Woolf and Ocampo_Female Contemporaries.pdf

VIRGINIA WooLF AND HER FEMALE CoNTEMPORARIES

Selected Papers from the Twenty-Fifth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf

VIRGINIA WOOLF and Her Female ContemporarLes Selected Papers from the Twenty-Fifth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf

EDITED BY JULIE VANDIVERE AND MEGAN HICKS

Table of Contents Julie Vandivere and Megan Hicks • Introduction ........ ... ......... ... ........ ... ...... ...... ...... ....... vii Acknowledgments .. ................................ ....... ... .................. .. ............. ... ................ .... . xviii Abbreviations ............................................................................................................... xx WHo

ARE VIRGINIA WooLF's FEMALE CoNTEMPORARIEs?

Mary Jean Corbett • Considering Contemporaneity: Woolf and "the Maternal

Generation"............................................................................................................. 2 Mary Wilson • Who Is My Contemporary?: Woolf, Mansfield, and Their Servants .. ........... 8 Catherine W. Hollis • "The World is My Country": Emma Goldman among the Avant-Garde ......................................................................................................... 15 Kristin Bluemel • "Definite, Burly, and Industrious": Virginia Woolf and Gwen

Darwin Raverat .................................................................................................... 22 Jeffrey M. Brown • '.It Verbal Life on the Lips ofthe Living": Virginia Woolf,

Ellen Terry, and the Victorian Contemporary ........................................................... 29 Elisa Kay Sparks • Twists ofthe Lily: Flora/Ambivalence in the Work ofVirginia

Woolf and Georgia O'Keejfe ........... ......................................................................... 36 VIRGINIA WooLF's CuLTURAL CoNTEXTs

Nicola Wilson • Virginia Woolf and the Book Society Limited........................................ 48 Alyssa Mackenzie • The Outsider as Editor: Three Guineas and the Feminist

Periodical.............................................................................................................. 56 Eleanor McNees • Woolf's Imperialist Cousins: Missionary Vocations ofDorothea

and Rosamond Stephen .... .... ... ................ ......... .. ... ........... ....... .................. ............ 62 Beth Rigel Daugherty • Mary Sheepshanks, Virginia Stephen, and Morley College:

Learning to Teach, Learning to Write ............................ ..... ............. ................. ....... 69 Leslie Kathleen Hankins • Moving Picture This: Virginia Woolf in the British Good Housekeeping!? or Moving Picture This: Woolf's London Essays and

the Cinema ........................................................................................................... 76 Sarah Cornish • "Quota Quickies Threaten Audience Intelligence Levels!": The

Power ofthe Screen in Virginia Woolf's "The Cinema" and "Middlebrow" and Betty Miller's Farewell Leicester Square .......................................................................... 86 VIRGINIA WooLF's CoNTEMPORARIES ABROAD

Patrizia A. Muscogiuri • Reconfiguring the Mermaid: H. D., Virginia Woolf, and the

Radical Ethics ofWriting as Marine Practice ........................................................... 94 Jessica Kim • A Carnival ofthe Grotesque: Feminine Imperial Flanerie in Virginia

Woolf's "Street Haunting" and Una Marson's "Little Brown Girl" ........................... 102 Kimberley Engdahl Coates • Mad Women: Dance, Female Sexuality, and Surveillance

in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Emily Holmes Coleman .................................... 109

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Lo · Gilmore • Shop My Closet: Virginia Woolf Marianne Moore, and Fashion Contemporaries ...... ........................................... ...... ................................. .. ......... 116 Maria Aparecida de Oliveira • Virginia Woolf and Victoria Ocampo: A Brazilian Perspective ........................................................................................................... 122 Joyce E. Kelley • Making ~ves in Lonely Parallel: Evelyn Scott and Virginia Woolf. ................................................................................................................. 129 Urvashi Vashist • Critical Characters in Search ofan Author: Cornelia Sorabji and Virginia Woolf.............................................................................................. 136 Kristin Czarnecki • "'n my mind I saw my mother':· Virginia Woolf Zitkala-Sa, and Autobiography ................................................... ........................................... 143 VIRGINIA WOOLF'S CONTEMPORARIES AT HOME

