Orlando
EXTRACTS from Virginia Woolf’s strange re-creation of four centuries formed an attractive BBC reading from 3YA on a recent Sunday. The extracts ignored the more puzzling theme of the book, the personal development and adventures of Orlando, which included a change of sex at the end of the second century; and heaven forbid that I should discuss these mysteries here. But the
aspect emphasised by this reading was the purely historical; about one of the great English country houses-actually, I think, the Sackville-West seat at Knole -Virginia Woolf brought successive historical periods and scenes to life and translated them into that familiar idiom of the imaginative writer, the telescoped or timeless present; as Orlando walks through the great rooms, each prepared for a king who never came, each reign is simultaneously, yet in its order, alive and contemporary. Behind all, at the end of the gallery, moves the figure of a monk from the age before the great nobles; and the reading ended here, with a fragment of Peter Warlock to point this last cowled moral. But, in the end, the history lives only by the life-giving but distorting creation of the artistic retrospect; and each piece, as it is read, proves to be not record but high and magnificent fantasy. It is a personal vision at the last, and a certain brilliant impatience characterises it.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19460301.2.25.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 349, 1 March 1946, Page 12
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227Orlando New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 349, 1 March 1946, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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