an importer of French dry goods. After her husband Allan died, between 1832 and 1834, Maria added an "e" to the family surname — seemingly at the behest of her son Gansevoort.[2]
The author's paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melvill, was honored as a participant in the Boston Tea Party. Thomas Melvill, who refused to change the style of his clothing or manners to fit the times, was depicted in Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem "The Last Leaf." Herman Melville visited his grandfather in Boston, and Allan Melvill also turned to him in his frequent times of financial need.
The maternal side of Melville's family had been among Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley in present-day New York state. His maternal grandfather was General Peter Gansevoort, a hero of the Siege of Fort Schuyler; in his gold-laced uniform, the general sat for a portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart, which is described in Melville's 1852 novel, Pierre. Melville drew upon his familial as well as his nautical background. Like the titular character in Pierre, Melville found satisfaction in his "double revolutionary descent."[3]
In 1826 Melville contracted scarlet fever, permanently weakening his eyesight.[4] Allan Melvill sent his sons to the New York Male School (Columbia Preparatory School). Overextended financially and emotionally unstable, the senior Melvill tried to recover from his setbacks by moving his family to Albany in 1830 and going into the fur business. The new venture was unsuccessful; the embargo of the War of 1812 had ruined businesses that traded with Great Britain and Canada. He was forced to declare bankruptcy. He died soon afterward, when Herman was 12, and left his family penniless.[5]
Although Maria had well-off kin and expected some inheritance from her mother's estate, the process was slow. Her kin were apparently concerned with protecting their own interests rather than settling their mother's estate so that Maria's young family would be more secure.
Melville attended the Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, and again from October 1836 to March 1837, where he studied the classics.[6]

Early working life

Melville's roving disposition and a desire to support himself led him to seek work as a surveyor on the Erie Canal. This effort failed, and his older brother helped him get a job as a "boy"[7] (a green hand) on a New York ship bound for Liverpool. He made the voyage and returned on the same ship. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) is partly based on his experiences of this journey.
For three years after Albany Academy (1837 to 1840), Melville mostly taught school. From 1838 to 1847, he resided at what is now known as the Herman Melville House in Lansingburgh, New York.[8] In late 1840, he decided to sign up for more work at sea.

Travels in the Pacific (1841-45)

On January 3, 1841, he sailed from Fairhaven, Massachusetts on the whaler Acushnet,[9] which was bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was later to comment that his life began that day. The vessel sailed around Cape Horn and traveled to the South Pacific. Melville left little direct accounts of the events of this 18-month voyage, although his whaling romance, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, probably describes many aspects of life on board the Acushnet. Melville deserted the Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842.[10]
For three weeks he lived among the Typee natives, who were called cannibals by the two other tribal groups on the island—though they treated Melville very well. Typee, Melville's first novel, describes a brief love affair with a beautiful native girl, Fayaway, who generally "wore the garb of Eden" and came to epitomize the guileless noble savage in the popular imagination.
Melville did not seem to be concerned about consequences of leaving the Acushnet. He boarded an Australian whaleship, the Lucy Ann, bound for Tahiti; took part in a mutiny and was briefly jailed in the native Calabooza Beretanee. After release, he spent several months as beachcomber and island rover (Omoo in Tahitian), eventually crossing over to Moorea. He signed articles on yet another whaler for a six-month cruise (November 1842 − April 1843), which terminated in Honolulu.
While in Hawaii, he became a controversial figure for his vehement opposition to the activities of Christian missionaries seeking to convert the indigenous Hawaiian population. After working as a clerk for four months, he joined the crew of the frigate USS United States, which reached Boston in October 1844. He drew from these experiences in his books Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket. These were published as novels because the publisher thought few readers without similar experience would have believed their veracity.
Melville completed Typee in the summer of 1845. After some difficulty in arranging publication,[11] he saw it first published in 1846 in London, where it became an overnight bestseller. The Boston publisher subsequently accepted Omoo sight unseen. Typee and Omoo gave Melville overnight renown as a writer and adventurer, and he often entertained by telling stories to his admirers. As the writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote, "With his cigar and his Spanish eyes, he talks Typee and Omoo, just as you find the flow of his delightful mind on paper".[11] The novels did not generate enough royalties to support him financially. Omoo was not as colorful as Typee; readers began to realize Melville was not producing simple adventure stories

