The Struggle of the Artist

Clive Bell states: "For works of art, unlike roses, are the creations and expressions of conscious minds" (103). Roses are perfect creations and beautiful in themselves. Both Bell and Roger Fry believe that art is more than a perfect beautiful creation. In their view, art is both imaginative and emotional. As a defender of abstract art, Bell's philosophy is that the aesthetic qualities in an object evoke emotion. Art then is not just an intellectual endeavor of the artist. In striving to create a new form, the artist of the modern era often breaks away from traditional forms which may shock the sensibilities of the viewing public. The modern artist is searching for a form that expresses truth.

Bell explains that a work of art is the result of several factors, which include an intense sensibility, a creative impulse, and an artistic problem. First, the artist is put into a situation where he/she feels the need to express himself/herself. Sometimes this only lasts for a short period of time because during the creative impulse phase, the artist's inspiration can grow cold as he/she is executing or constructing the piece. What starts as a passion does not necessarily maintain itself throughout the creative process.

Bell defines the artistic problem as making a match between the emotional experience and a form that has yet to be created. Bell calls this the "significant form." The artist needs more than desire to develop a form that will fit the experience. Bell emphasizes that the great artists of the past such as Shakespeare or Picasso perfected a form which speaks to the depth of the human soul. Their creations appeal to the aesthetic emotions of the viewer and reader. It is a strong emotion almost like a religious experience. What inspires artistic experience and what an artist compresses into their art is an intense feeling for the object itself.

Bell concludes his essay by saying that an "artist must submit his creative impulse to the conditions of the problem" (106). He is saying that an artist must set himself/herself to create a particular form. Artists and writers struggle to find that significant form to fit the creative ideas they are trying to express. Bell also emphasizes that aesthetic value of the art work has nothing to do with whether it is an accurate representation of something. It is somewhat difficult though to apply Bell's theory to the great art work of the past, such as the paintings of the Impressionistic era. Did they also not have something valuable to express?

Virginia Woolf's "An Unwritten Novel"

Woolf's "An Unwritten Novel"

The spirit of free thought and intellect is encouraged by members of the Bloomsbury Group. Woolf, a member of the group is encouraged to develop her independence. She eventually uses novel ways to express her vision of the modern world. For example, in her short story, "An Unwritten Novel," Woolf experiments with style and form which she later uses in her novels Jacob's Room (1922) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

In "An Unwritten Novel, a parody, Woolf makes fun of the contrived plots the narrator fantasizes about. For example, the narrator renames the old woman on the train, Minnie Marsh. She envisions Minnie as a spinster, but in actuality she is a mother. This is symbolic because the narrator is a mother also - the creator of stories - "the unborn children of the mind." The narrator then is the creator and ruler of the fictional world. In fact, she is a writer of the type of fiction that Woolf did not admire. Her fantasies are absurdly melodramatic and disconnected from reality.

As a writer, Woolf is more concerned with the process of the story and the artist's response to the external world through the creation of a fictional world. In this short story, as the narrator continues to daydream, her thoughts become more chaotic, which is a sense of her unrestrained imagination. Woolf's feelings about art was that it should be imaginative and intellectual, not emotional. She wants to express truth by searching for a form of literature that breaks traditional rules. One of the patterns that she breaks is that she does not use conventional order of action.

"An Unwritten Novel" dramatizes the problem of writing and how difficult it is to close the gap between the narrator and the woman she is describing. Are the narrator's daydreams reflective of her own emptiness?

Bibliography

Bishop, Edward. Virginia Woolf. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Farjarod-Acosta, Fidel. "An Unwritten Novel." World Literature Website. 8 Sept. 2009.

<http://fajarodacosta.com/world/lit/woolf>.

Gorsky, Susan Rubinow. Virginia Woolf: Revised Edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Marcus, Jane. Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy. Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press, 1987.

Sellei, Nora. "The Snail and the Times: Three Stories 'Dancing in Unity.'"

Short Story Criticism. Vol. 79. New York: Thompson Gale, 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. "An Unwritten Novel." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. 8 Sept. 2009.

http://www.bartleby.com/85/4.html.

Woolf, Virginia. "Modern Fiction." Norton Anthology: English Literature.

Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2006.

Who is the real Virginia Woolf? - Forster's Views

Virginia Woolf was a woman of many talents, but writing by far was her passion. She wrote for the sake of writing. In Forster's Rede lecture on the author, he said that Woolf had neither the desire for money nor the desire for reputation nor philanthropy could influence her (206). She enjoyed writing and it was her sense of humor that kept her from tiring of it. She experimented with syle and form and this kept her writing fresh. "Literature was her merry-go-round as well as her study" (207).

Even though she enjoyed the humorous side of life, she was always in control of her writing. She was a perfectionist which sometimes made life difficult for her. For example, her first novel, The Voyage Out, took seven years to complete, but she was always supported by her friends in the Bloomsbury Group, including Forster, whose opinion she valued. It was obvious that Forster was most impressed with her novels Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and the Waves. In his description of these novels, Forster focused on her development of the characters in the novels as well as a sense of poetry in these works.

In her works, particularly her short stories, Woolf allowed her characters to melt into one another. What mattered to her was what happened inside the characters. They were symbolic of the human community - both unique and typical. Woolf's gift was her development of character rather than plot. According to Forster, her characters can be remembered on their own account.

Woolf was an experimenter. Even though she wrote a few conventional novels, she liked to take chances. Forster pointed out that her ideas did not always work out, particularly when she was inspired to write about Feminism. He referred to her Feminism as extreme and said that she was sometimes not really aware how much progress had been made since her support of the Suffragette movement during her youth. He characterized her as a snob, particularly shince she was more attuned to an upper-class upbringing than what people of the Labour class endured.

It was amazing the amount of work Woolf accomplished during her short period of life. It was unfortunate that her mental illness cut her great literary career short. I think that Forster summed her up best with this description: "She is like a plant which is supposed to grow in a well-prepared garden bed - the bed of esoteric literature - and then pushes up suckers all over the place, through the gravel of the front drive, and even through the flagstones of the kitchen yard" (204-5). What is it that fascinates you , the reader about Virginia Woolf?