... so she says.

hi Everyone :) O_o

Selected Essays : by Virginia Woolf

Our century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. But if we seek masterpieces, where are we to look ? --->

It is a barren and exhausted age, we repeat; we must look back with envy to the past. Meanwhile it is one of the first fine days of spring. Life is not altogether lacking in colour. The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of it's own. And the random talk of people who have no chance of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, of lights, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which will weave itself into a moment for ever. --->

Our optimism, then, is largely instinctive. It springs from the fine day and the wine and the talk; it springs from the fact that when life throws up treasures daily, --->

the senses of sight, of sound, of touch above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in short. --->
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Ok blame it on the telephone (ring ring lol), you know how often are we involved in something important and the telephone rings, such a distraction. Then you have kind of broken your train of thought to some extent. Of course they did not have telephones in the old times, so possibly may have been able to stay more focused for longer periods of time. Mind you take away my internet and boy I'd have serious withdrawals :/ Anyway this aphorism seems to be part of an analytical report (critic) that concerns itself with various writers from days gone past and Woolf's present time. And by looking at the context I see that the emphasis is on NOT rather than, is maybe or whatever. Possibly with pessimism on the present due to many things, as she sure does not leave any stones unturned, it would appear from a quick read. Interestingly she mentions names, sort of get an idea of who she thinks is great (masterpieces) or partially and whether novelty was the only order of the day etc... Well I'd love to chat all day but got business to attend to, may listen to some Pink Floyd later they had some songs with bells and ringing and a album called Division Bell, could be appropriate :-)

I followed up on Jimbob's find, and discovered that the quotation actually comes from How It Strikes a Contemporary, an essay from a collection entitled The Common Reader by Woolf. In the essay she compares and contrasts literary works of the Nineteenth Century with those of her own, the early Twentieth Century, finding that the Twentieth comes up considerably short of the Nineteenth. In hindsight her conclusions now seem premature and incorrect, particularly with respect to James Joyce's Ulysses, now recognized as one of the masterpieces of English Literature. Wolf's failure demonstrates the danger and difficulty of accurately assessing the stature of our contemporaries. "Life levels all. Death reveals the eminent," the adage goes. Here is the paragraph from which the quotation was taken:

At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. Waverley, The Excursion, Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt’s Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion, and Prometheus Unbound were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in Far Away and Long Ago will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe — immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be compared with the age that went before.