Herman Melville

هرمان ملفل ( 1819-1891م ) Herman Melville
وُلد ملفيل هرمان في مدينة نيويورك عام 1819.
من أبرز الروائيين في أمريكا.
كتب موبي ديك، وهي واحدة من أشهر الروايات الأدبية.
ترجع شهرته إلى هذا الكتاب بشكل رئيسي،
لكنَّ كثيرًا من أعماله الأخرى، هي إبداعات أدبية عالية المستوى،
تمتزج فيها الحقيقة والخيال والمغامرة والرمزية البارعة,
كتب ملفيل عن تجاربه بطريقة جذابة،
جعلته أحد أكثر الكُتَّاب شعبية في زمانه.
وقد أضفى على مغامراته خيالاً خصبًا وشكلاً فلسفيًا،
إلى جانب مهارةٍ فائقة في استعمال اللغة الإنجليزية الأمريكية.

موبي ديك . Moby Dick

رواية موبي ديك نشرت الرواية لأول مرة بإسم الحوت في ثلاثة مجلدات
ونشرها ريتشارد بنتلي، في لندن بتاريخ 18 أكتوبر ، 1851م.
بينما نشرها هاربر وإخوانه، في نيويورك،
وكانت الطبعة الامريكية الأولى في 14 نوفمبر 1851
هي رواية من تأليف الروائي الأمريكي هيرمان ملفيل
وتدور حول صراع تراجيدي بين حوت وإنسان
تتخذ من هذا الصراع الضاري وسيلة لتأمل الوضع البشري وعلاقته بالوجود.

هيرمن ملفل
- ولد عام 1819 ومات عام 1891.
- روائي وكاتب قصة ومقالات وشاعر.
- أشهر رواياته موبي دك.
- عندما مات لم يكد احد يذكره.
- الثالث من بين 8 اطفال.
- كان والده يعمل في الخارج وامضى وقت كثير بعيد عن العائلة.
- مات والده عام 1832 وعمره ( 12 سنة).
- عام 1826 مرض بالحمى القرمزية مما اضعف بصرة بشكل مزمن.
- تعرض والده الى خسارة في عمله التجاري واعلن افلاسه ومات على اثر ذلك وترك العائلة معدمة.
يتيم الأب في سن الثانية عشرة وطفولة صعبة وشبه فقدان للبصر بسبب المرض ( الحمى ).

Mrs. Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)

'Fear no more the heat of the sun.' Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe.Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-World War I England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. In 2005, Mrs Dalloway was included on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.[1]

Plot summary

Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh and she "had not the option" to be with Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning.
Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of World War I suffering from deferred traumatic stress, spends his day in the park with his Italian-born wife Lucrezia, where they are observed by Peter Walsh. Septimus is visited by frequent and indecipherable hallucinations, mostly concerning his dear friend Evans who died in the war. Later that day, after he is prescribed involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he commits suicide by jumping out of a window.
Clarissa's party in the evening is a slow success. It is attended by most of the characters she has met in the book, including people from her past. She hears about Septimus' suicide at the party and gradually comes to admire the act of this stranger, which she considers an effort to preserve the purity of his happiness.

