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    Orlando
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    Orlando
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    Orlando
    Ebook276 pages5 hours

    Orlando

    By Virginia Woolf

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Virgini a Woolf, akinek különös tehetségével mindmáig birkózik o kritika, talán legjelentősebb, de mindenesetre legszemélyesebb hangú művét alkotta meg az Orlondó-ban. Csakugyon kevés ilyen sokrétű s ilyen különös könyvet ismer a világirodalom története. Orlondo, a költői hajlandóságú ifjú nemes, az angliai reneszánsz teljében született, Shakespeare szomszédságában ismerkedett meg a vilóggal, látta Erzsébet királynőt, és táncolt a Temze befagyott jegén, majd követ lett Konstantinápolyban, átváltozott nővé, kóbor cigányok között élt romantikus tájakon, hogy azután visszatérve hazájába, tanúja legyen a XVIII., XIX. századi és végül a százod eleji Anglia életének.
    Orlondo persze maga Virginia Woolf, vagyis az az ember, aki magába szívta az elmúlt négy évszázad művelődéstörténetét, s azt próbálja korokon és élményeken át egyetlen költeménnyé sűríteni. Amit a regényben Orlondo megkísérelt, azt váltja valóra Virginia Woolf műve kifinomult iróniával, nemes költőiséggel.
     
    LanguageMagyar
    PublisherFapadoskonyv.hu Kiadó
    Release dateDec 10, 2013
    ISBN9789633769423
    Unavailable
    Orlando
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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    Reviews for Orlando

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      A surreal novel, unmoored from conventional time framework, centred on an immortal, sometimes male and sometimes female. Woolf was a highly skilled writer, and though the work is sometimes entertaining, overall, I found this exercise dull.
    • 2/5
      If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Biological Constructs: "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf(Original Review, 2002-06-18)I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be allowed to write, and then only for a select audience.
    • 5/5
      An Elizabethan nobleman is reincarnated as a Victorian lady via an ambassador to Turkey and a hospitable gypsy tribe. Whimsy to the nth degree! This is not what I was expecting from the author of such a tragedy as THE VOYAGE OUT, but Woolf’s remarkably convoluted yet elegant syntax was sufficient to keep me entranced. I laughed out loud at the scene of Lady Orlando cheating at a game of “Fly loo.”

