The Old Woman

One thing I was confused with in Mrs. Dalloway was the old beggar woman.  She doesn't seem to have much of a place in the novel. Part of me thought that she represented Lucrezia's future, that after Septimus died, she would grow old and impoverished.  That does not seem incredibly likely; it seems a bit far-fetched, as there is nothing solid to connect the two.  She sings about her lover, with whom she had walked in May.  In the notes, it mentions a possible connection to a Richard Strauss song.  I looked around, and the lied, Allerseelen, is about a lover reminiscing on love that happened in May, and mourning.  The text is a poem by the Austrian poet Hermann von Gilm zu Rosenegg.  Here is a translation:

All Souls' Day

The fragrant mignonettes put on the table,

And bring in the last red asters,

Then let us speak of love again

Like once in May.

Furtively give me your hand to squeeze

And if anyone sees us, I don't mind at all.

Just give me one of your sweet glances, 

Like once in May.

Today every grave blooms and shines.

Yes, one day a year the dead are freed.

So come, my heart, and be again my own

Like once in May.

Mignonettes and asters are funeral flowers, and All Soul's Day is a day of mourning and prayer for the souls of the dead.  It seems that Woolf connect a woman she had seen on the street with the poem, as the connections between the two warrant more than coincidence.  The people were in love in May, and the woman says to Peter, "give me your hand so that I may press it gently and if someone should see, what matter they?," an almost direct quotation (though she probably would have seen a different translation.) Woolf must have been familiar with Strauss' song (it was published in 1887, and written two years before that,) or the poem.  Some people have taken it that the speaker of the poem is dead, and that the "table" is a headstone.  This doesn't go along with Woolf's use of it, though, as the woman is alive, and is mourning.  The notes speak of the return of the lover on All Soul's Day, so I think that the woman is the speaker of the poem.  Woolf talks about the woman having sung for "infinite ages," and says that the woman will "still be there in ten million years."  I think this means that there will always be love lost to death.  This perhaps foreshadows Rezia's loss of Septimus.  My opinion is that Woolf liked the poem, and worked it into her novel as the old woman.

The Minutiae in The Mezzanine

One of the first things that caught my attention in The Mezzanine was the incredible, obsessive, almost absurd attention to detail.  However, this would eventually be what I found to be the most endearing quality of the novel.  At the beginning, I had trouble with the novel, becoming easily distracted as I read. The endless tangents were tiresome, and I found I had to reread sections to remember what had been said.  I wondered how Baker could go on like this for 130-some pages.  Though, I slowly began to appreciate his style. I saw how there was actually some logic to his digressions.  I found that I appreciated other parts as well.

What first started to better my feeling of the novel was how I could identify with the narrator at times.  I was glad to know that someone else disliked blow-dryers, or that an aversion to small talk in the restroom was completely reasonable.  In this way, I began to like the book.  What really turned me around, though, was the attention to and appreciation of detail, and the seemingly mundane.  Some things I started the novel already appreciating, such as paper towels, and escalators.  I liked seeing normal things in different light, and the scenes he created of everyday life.  One of my favorite passages was that describing his insomnia, especially with the sheep, having been ordered, travelling all day to jump over a fence for him.  I grew to like the novel through scenes like this.

The detail presented in the book was at first onerous, but, I grew to love it through the details I could relate to.  I then had a greater appreciation for other things I had given no thought whatsoever to, the greatest example being perforation.  So, I grew from being annoyed by a passage on the history of the straw, and not particularly caring for it, to growing a greater appreciation for so many of the generic parts of life.  I admired Baker for having put so much thought into these things.  I probably would not have thought twice about my shoelaces breaking a day apart.  This proved to be a very creative work, and I grew to enjoy it in the end through the little details.