1. السيدة دالاوي وقصة حياتها من كتاب روايات خالده للكاتبه رشا المالح

ولدت أدلين فيرجينيا سيفن عام1882 في كنف عائله ذات ارتباط وثيق بالأدب.................... وحينما توفيت والدتها, أصيبت فيرجينيا وكانت في الثالثه عشر من عمرها بانهيار عصبي كان الأول لعدة أزمات بعدها ........
وبعد وفات والدها عام 1904 انتقلت فيرجينيا مع أخويها واختها إلى بيت بلومبزبيري.............وبات الأشقاء محوا لمجموعه استثنائيه من الكتاب والفنانين دعاها النقاد آنذاك بمجموعة بلومبزبيري...........
بعد مضي عام على سكنهم الجديد , بدأت فيرجينيا بتقديم عروض الكتب في إحدى الصحف ومن ثم العمل للملحق تايمز الأدبي . أما روايتها الأولى ((رحله إلى الخارج)) التي انجزتها عام 1913 لم تنشر إلى بعد عامين بسبب وضعها الصحي. في الثلاثين من عمرها تزوجت من ليونارد وولف , وهو منظر سياسي عمل سابقا في الخدمه المدنيه في سيريلانكا . قرر الزوجان أن يكون مصدر دخلهما من الصحافة والنشر , وبعد خمسة أعوام أسس زوجها عمله في النشر وأحضر آلة طباعة يدويه كانت سابقة من نوعها آنذاك,واستقرا في بيت هو غارث في ريتشموند التي اختارها الزوج آخذ في الاعتبار حالة فيرجينيا الصحيه.
وفي 28 مارس 1941ملأت فيرجينيا جيوبها بحجاره ثقيله وسارت إلى نهر أوس بجوار سكنهما في ساسكس وأغرقت نفسها وذكرت في الرساله التي تركتها لزوجها ((بت أسمع أصواتا في عقلي ولم اعد استطيع التركيز في عملي أدين لك بكل سعادتي لكنن لا استطيع الاستمرار والتسبب في افساد حياتك ومن اهم رواياتها ((ليل ونهار)) ونشرت عام 1919 ((والإثنين والثلاثاء)) عام 1921 و((غرفة يعقوب)) عام 1922 ((ونحو المناره)) عام 1927 و((الأمواج)) عام 1931.

نبذة النيل والفرات:
كتبت فرجينيا وولف (1882-1941) تسع روايات ظهرت بين 1915 و1941. وكانت رواية "السيدة دالاوي" التي نقدم لها رابع رواية تظهر لنا. وقد نشرت سنة 1925. ينحصر زمن الرواية بيوم واحد فقط من زمن حياة كلاريسا دالاوي، الزوجة العصرية لأحد أعضاء البرلمان، لكنه زمن يتشعب إلى أيام ماضية تتوقف فيها الذكريات.
وبهذا قطعت الكاتبة صلتها بالشكل التقليدي لكتابة الرواية الانلكيزية، إذ أخذ يجري عرض الأحداث ورسم الشخوص لا بطريقة التصوير المباشر بل عن طريق الانطباعات التي تحدث، الذكريات التي تمر، في عقل الشخصية الأولى في الرواية وفي عقول الشخصيات الأخرى. الرئيسية منها والثانوية، في ذلك اليوم الواحد الذي كانت السيدة "دالاوي" ستقيم فيه حفلة كبرى. يتميز هذا الأسلوب الجديد بظهور ما يسمى بتيار الوعي، أو تداعي الذاكرة، ويفوق في أهميته تيار السرد النظامي للعالم الخارجي وما فيه والذي كان يطبع الأسلوب التقليدي.

نبذة الناشر:
جبرا إبراهيم جبرا:
هذا الكتاب رواية مشهورة، لكاتبة إنكليزية من أعظم كتاب النصف الأولى من هذا القرن. وروايتها هذه بالذات أحد أسباب شهرتها وقيمتها في عالم الأدب، إذ إن المؤلفة بروايتها "السيدة دالاواي" ساهمت في تأسيس طريقة جديدة في الكتابة الروائية تتعدى السرد التقليدي-وهي التي عرفت بتيار الوعي. وهي طريقة تعتمد التداعي الحر وترابط الحاضر والماضي، وتداخل الوعي والحلم، مع شاعرية تستمر في نبضها ووهجها من البداية حتى النهاية. والمؤلفة بطريقتها هذه تنساب بالقارئ الى دواخل كل شخصية، وتجعله يشاطر الضحية ذكراياتها واحاسيسها وردود فعلها الآنية ورؤاها، بحيث يرى ابطال الرواية في النهاية من زوايا لا يتيحها السرد التقليدي. وقد كان في "تيار الوعي" الذي ابدعت فيه فرجينيا وولف إضافة أساسية كبرى الى أساليب الفن الروائي في القرن العشرين. ومن هنا أهمية هذه الرواية.

