Abstract
In their introduction to a 2011 issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany dedicated to the topic of ‘Woolf and Spirituality’, Amy C. Smith and Isabel MarÃa Andrés-Cuevas observe how Woolf, like many of her fellow modernists, engaged with ‘religious forms in unorthodox ways’ and explored forms of spiritual experience ‘outside [of] organized religion’. Smith and Andrés-Cuevas contend that Woolf’s conception of the spiritual entailed an ‘impulse to surpass the material aspects of life and look towards an intangible dimension of the latter’. They propose that Woolf sought to ‘transcend the ordinary and look for something spiritual in the world’ (1). The view that the spiritual for Woolf is something that lies beyond the ordinary, material realm and that her work betrays a desire to move beyond (‘surpass’ or ‘transcend’) that realm—and that it is by implication somehow insufficient—is one I want to challenge here. As I will discuss, one of the hallmarks of conceptions of the spiritual and spiritual experience in modernism is what Pericles Lewis describes as a ‘blurring of the lines between the sacred and the profane’ (2010, 20). Many modernists sought what Lewis terms a ‘secular sacred’, by which he means a ‘form of transcendent or ultimate meaning to be discovered in this world, without reference to the supernatural’ (2010, 21). In exploring Woolf’s conception of a ‘secular sacred’, I will discuss the relationship between ordinary life and her idea of a numinous reality, as well as its revelation and apprehension. Woolf’s descriptions of an abstract reality, which she sometimes refers to as ‘it’ or ‘the thing’, relate to her conception of a unifying pattern underlying everyday life. This pattern or special sense of reality is made manifest to her during ‘moments of being’— experiences that are embedded in the everyday. During the course of this chapter, I will propose that in addition to being central to her descriptions and experience of the numinous, Woolf frequently affords the immanent realm—ordinary things, daily routines and activities—attributes that are traditionally associated with the divine: particularly ideas of plenitude, bliss and sacredness. Far from being something to disavow or move beyond, the ordinary and daily are, for Woolf, the home of the sacred, happiness and value. While like many of her contemporaries, Woolf grappled to articulate a personal philosophy and conception of the spiritual within a linguistic framework that was shaped by 2000 years of Judeo-Christian thought, repeatedly in her writing she puts forward the view that the sacred and numinous reside within, and cannot be situated outside of, the ‘immanent frame’ (Gordon 2011, 126). If the Romantics understood the supernatural to inhere in nature (‘natural supernaturalism’), Woolf along with other modernists such as James Joyce and Wallace Stevens, substantially amplified the Romantics’ regard for the commonplace and ordinary, elevating it to the status of the sacred.1 Thus, in novels such as Joyce’s Ulysses and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, a ‘sacramental quality’ is conferred onto ‘mundane tasks’, experiences of social connection and intimacy, and ordinary things (Lewis 2010, 14).
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf |
Editors | Kristina K. Groover |
Place of Publication | Switzerland |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Pages | 51-68 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783030325688 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941
- spirituality