In Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma (1839), we follow the life of impetuous, rebellious young Italian aristocrat Fabrice del Dongo during the Napoleonic era, from Fabrice’s birth in 1798 until his death.
"An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent-- of Miss Vincy, for example."
George Eliot, Middlemarch, book 3, ch.27
For years I was convinced I had read this passage somewhere in Virginia Woolf, but then rediscovered it, to my surprise, in Middlemarch. I'm not sure whether reveals that I had misunderstood Woolf, or underestimated Eliot.
thanks, mike. what a fabulous quote. i think it's impossible to overestimate middlemarch -- and so inevitable that we underestimate it -- even if we think it's superb.
"An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent-- of Miss Vincy, for example."
George Eliot, Middlemarch, book 3, ch.27
For years I was convinced I had read this passage somewhere in Virginia Woolf, but then rediscovered it, to my surprise, in Middlemarch. I'm not sure whether reveals that I had misunderstood Woolf, or underestimated Eliot.
Mike
thanks, mike. what a fabulous quote. i think it's impossible to overestimate middlemarch -- and so inevitable that we underestimate it -- even if we think it's superb.
p. 738ff https://archive.org/details/magicmountain00mann_0/page/737/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/lachartreusedepa0000sten_x3j1/page/n5/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/charterhouseofpa0000sten
https://www.openculture.com/2016/06/virginia-woolf-writes-the-cinema-a-seminal-attempt-to-understand-the-power-of-cinema-1926.html