ولدت أدلين فيرجينيا ستيفن عام 1882 في كنف عائلة ذات ارتباط وثيق بالأدب. وحينما توفيت والدتها، أصيبت فيرجينيا وكانت في الثالثة عشرة من عمرها بانهيار عصبي كان الأول لعدة أزمات بعدها. وبعد وفاة والدها عام 1904 انتقلت فيرجينيا مع أخويها وأختها إلى بيت بلومبزبيري. وبات الأشقاء محورا لمجموعة استثنائية من الكتاب والفنانين دعاها النقاد آنذاك بمجموعة بلومبزبيري.
بعد مضي عام على سكنهم الجديد، بدأت فيرجينيا بتقديم عروض الكتب في إحدى الصحف ومن ثم العمل لملحق تايمز الأدبي. أما روايتها الأولى «رحلة إلى الخارج» التي أنجزتها عام 1913 لم تنشر إلا بعد عامين بسبب وضعها الصحي. في الثلاثين من عمرها تزوجت من ليونارد وولف، وهو منظر سياسي عمل سابقا في الخدمة المدنية في سيريلانكا. قرر الزوجان أن يكون مصدر دخلهما من الصحافة والنشر، وبعد خمسة أعوام أسس ليونارد عمله في النشر وأحضر آلة طباعة يدوية كانت سابقة من نوعها آنذاك، واستقرا في بيت هوغارث في ريتشموند التي اختارها ليونارد آخذا في الاعتبار حالة فيرجينيا الصحية.
وفي 28 مارس 1941، ملأت فيرجينيا جيوبها بحجارة ثقيلة وسارت إلى نهر أوس بجوار سكنهما في ساسكس وأغرقت نفسها. وذكرت في الرسالة التي تركتها لزوجها، «بت أسمع أصواتا في عقلي ولم أعد أستطيع التركيز في عملي. أدين لك بكل سعادتي، لكنني لا أستطيع الاستمرار والتسبب في إفساد حياتك». ومن أهم رواياتها «ليل ونهار» ونشرت عام 1919 و«الإثنين والثلاثاء» عام 1921 و«غرفة يعقوب» عام 1922 و«نحو المنارة» عام 1927 و«الأمواج» عام 1931.
أما أهم أعمالها فهي رواية «السيدة دالاوي» التي تندرج ضمن حركة الكتاب الأدبية في أوائل القرن العشرين حيث يتم التعبير بالكلمات عن أفكار ومشاعر الشخصيات، وتهدف هذه التقنية إلى إعطاء القارئ الانطباع بأنه يعيش داخل فكر تلك الشخصيات. كما قدمت فيرجينيا من خلال روايتها تلك أسلوبا جديدا في اللغة والسرد. وعملها هذا، بمثابة لوحة موزاييك لعوالم مجموعة من الشخصيات من خلال الانتقال بين الداخل والخارج ومن الحاضر إلى الماضي وبالعكس عبر تداخل نسيج السرد.
كل ذلك من خلال تقديمها لصورة حية ليوم واحد في حياة سيدة تدعى كلاريسا دالاوي في الخمسينات. في البداية تعد كلاريسا التي تعافت مؤخرا من مرضها، اللمسات الأخيرة لحفل تقيمه في تلك الليلة. تبدأ بالقيام بجولة في لندن لشراء زهور الحفل. وخلال فترة الصباح تعود كلاريسا إلى ماضيها بما في ذلك قرارها بالزواج من ريتشار دالاوي قبل 30 عاما بدلا من صديقها المحب بيتر وولش.