      Elizabeth Bowen comments in the Afterword to the edition I read that Virginia was the idol of those who believed art exists for “sublimating personality into poetry”—for escaping from the personal, as I understand her. Bowen says these devotees were dismayed to find in ORLANDO a “prank [or] personal joke”—i.e., the author’s evocation of her own special friendship with Vita Sackville-West. Contrary to the aesthetes Bowen cites, I found that the aura of fantasy became so dense in the book’s latter pages it made me wonder if this might be a sublimation of the symptoms of mental illness. What more salutary use might one make of such affliction that to channel it into a book that makes readers laugh?
    • 3/5
      I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't really feel this book until I saw the movie (with Tilda Swinton). Not my favorite V. Woolf, but possibly more interesting.
    • 3/5
      While the scope and idea of this novel was and is exciting, I felt it lacked something. Orlando's adventures felt more like aimless (and not-quite-interesting) wanderings than an exciting odyssey. After finishing the book and feeling a little like I had wasted my time, I read some background on it that explained that the biography was a kind of tribute to Woolf's androgynous lover, Vita Sackville-West. Knowing that gives the novel a little more meaning, but doesn't make it all that much more interesting. As other reviewers have noted, the story up to the point where Orlando leaves London for Constantinople is much more exciting than the rest and is what most of my three stars a owed to.
    • 5/5
      Review of the Annotated Edition of Orlando, published by Harvest Books Harcourt, Inc. Although the movie version of this book is one of my favourites, and although I've read a decent amount of Virginia Woolf, I was rather dubious about this book. It seemed very odd compared to her other writing. And it is . . . but it's wonderfully odd. This may be my favourite of all her novels.What really made this book for me was all the magic realism elements. I loved her descriptions of Orlando viewing all of England from his/her oak tree, including "the wild tides that swirl about the Hebrides". The whole Great Frost section was exceptionally well done, and I especially loved the description of the porpoise frozen in suspended animation in the icy Thames, or the Norwich countrywoman who turned visibly to powder by the cold while she crossed the road. I could go on and on . . .As for the annotations, as with the other annotated Woolf books published by Harvest Harcourt, I have mixed thoughts. Some of the annotations were very helpful. However, I thought they missed some things in the text that I would have appreciated a note on, and there were many notes that I thought unnecessary.Recommended for:I want to say "everyone," but alas, Virginia Woolf is not everyone's cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      In a graduate class on Victorian Literature at Baylor, we read most of Woolf’s works. I had come to the class having only read Mrs. Dalloway, which I greatly enjoyed. Orlando immediately became another favorite of her novels. On October 5, 1927, Virginia Woolf began writing a story she had worked through her mind for months. Now Woolf, an early modernist influenced by James Joyce, is most certainly an acquired taste. The novel, Orlando, is, as she wrote, a fictional “biography beginning in the year 1500 & continuing until the present day” (Nissley, A Reader’s Book of Days 316). I decided to revisit this unusual novel, but a rather peculiar thing happened to me. I found the story a tough read, and as the novel progressed, I found it harder and harder to continue. For once a novel did not stay with me, and I can say I did not enjoy the read at all.The story begins with Orlando, a handsome young man, heir of titles and lands dating back to William the Conquerer. He becomes a favorite of Queen Bess. As Woolf writes, “For the old woman loved him. And the Queen, who knew a man when she saw one, though not, it is said, in the usual way, plotted for him a splendid ambitious career. Lands were given him, houses assigned him. He was to be the son of her old age; the limb of her infirmity; the oak tree on which she leant her degradation. She croaked out these promises and strange domineering tendernesses (they were at Richmond now) sitting bolt upright in her stiff brocades by the fire which, however high they piled it, never kept her warm” (9).Woolf, an ardent feminist, details the habits and peculiarities of men, and then turns her attentions to the onerous life of women with all the strictures placed upon them in regard to marriage, ownership of property, and public, as well as private, activities. She also comments on Elizabethan, Enlightenment, Victorian, and 20th century attitudes towards women.Woolf writes, “crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book learning; none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue; no fancy that what we call ‘life’ and ‘reality are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality; nor, indeed any equivalent for these two words at all” (13). Yes, these lines found themselves on paper in her distinctive purple ink in 1927.Orlando constantly struggles with loneliness and isolation concomitant with his position among the nobility. As he rises to the title of Duke, he begins to detest the hypocrisy of the upper class and the shallow gossip of those who pretend to intellectualism. Orlando befriends, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, and John Dryden attends gatherings with Swift, Johnson, and Boswell. Finally, an invitation is extended to Pope and Addison to her home, and there, they have tea and conversations worthy of those eminent men.Half way through Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the well-foxed old paperback began to fall apart, as if trying to end its own misery. But I have ordered a new copy, with annotations, and I will try again soon. So, I find myself perplexed. Do I dare reread Mrs. Dalloway? I think not. I will hold that one in my memory. Based on my read in 1995, or thereabouts, 5 stars--Chiron, 9/14/14
    • 1/5
      Not what I like about VW's writing. Didn't finish.
    • 5/5
      Virginia W. said this was her throwaway book, not to be taken seriously and not to trouble herself too much over. Sort of her "beach" read. I loved it almost more than her serious works of art. Woolfe isn't known much for the fantastical or the humourous, but Orlando has these things. A fascinating experiment in time and gender.
    • 4/5
      I read this one not knowing exactly what it was about - and I find a very funny, well written, Satire-ish book on what it means to be man or a woman in the British England. First - this is a book you have to read carefully. Orlando doesn't age like a regular person, so years pass, societal beliefs, and general culture change in a blink of an eye. But, it is written in an easy style, with a light touch that makes it a very accessible book. It's a completely different style than Virginia Woolf's other books (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, etc.)Ms. Woolf has a way of writing that manages to capture the absurdity of culture's expectation of both being Male and being Female. Orlando, being both at different times, shows just how limiting both are sexes are. Its also a critique of Victorian England and how stifling it is to women.
    • 5/5
      An extraordinary caprice by Woolf: a 'biography' whose subject is, like an oak tree, effectively immortal and androgynous. (There are also several other characters who are one or both.)Some of the best -- i.e. least simplistic -- thinking about culturally-defined sex roles I have ever read, including observations of how they have mutated over the past four centuries. She asserts, for example, that the Victorian era was a regressive one for women.The last part of the book is an extended reverie, which I found a little monotonous, but I'll give it another chance.
    • 2/5
      I finished Orlando a couple of days ago. It was not really my thing. I understand that it started as a joke, but (even though I sorta know what she was making fun of) it just wasn't funny to me. I'm sure Virginia Woolf had a hoot writing it, though, so I'm happy for her.

