The Problem of Life, Literature and Art

ghlight other levels of reading the work through forms, symbols, meanings - "woven presences"[vii] from other texts. V. Woolf likes to rethink things from life, art and literature through associations and metaphors[viii]. The novel is present in various metaphors - the book of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, from which Mrs. Ramsay reads to little James, a painting, a sock, a butterfly, a cocoon, etc.

      Describing moments from the life of the Ramsey family and their loved ones in two long days and one short night, in which a period of ten years is synthesized, the author constructs the creator's view of the world and his philosophy in the age of modernism, when under the influence of science and technology progress, man has lost his own center. Faith in God is missing and humanity is facing a huge abyss. The side view is achieved through descriptions of the summer house in the countryside and the changes occurring in it as reflections, or echoes, of events that occurred at a great distance; through the thoughts of artist Lilly Briscoe; through brief moments of empathy in the completely unremarkable observer-narrator (he or she, sometimes Lilly, but not quite), revealing assumptions about likely feelings and thoughts in others, based on observations of actions, movements, expressions of faces, poses, voices...

     The motifs of art, the forms and outlines, through which the figures of gods and heroes from the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc. are implicitly hinted at. mythologies, images and symbols from Christianity[ix], etc. are metaphors through which V. Woolf returns to his memories of individual moments of life with his family and holidays spent at the cottage in Cornwall, South West Great Britain. It is debatable whether the word "prototype" is appropriate for her family, implied through the Ramsays, as well as for the cottage, given that writing and art are the means by which she returns painlessly to the innermost left in her memory of those closest to her, and not the other way around - that she was looking for a way to embody them in the mosaic of the novel. It is no coincidence that "To the Lighthouse" is constructed in three parts - "Window" (can be represented by a sign-symbol-eye); "Time passes" - a long night, through which both the barrier and its overcoming are expressed, so that the gaze of the eye from the First part can painlessly reach the Third part: "The lighthouse" - the cherished memory.

Through the act of writing the novel, V. Woolf crosses his abyss to achieve inner balance. The approach she chose for the construction of the narrative was provoked by the studies of A. Bergson, W. James and F. de Saussure.