بعد تركها في محل الأزهار، تنتقل الراوية إلى أحداث قصة ثانية تبدأ مع سيبتيموث سميث، الذي يعاني من صدمة نفسية لتبعات الحرب، ويكون بصحبة زوجته لوكريزيا. وحينما تطلق إحدى السيارات العابرة صوتا يشبه الطلقات النارية، يشكل هذا الأمر حدثا كبيرا في المنطقة المحيطة بتلك السيارة الفارهة، وفي حين يصاب هو بجمود الرعب وعودته إلى ساحة الحرب وتعكس وولف من خلال ردود أفعال بعض الأفراد في الطريق ومنهم كلاريسا رؤيا نقدية للمجتمع الانجليزي بمختلف فئاته. تعود كلاريسا إلى منزلها، وتبدأ بتذكر صديقتها الأقرب إلى نفسها في مرحلة الشباب سالي سيتون، التي تميزت بالتمرد والجموح وبجميع الصفات التي تخفيها كلاريسا. وتسترجع بسعادة ذكريات تلك الصداقة المتينة.
تبدأ كلاريسا بإصلاح ثوبها الحريري الأخضر الذي سترتديه في الحفل، حينما تتلقى زيارة مفاجئة من بيتر وولش حبيبها السابق الذي عاد من الهند بعد مضي خمس سنوات. وتتذكر ما قاله لها بيتر في يوم ما في لحظة غضب ويأس بأنها يوما ما ستصبح سيدة صالون من الطراز الأول. واتضح لها مع مضي الزمن صحة نبوءته العابرة.
يتحدث الاثنان ببساطة عن الحاضر، وإن كان الاثنان يفكران بالماضي والقرارات التي أوصلتهم إلى ما هم عليه الآن، وحينما يبدآن بالحديث عن المشاعر تدخل إليزابيت ابنة كلاريسا الشابة فينهي بيتر زيارته وينسحب.يذهب إلى الحديقة لتمضية الوقت حيث كان سيبتيموث مع لوكريزيا يتجادلان بحدة عن الانتحار، في حين يبدوان لبيتر مجرد شابين عاشقين من دون إدراكه لعمق مشاعرهما أو حالة الشاب غير المستقرة.
كان الشابان متوجهي ن إلى موعدهما مع الطبيب الأخصائي بالأمراض العصبية الشهير، سير ويليام برادشو الذي ينفي جنونه ويقترح عليه الاستجمام في إحدى مصحاته حتى يتعافى من حالة الانهيار العصبي ويصر على أن يكون بمفرده.
وفي تلك الأثناء يكون ريتشارد زوج كلاريسا، بصحبة عدد من الأصدقاء في بيت السيدة براتون يتناولون الغداء. تشعر كلاريسا بالضيق لعدم دعوتها بصحبة زوجها، وترى في ذلك إنقاصا من مكانتها على الصعيد الاجتماعي والفكري. يشعر ريتشارد خلال الدعوة بتوق لزوجته وبحاجة ملحة للبوح بحبه لها. وللأسف لا يتمكن من الإفصاح عن مشاعره لاسيما وقد مضى سنوات على ذلك.
تتوجه كلاريسا لرؤية ابنتها التي تأخذ درسا مع معلمة التاريخ دوريس كليمان. ويتجلى احتقار كل منهما للأخرى وبدوافع مختلفة فكلاريسا ترى في دوريس دونيتها ومحاولتها سلبها ابنتها والأخرى ترى فيها سلوكيات البرجوازية التافهة وثرائها مقابل فقرها. يعود سيبتيموث وزوجته إلى شقتهما بانتظار وصول مرافقي المصحة ويعيشان في ألفة افتقدتها لوكريزيا من تدهور حالته وتقرر مرافقته إلى المصحة. ولكن حينما يصل المرافقون يقرر الشاب الهرب منهم، وعلى الرغم من عدم رغبته في الموت إلى أن حاجته إلى الهرب كانت أقوى وبذا يرمي نفسه من النافذة ليفارق الحياة.
تلتقي كلاريسا خلال حفلها، بعدد من أشباح الماضي بما فيهم بيتر وسالي. وفي وقت متأخر يصل سير ويليام برادشو وزوجته التي تعتذر لكلاريسا ساردة عليها قصة الشاب الذي انتحر برمي نفسه من النافذة. وحينما ينتهي الحفل تشعر كلاريسا للمرة الأولى بإحباط شديد من النجاح الذي حققه حفلها

