writing we have something more elusive than has yet been achieved in English. If a drowsy and desultory person could also be a great artist he would talk like this:
Yellow and black, pink and snow white, shapes of all these colours, men, women and children were spotted for a second upon the horizon, and then, seeing the breadth of yellow that lay upon the grass, they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees, dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it faintly with red and blue. It seemed as if all gross and heavy bodies had sunk down in the heat motionless and lay huddled upon the ground, but their voices went wavering from them as if they were flames lolling from the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire; or, in the voices of children, such freshness of surprise: breaking the silence? But there was no silence; all the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels and changing their gear: like a vast nest of Chinese boxes all of wrought steel turning ceaselessly one within another the city murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours in the air.
The objection (or apparent objection) to this sort of writing is that it cannot say much or be sure of saying anything. It is an inspired breathlessness, a beautiful droning or gasping which trusts to luck, and can never express human relationships or the structure of society. So at least one would suppose, and that is why the novel of Jacob's Room (1922) comes as a tremendous surprise. The impossible has occurred. The style closely resembles that of Kew Gardens. The blobs of colour continue to drift past; but in their midst, interrupting their course like a closely sealed jar, rises the solid figure of a young man. In what sense Jacob is alive—in what sense any of Virginia Woolf's characters live—we have yet to determine. But that he exists, that he stands as does a monument is certain, and wherever he stands we recognise him for the same and are touched by his outline. The coherence of the book is even more amazing than its
