Virginia Woolf: The Ambiguity Of Feeling

Almost a romantic escape. 1928. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West set off for France to attest to their feelings. To find each other, even with the ever-present phantom of Orlando, which celebrates Vita beyond any love. Virginia has lost her heart to Vita - the elusive, ephemeral Sapphic nymph - and her statuesque body. Vita and her other loves. Swashbuckling Vita. Vita, romancing and being romanced. Vita, bowed in adoration of other women's bodies. For Virginia, feelings are a sort of surrogate ambiguity, because reality -meant to be the setting for a love song - is to her the fertile mother of thousands of worries, clashing affections, and artificial sensibilities. Nothing is as real as her imagined feelings. Virginia feels alone with her own never-ending perplexities. Ambiguity becomes central in her unconsciousness, surmising a possible, likely reality. The love proposition that fails to determine reality as such. A love that even when it is close seems to be far, with thousands of memories emerging and turning into visions that confuse past and present. They live parallel lives in the ambiguity of feeling, lives that appear as imagined realities and real images.