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. In 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf. Her first novel The Voyage Out was published in 1915, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press. The majority of Virginia Woolf's work was first published by The Hogarth Press, and these original texts are now available, together with her selected letters and diaries, from Vintage Classics, which belongs to the publishing group that Hogarth became part of in 1987. Between 1925 and 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from Mrs Dalloway (1925) to the poetic and highly experimental novel The Waves (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism and biography, including the playfully subversive Orlando (1928) and A Room of One's Own (1929) a passionate feminist essay. On 28 March 1941, a few months before the publication of her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide. Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire in 1952. She is a poet, short story writer and novelist.Her novels include Zennor in Darkness, Talking to the Dead, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, With Your Crooked Heart, The Siege, Mourning Ruby , House of Orphans and Betrayal. Her second novel, A Spell of Winter, about a brother and sister brought up by their grandfather in his decaying house in the country won the first Orange Prize for Fiction in 1995

Adeline Virginia Woolf (/ˈ w ʊ l f /; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Contents

Early life

- Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882 to Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Prinsep Stephen (née Jackson).
- Virginia's father, Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer. He was the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies.
- Virginia's mother Julia Stephen (1846–1895) was a renowned beauty, born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson.
She was also the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.[2]
Woolf was educated by her parents in their literate and well-connected household at 22 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington.
- Her parents had each been married previously and been widowed, and, consequently, the household contained the children of three marriages.
Julia had three children by her first husband, Herbert Duckworth: George, Stella, and Gerald Duckworth. Leslie first married Harriet Marian (Minny) Thackeray (1840–1875), the daughter of William Thackeray, and they had one daughter: Laura Makepeace Stephen, who was declared mentally disabled and lived with the family until she was institutionalised in 1891.[3] Leslie and Julia had four children together: Vanessa Stephen (1879), Thoby Stephen (1880), Virginia (1882), and Adrian Stephen (1883).
Sir Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic, and biographer, and his connection to William Thackeray, meant that his children were raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes, and Virginia's honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected. Descended from an attendant of Marie Antoinette,[citation needed] she came from a family of beauties who left their mark on Victorian society as models for Pre-Raphaelite artists and early photographers, including her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron who was also a visitor to the Stephen household. Supplementing these influences was the immense library at the Stephens' house, from which Virginia and Vanessa were taught the classics and English literature. Unlike the girls, their brothers Adrian and Julian (Thoby) were formally educated and sent to Cambridge, a difference which Virginia would resent. The sisters did, however, benefit indirectly from their brothers' Cambridge contacts, as the boys brought their new intellectual friends home to the Stephens' drawing room.[citation needed]
According to Woolf's memoirs, her most vivid childhood memories were not of London but of St. Ives in Cornwall, where the family spent every summer until 1895. The Stephens' summer home, Talland House, looked out over Porthminster Bay, and is still standing today, though somewhat altered. Memories of these family holidays and impressions of the landscape, especially the Godrevy Lighthouse, informed the fiction Woolf wrote in later years, most notably To the Lighthouse.
- The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns.
She was, however, able to take courses of study (some at degree level) in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department of King's College London between 1897 and 1901, and this brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of women’s higher education such as Clara Pater, George Warr and Lilian Faithfull (Principal of the King’s Ladies’ Department and noted as one of the Steamboat ladies).[4] Her sister Vanessa also studied Latin, Italian, art and architecture at King’s Ladies’ Department.
- The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalised.
- Modern scholars (including her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell) have suggested[5] her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods were also influenced by the sexual abuse to which she and her sister Vanessa were subjected by their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth (which Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate).
- Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by periodic mood swings and associated illnesses.
Though this instability often affected her social life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks throughout her life.

Bloomsbury

After the death of their father and Virginia's second nervous breakdown, Vanessa and Adrian sold 22 Hyde Park Gate and bought a house at 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.
Woolf came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Rupert Brooke, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and Roger Fry, who together formed the nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group. Several members of the group attained notoriety in 1910 with the Dreadnought hoax, which Virginia participated in disguised as a male Abyssinian royal. Her complete 1940 talk on the Hoax was discovered and is published in the memoirs collected in the expanded edition of The Platform of Time (2008). In 1907 Vanessa married Clive Bell, and the couple's interest in avant garde art would have an important influence on Woolf's development as an author.[6]
Virginia Stephen married writer Leonard Woolf on the 10th August, 1912.[7] Despite his low material status (Woolf referring to Leonard during their engagement as a "penniless Jew") the couple shared a close bond. Indeed, in 1937, Woolf wrote in her diary: "Love-making—after 25 years can’t bear to be separate ... you see it is enormous pleasure being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete." The two also collaborated professionally, in 1917 founding the Hogarth Press, which subsequently published Virginia's novels along with works by T.S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post, and others.[8] The Press also commissioned works by contemporary artists, including Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell.
The ethos of the Bloomsbury group encouraged a liberal approach to sexuality, and in 1922 she met the writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson. After a tentative start, they began a sexual relationship, which, according to Sackville- West, was only twice consummated.[9] In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando, a fantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both sexes. Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, wrote "The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her".[10] After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941. Virginia Woolf also remained close to her surviving siblings, Adrian and Vanessa; Thoby had died of an illness at the age of 26

اديلين فيرجينيا وولف

25 يناير 1882 — 28 مارس 1941 أديبة إنجليزية، اشتهرت برواياتها التي تمتاز بإيقاظ الضمير الإنساني, ومنها :السيدة دالواي, الأمواج, تعد واحدة من أهم الرموز الأدبية المحدثة في القرن العشرين.