      Towards the middle, the "biographer's" voice started sounding very much like the "lecturer's" voice in A Room of One's Own. In fact, I was surprised at the similarity in tonality between the two works. It had that same quality of breaking the third wall, of creating a make-believe scenario that was obviously not true (i.e. written to illustrate a point), and also of that slightly didactic "here's what I want to say on the topic of the sexes" which I didn't mind as much in AROOO since it was an essay afterall.

      Anyway, if you (like me) loved Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then don't read this expecting more of the same. You may love it or you may hate it. If you hated Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then definitely give this a chance. This may be your thing.
    • 4/5
      It's crazy. In a good way.
    • 1/5
      You know, this could have been a good book. I am definitely interested in the sort of premise of the last two-thirds. But my potential enjoyment of the book was ruined by the fact that this book purports to be a biography, or at least a straightforward narrative, for the first third or so -- and then, without warning or explanation, our hero abruptly becomes a transsexual time traveler. Though the book has to this point been fairly realistic, no one reacts as though Orlando's gender switch is odd, and no one thinks it's strange that s/he suddenly appears again over a century after his/her birth. Again, this would have been _fine_ if it was set up. But it wasn't. Woolf begins in a realistic mode, and there is absolutely no good excuse, save sheer perversity, for turning the reader topsy-turvy in this manner. After 130 pages of apparently realistic prose, an abrupt shift (which makes use of an extremely trite use of allegorical figures, I might add) to the realm of the fantastic is confusing and illogical. And the book just goes downhill from there. People from the sixteenth century appear in later centuries -- again, without any explanation and without any expression of surprise on anyone's part. Orlando's house staff from the 1500s is waiting for her when she returns in the early 1700s -- but then they all die by the 1800s, though she is still alive. She marries, and after her husband leaves on a trip we pretty much never find out what the hell happens to him. She gives birth (when she actually got pregnant is yet another question), and her child isn't mentioned after that moment. Jumps in time during the course of the narrative are profoundly unclear. And why doesn't anyone around Orlando seem to remark on the fact that she seems to be immortal?! And of course, woven through all of this at intervals is intolerable "philsophical" prattling which rarely has any depth.As usual, Woolf is too busy trying to be unusual and shocking to bother writing something actually readable. It is so frustrating, because there are a few beautiful passages, and the idea behind the last two-thirds or so of the novel is really interesting and could have made a wonderful book on its own. But these sparks of something better are drowned in Woolf's usual overly-self-conscious, self-indulgent prose. If you really must read any of this (and I advise against it), go only as far as the point where Orlando falls into a trance in Constantinople. There is absolutely nothing worth your time and energy beyond that point.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure what to make of this. As a novel, far too many things are left hanging or unexplained. How come Orlando can live for 400 years and be 36 being just one... As a thought provoking piece of writing, however, it asks a lot of questions that are not uncontroversial now, so goodness only knows what it was like when it was published. On the face of it, Orlando is a biography of the titular character, an Elizabethan Nobleman who has too much time on his hands and a penchant for poetry. He goes to Constantinople as ambassador and comes back transformed into a woman. From that point, the love of literature persists, although the adjustment to life as a woman takes some time. The questions raised are about who we are, the face we present to the world. Orlando starts as a man, ends as a woman, and so has a lot of adjusting to do, in terms of what is expected of her now in her thought, speech, dress and behaviour. Why do we expect, even now, women and men to act differently in the same situations? Then there are questions about conformity, Orlando feels obliged to conform to the times she lives in, but how to do that while remaining true to herself. Some people are of their time, others appear to be ahead or living in the past. They're all equally valuable, should they conform and change their thinking to accommodate their times? There's a lot of what might be described as the thought police
    • 4/5
