To the Lighthouse 5 - (well, 2 really)

Our assignment this week is to blog about 5 existing moments of epiphany in Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I have already blogged about the epiphany of sudden death, which is to say death brings about moments of clarity unlike any other experience, not just for the dying but for the grieving. There is a certain life in death... the life that happens afterward, the moments of pause and reflection, picking up the pieces, making sense of it all, putting things back together and continuing on with something of a 'normal' life again. This is an overriding theme in To the Lighthouse, and after GOOGLE-ing around a bit, I found out that the novel is based largely on Virginia Woolf's personal experience with the idea of life IN death and life after death (specifically related to her own family). Conflicts between the characters apparently mirror conflicts within Woolf's own family.

Perhaps one of the most obvious moments of epiphany is the one that comes to Lily at the end of the novel, prompting her to make the last brush stroke and complete her painting. Lily experiences some sort of vision that leaves her thinking about the world and her 'final destiny'... full of compassion and void of the suffering of man-kind. In the last paragraph of the novel she seems to come sudden divine manifestation of her work, the meaning of her work, and the way some things may be more finite than she will ever be.

'Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was - her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in attics, she though; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked her at canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.'

Lily Briscoe made a surreal connection between her existence in the present, the finiteness of her own being, and how lasting her own work would be. Even if the painting would spend its days living in an attic and ultimately destroyed, it was important that she knew at that moment it was finished. It was finished for her, and she could move on. Isn't that how everything works in life? Often times, SOMETHING has to tell us we're finished with one thing in order to move on to another. It's not always presented to us clearly; sometimes it's not even fully understood, but it has to happen. Perhaps she is able to find comfort in knowing that eventually everything will 'lay at length up on the earth'. Even her. Even her painting. Everything.

Another moment of epiphany is when Lily sits bolt upright in bed and asks 'What does it mean then, what can it all mean?' I kind of laughed at this particular part because I swear I have had so many moments like this one... not being able to sleep, thoughts racing chaotically through my head without a single 'off' switch in sight. It's those moments of epiphany that scare me, in a way, because all you come up with is that you don't know what you thought you did and you will never know what you hope to know and it's terrifying. Truly. You spend a majority of that time trying to come up with an answer that you know you will never come up with, and all you can do is finally make peace with your own mind, if only for a second, or until the next time you have one of those moments again. I can never tell when it's going to happen, but when it does it seems like the universe opens itself up and wants me to grasp something and I never can. I just think about how infinite things are... how small I am... and how scary the 'unknown' of death is.

I think I'm done with 'To The Lighthouse' for the day, but I'm sure I'll have some more ramblings to post after Wednesday's discussion. And more Sexson-isms, of course. :)