مسيرة حياتها

هي روائية إنجليزية، ومن كتاب المقالات. تزوجت 1912 من ليونارد وولف، الناقد والكاتب الاقتصادي، وهي تعد من كتاب القصة التأثيرين. كانت روايتها الأولى ذات طابع تقليدي مثل رواية «الليل والنهار» 1919، واتخذت فيما بعد المنهج المعروف بمجرى الوعي أو تيار الشعور، كما في "غرفة يعقوب" 1922، و«السيدة دالواي» 1925 و«إلى المنارة» 1927، و"الأمواج" 1931، ولها روايات أخرى ذات طابع تعبيري، منها رواية «أورلاندو» 1928 و«الأعوام» 1937، و«بين الفصول» 1941. اشتغلت بالنقد، ومن كتبها النقدية «القارئ العادي» 1925، و«موت الفراشة ومقالات أخرى» 1943. كتبت ترجمة لحياة «روجر فراي» 1940، وكتبت القصة القصيرة، وظهرت لها مجموعة بعنوان الاثنين أو الثلاثاء 1921 انتحرت غرقاً مخافة أن يصيبها انهيار عقلي.

الروايات

أفلام

الساعات (The Hours (2002
السيدة دالواي (Mrs Dalloway (1997

وفاتها

بعد أن انهت روايتها (بين الأعمال) والتي نشرت بعد وفاتها, أصيبت فيرجينيا بحالة اكتئاب مشابهة للحالة التي أصابتها مسبقا. وزادت حالتها سوءا بعد اندلاع الحرب العالمية الثانية وتدمير منزلها في لندن والإستقبال البارد الذي حظيت به السيرة الذاتية التي كتبتها لصديقها الراحل روجر فراي حتى أصبحت عاجزة عن الكتابة.[1] وفي 28 مارس 1941 ارتدت فيرجينيا معطفها وملأته بالحجارة وأغرقت نفسها في نهر أوس القريب من منزلها. وجد جسد وولف في 18 أبريل 1941[2] ودفن زوجها رفاتها تحت علم في حديقة مونكس هاوس في رودميل ساسيكس.
وفي رسالة انتحارها كتبت لزوجها:
“ عزيزي, أنا على يقين بأنني سأجن, ولا أظن بأننا قادرين على الخوض في تلك الأوقات الرهيبة مرة أخرى, كما ولا أظن بأنني سأتعافى هذه المرة. لقد بدأت أسمع أصواتاَ وفقدت قدرتي على التركيز. لذا, سأفعل ما أراه مناسبا. لقد أشعرتني بسعادة عظيمة ولا أظن أن أي احداَ قد شعر بسعادة غامرة كما شعرنا نحن الإثنين سوية إلى أن حل بي هذا المرض الفظيع. لست قادرة على المقاومة بعد الآن وأعلم أنني أفسد حياتك وبدوني ستحظى بحياة أفضل. أنا متأكدة من ذلك, أترى؟ لا أستطيع حتى أن أكتب هذه الرسالة بشكل جيد, لا أستطيع أن أقرأ. جل ما أريد قوله هو أنني أدين لك بسعادتي. لقد كنت جيدا لي وصبوراَ علي. والجميع يعلم ذلك. لو كان بإمكان أحد ما أن ينقذني فسيكون ذلك أنت. فقدت كل شئ عدا يقيني بأنك شخص جيد. لا أستطيع المضي في تخريب حياتك ولا أظن أن أحد شعر بالسعادة كما شعرنا بها."[3]

- يتمة الام في سن 13
- توفيت اختها غير الشقيقة وهي في الخامسة عشره.
- تعرضت لاعتداءت جنسيه من اخيها غير الشقيق.
- اصيبت بانهيار عصبي نتيجة لوفاة امهها ةاختها غير الشقيقة.
- مات ابوها وعمرها 22 سنة
- اصيبت بانهيار عصبي قوي ةادخلت مستشفى الامراض العقلية.

يتيمة الام في سن 13 وعاشت حياة ازمة ومات ابوها وهي في سن الـ 22.