      What with the crowd, what with the Duke, what with the jewel, she drove home in the vilest temper imaginable. Was it impossible then to go for a walk without being half-suffocated, presented with a toad set in emeralds, and asked in marriage by an Archduke?Orlando is written in the form of a biography rather than a novel, with Virginia Woolf as the very present biographer, discussing her choice of words and the biographer's role, while relating the life of her protean and strangely long-lived subject.I won this book in a competition on the BBCi Arts web-site in 2002. I have been putting off reading it because, out of Virginia Woolf's novels I've only read "Mrs Dalloway" and part of "To the Lighthouse" and struggled with both. I did however enjoy the film version of "Orlando" starring Tilda Swinton, so when I gave myself a 'read it or get rid of it' ultimatum, I decided to give it a go and surprised myself by enjoying it quite a lot!
    • 4/5
      This is an odd book by any stretch of the imagination.
    • 4/5
      Seems like the very beginning of magical realism. I've never read anything like it from that time period. Extremely symbolic. The author is very interested in androgyny, but also, and mainly in coming to terms with oneself and the world. Balancing the yin and yang if you will.
    • 3/5
      Surreal and eclectic. As a piece of allegory, this was an interesting book. A bit long-winded in places but still mostly entertaining.
    • 3/5
      Another classic I had to read for a research project. And I liked it even less than I thought I would. I have no idea why the "experts" rave about this so much... as a lesbian love letter to someone "in the know" (i.e. they have a clue what Woolf was going on about) maybe it is okay. But as a story?? not so much... there is no plot and no suspense... Basically it is a biography of a woman who pretends to be a man so she can have sex with women (and some transgender theorists claim she was transgendered but I didn't see this, I just saw a lesbian trying to live as a man in a world that didn't allow lesbians) and writes page after page about their clothing, their culture, their houses, their roads, their scenery.... ad nauseam.Again, I tried to read this in text form but the paragraphs are very very long and it was hard to keep my place without my eyes glazing over in boredom, so I got it in audio... which was better, only because my eyes no longer hurt.
    • 5/5
      Magical realism saved Orlando from being targeted for obscenity. A delicious tale of a writer's growth into herself, and out of himself. The biographer's commentary is often hilarious, and do pay special attention to the cross-dressing section for hints of the "obscene" according to Lord Campbell's Act of 1857. It isn't there, but it is there.
    • 5/5
      Loads of fun, effortless prose, and one hell of a love note. Not your usual Woolf!
    • 3/5
      Orlando is odd, and I can't quite put my finger on why I think it's odd. It's not the gender bending, although the "and one day Orlando woke up and was a woman" was definitely odd. Finding that one of her lovers had been pursuing her in drag was not so odd as puzzling. The three centuries Orlando lives in this tale is a little odd. I understand the parody of biography Woolf is writing, and the pokes she takes at rigid cultural mores which insist women must behave in certain ways and are not allowed to have sexual interest in other women. I just found the whole book odd, and a bit of a slog and finished it because I've never read Virginia Woolf before and felt I owed it to myself to finish.
    • 1/5
      Possibly one of the strangest novels I've ever read. So... flexible (for lack of a better term) in time and gender, not to mention the legality of identity. I finished it thinking how the story worked which was amazing because logically it doesn't work what so ever.
    • 5/5
      A lovely, lively meditation on biography, history, reading, human nature and sexuality. Amusing, witty, and thought-provoking all at once. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      One of Virginia Woolf's best works, it presents the impossible as believable, and is one of the very few novels I've ever seen taken to the screen that kept the improbable becoming possible without insult to the intellect, and with respect for the beauty.
    • 3/5
      Orlando features less of the beautiful prose passages that I associate with Woolf's writing than her other works, which leaves the story to carry much of the burden. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (and I suspect The Waves, which I shall read shortly), there is an actual story here focusing on the life of the titular Orlando. Orlando occupies a strange semi-supernatural role where both sex and gender shift and the years pass without leaving much trace. It's an interesting center for the story in theory, though in practice I found Orlando to be a rather uninteresting character who goes from a pining youth to a married woman without inspiring much interest or sympathy from me. The character exists in different time periods more than s/he lives in them, making the different ages mere window dressing. Eventually the book ends, though it doesn't feel so much like the story has concluded as it does that Woolf thought she had written enough.

