J. E. Robinson 2007-08-04
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As background information, I read most of her work starting with her first novel "The Voyage Out" published in 1915, skipped her second novel - which is considered to be a flop, Night and Day from 1919 - and then read "Jacob's Room," her third, then went on and read "Mrs. Dalloway," her fourth, and next read "To The Lighthouse," etc. Also, I read much of Woolf's non-fiction and set up a Listmania list on amazon.com.
We are the "common readers," as Woolf describes us, we readers of her books. The present book is an informal summary of all literature from the Greeks to Joyce. It is not complete but it is bits and pieces that Woolf thinks are interesting. This is a medium length book about 200 pages long and available free on line at the Gutenberg project. I think her best fiction is "To The Lighthouse" - that is a masterpiece - and her best non-fiction is "A Room of One's Own." I like the Oxford version of the latter published along with "Three Guineas." Also, the present book is almost on par with "A Room of One's Own."
I got interested in Dostoevsky, and read most of his work, so I was interested to read what Woolf might say about him. These two comments from Woolf on Dostoevsky show you what you can expect from the "Common Reader." The two quotes below are from the section on Russian literature.
Comment #1: Her question: it was written in Russian, and is the sense lost in the translation to English?
"Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by "understand"."
Comment #2: Dostoevsky focuses on the Russian soul.
"Indeed, it is the soul that is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in Chekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky; it is liable to violent diseases and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read The Brothers Karamazov or The Possessed a second time. The "soul" is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture."
The "Common Reader" is only glimpses and fragments of literature but it has many interesting sections.