by Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)
Hardy's Funeral (January, 1928)
Language: English
Yesterday we went to Hardy's funeral. What did I think of? Of Max Beerbohm's letter . . . or a lecture . . . about women's writing. At intervals some emotion broke in. But I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. One catches a bishop's frown and twitch; sees his polished shiny nose; suspects the rapt spectacled young priest, gazing at the cross he carries, of being a humbug . . . next here is the coffin, an overgrown one; like a stage coffin, covered with a white satin cloth; bearers elderly gentlemen rather red and stiff, holding to the corners; pigeons flying outside . . . processions to poets corner; dramatic "In sure and certain hope of immortality" perhaps melodramatic . . . Over all this broods for me some uneasy sense of change and mortality and how partings are deaths; and then a sense of my own fame . . . and a sense of the futility of it all.
Note: this is a prose text; the line breaks are arbitrary.
Authorship:
- by Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Dominick Argento (1927 - 2019), "Hardy's Funeral (January, 1928)", from From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, no. 4. [ sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2008-07-01
Line count: 14
Word count: 168