      Decidedly different from most Woolf in both style and substance, I thought this one was alright.
    • 3/5
      On the back cover it states that this is one of Virginia Woolf's most popular and entertaining works. Last year I had read Mrs. Dalloway, my first Woolf, and enjoyed it a lot more.(VERY MILD SPOILERS)The book was interesting, but it didn't grip me. It is a fantastical biography about Orlando, starting with him as a 16-yr old boy sometime in the 1500's, who eventually turns into a woman (I don't think this is a spoiler - it's written on the back of the book...), and is still a relatively young woman when the novel ends in 1928. Orlando is rich with a large estate and is in good favor with the Queen. He has a romance with a Russian princess (at least we think she is), and many others, gets to be Ambassador to Turkey, turns into a woman, has more affairs, and so on.There was lots of just the narrator stepping in and saying how this part is boring. Also, there were some confusing bits, like at one point I think she got pregnant, but it wasn't really clear. But then years later (I think) she gives birth. And then no mention of her child. I was used to that a bit from Mrs. Dalloway, but it was a lot worse in this book.It took me a lot longer to read than it should have; I figured I definitely would have finished it by the end of the year, but it just dragged on and on, and it was a chore to finish.I haven't said a lot of good things about the book, and I'm sorry about that. There were interesting parts here and there, and it did spawn a neat movie, but all in all, I didn't think it was that great.I'm going to give it 3 stars; I'm vacillating a bit, quite ambivalent about it, but I think that's what it should get on my scale.
    • 5/5
      This book was a joy to read. Exuberant, fanciful, exemplifying literature at its finest. This semi-biographical novel is partly based on the life of Vita Sackville-West, an intimate friend of Woolf. Orlando is a character who is liberated from the restraints of time and gender. He starts as a young nobleman in the Elizabethan era and ends as a modern woman three hundred years later. Woolf explores the theme of femininity and roles of men and women within certain cultural (English mainly and Oriental) and historical contexts through some bizarre and outrageous devices (e.g. Orlando is not the only androgynous character). The reader is taken on a wild and playful ride, from his days as a young steward of the queen and on the throes of passion for a Russian princess, his devastation on her desertion, to a period of ambassadorship in Constantinople where he awakes one day as a woman, to time spent with the gypsies, and eventually, to her return to modern-day England. The 2 constant things through all this was her passion for writing, and search for love -- the fulfillment of which she finally found towards the end of her 300-year journey (signifying the drastic difference of the social milieu and implications for women in general). The novel is full of wit, and where Orlando has moments of ambiguity and confusion (owing mostly to social restraints of the era) -- which she would after a round of internal debate, invariably junk, i found hilarious. This publication of this book in 1928, was a hallmark in literature, especially in regard to women's writing and gender studies, for obvious reasons.
    • 2/5
      about a person that changes genders and lives over several centuries