by Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)
Parents (December, 1940)
Language: English
How beautiful they were, those old people - I mean father and mother - how simple, how clear, how untroubled. I have been dipping into old letters and father's memoirs. He loved her: oh and was so candid and reasonable and transparent . . . How serene and gay even, their life reads to me: no mud; no whirlpools. And so human - with the children and the little hum and song of the nursery. But if I read as a contemporary I shall lose my child's vision and so must stop. Nothing turbulent; nothing involved; no introspection.
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), "Parents (December, 1940)", from From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, no. 7. [ sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2017-08-12
Line count: 9
Word count: 98