Gill Lowe • "The Squeak ofa Hinge": Hinging and Swinging in Woolf and

Mansfield ............................................................................................................ 150 Kate Haffey • "People must marry':· Queer Temporality in Virginia Woolfand

Katherine Mansfield ............................................................................................ 157 Emily Rials • The Weight of"Formal Obstructions" and Punctuation in Mrs. Dalloway and Pointed Roofs .............................................................................. 163 Diane F. Gillespie • Advise and Reject: Virginia Woolf the Hogarth Press, and a Forgotten Womans Voice ............................. ..................... ........... .............. ............ 170 Karen L. Leven back • Florence Me/ian Stawell and Virginia Woolf Home-front Experience, The Price of Freedom, and Patriotism ................................................ 177 Benjamin D. Hagen • Intimations of Cosmic Indifference in Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Olive Moores Spleen ....................................................................... 183 Mark Hussey • "Could I sue a dead person?':· Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf .... ......... 189 Vara Neverow • Splintered Sexualities in Rebecca Wests The Return of the Soldier, Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, and Sylvia Townsend ~rners /1 Love Match" .... 196 Barbara Lonnquist: Sexual Cryptographies and ~r in Virginia Woolfs Between the Acts and Elizabeth Bowens The Heat of the Day ......................................... ........ 202 TRIBUTE TO ]ANE

MARcus

Linda Camarasana • Memorial Tribute for jane Marcus ............................................... 21 0 To jane, Thank You. With Love, ............ ........ ............ ....................... 213 Jean Mills • Tribute to jane Marcus ................................ .......................... ............. ...... 216

J. Ashley Foster •

Notes on Contributors ............................................................... ..... ....... .......... ........ . 218 Conference Program .................................................................................................. 223

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VIRGINIA WooLF AND VICTORIA OCAMPO:

A BRAZILIAN PERSPECTIVE

by Maria Aparecida de Oliveira

T

his paper aims to investigate how Woolf influenced Victoria Ocampo's literary production as it appears in Ocampo's Testimonies. It also aims to analyze how Ocampo disseminated Virginia Woolf's writings in the Spanish-speaking world through translations, public lectures, publications, and especially through her passion for talking about Woolf. This relationship was of mutual benefit in a remarkable manner to both of them as women writers and intellectuals of their time. Woolf dramatically impacted Ocampo's progress as a writer. Ocampo contribured immensely in spreading Woolf's writings in the Spanish-speaking world. However, Ocampo was severely criticized because of her European relations. Juan Peron, the president of Argentina at the time, thought she was spreading an imperialist vision; others, on the contrary, thought that she was a nationalist because her work was of great assistance to building an Argentinean culture. My paper is organized into four sections. First, I will write about the 1934 encounter between Virginia Woolf and Victoria Ocampo, introducing the latter and giving details abour their impressions of each other. Second, I will talk about the translation Ocampo made of A Room of One's Own (1929) and Woolf's impressions of it. Third, I will emphasize the importance of the photographs of Woolf taken by Gisele Freund and the circumstances around them. Finally, I will concentrate on Victoria Ocampo's writings on Woolf; I will begin with "Letter to Virginia Woolf," written in 1934 (about the time Ocampo met Woolf); then, I will move to Virginia Woolf in her Diary, and lastly, I would like to discuss Ocampo's speech at the Academy, in which she mentions Virginia Woolf and how important she was in motivating Ocampo to write. WOOLF AND OCAMPO: FIRST ENCOUNTER

Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979) came from a wealthy, aristocratic Argentinean family whose position offered her some privileges but also dictated how she should behave in a patriarchal society. From the very beginning she had to fight against all odds in order to survive in an intellectual and literary patriarchal environment and to pursue her artistic goals. She was the founder and publisher of one of the most influential literary journals of her time, Sur, around which an international literary elite gathered, including Argentinean writers such as Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges. The purpose of Sur was to develop a cultural bridge between European, American, and Latin American cultures. Not only did Ocampo know how isolated Argentina was, bur she was also aware of the lack of interest and knowledge that other countries had regarding Latin America. So, against the wind and the tide, as Doris Meyer characterized Ocampo's journey, she carried on with her enterprise for more than forty years, translating and disseminating her culture and bringing to her country European and American literature and art of all sorts. She made a tremendous effort to bring many writers to Argentina, such as Rabindranath Tagore and Aldous Huxley. She was familiar with Paul Valery, Jean Cocteau, H.G. Wells, Bernard

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Shaw, and Jacques Lacan. Many women writers contributed to shaping her thoughts regarding feminism, including Maria de Maeztu, Gabriela Mistral, and especially Virginia Wool( Sylvia Beach was the one who gave her a copy of A Room of One's Own. The first encounter berween Ocampo and Woolf was on November 26, 1934, when Aldous Huxley introduced them in London at the Man Ray photography exhibition. Ocampo was absolutely fascinated by Woolf, and Woolf must have been interested in Ocampo as well, as Ocampo soon became one of Woolf's fictional characters. Woolf's perception of South America was similar to the one presented in her novel The Voyage Out. Dear Madame Okampo [sic] You are too generous. And I must compare you to a butterfly if you send me these gorgeous purple butterflies [orchids]. I opened the box and thought "this is what a garden in South America looks like!" I am sitting in their shade at the moment, and must thank you a thousand times. (L5: 349) On the one hand, Woolf created an exotic vision of Ocampo, thus introducing a clear difference berween the rwo of them. Ocampo, on the other hand, fed Woolf's imagery of South America, sending her a box with big butterflies from different countries. TRANSLATION

When Victoria Ocampo wrote to Woolf expressing her interest in translating A Room ofOne's Own into Spanish and getting it published by Sur, Woolf reacted with some skepticism. Why would South American readers be interested in her works? What could they possibly have in common with an English audience? We have to wonder about Woolf's response. Was she being too insecure about her own writing and how it would be received in other countries? Or was she being too snobby and looking down on the "other," as we have already seen in other texts, such as The Voyage Out? Woolf was much aware of her position as a self-centered woman writer, when she says in Moments ofBeing: I have visited most of the capitals of Europe, it is true; I can speak a kind of a dog French and mongrel Italian; but so ignorant am I, so badly educated, that if you ask me the simplest question-for instance-where is Guatemala?-! am forced to turn the conversation. (204) The fact is that Ocampo's reality was completely unknown to Woolf, and the Spanish language was for Woolf "a gaping mouth, but no words"; it was a world she could only imagine. As we can read in a letter Woolf sent to Ocampo: Dear Victoria, Yes, you wrote a very nice, I won't say flattering, but impetuous letter. I agree about hunger: and agree that we are most satiated, or so famished that we have no appetite. How interested I am in your language (Spanish), which has a gaping mouth but no words-a very different thing from English. (L5: 349) To Ocampo, translating Woolf in 1935 was a very important step for both of them. It was fundamental to have A Room of One's Own introduced and facilitated through the gaze of

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VIRGINIA WooLF AND HER FEMALE CoNTEMPORARIEs

a woman. Regarding the Spanish editions published by Victoria Ocampo in Buenos Aires, Woolf expressed her opinion: And I shall be proud to see A Room look like that. I think the Room is the best to begin on: then perhaps, if you want another, Orlando or To lhe Lighthouse. I heard from your agent this morning; and oddly enough by the same post got a copy of Mrs Dalloway in a Spanish translation. (Catalan I think) so don't do that. (L5: 358) Pertaining to the translation itself, I fail to understand why Ocampo entrusted the translation of A Room of One's Own to the brilliant writer Jorge Luis Borges instead of translating it herself. Borges had his own rationale on translation, as we can see, especially, in his short story "Pierre Menard, Quixote's Author," in which he questions if the translator is also a creator or is a re-creator of the "original" text. Borges would fictionalize it by stating that the translator was his mother. However, she only began translating after his father's death in 1938. Borges declared that he was a feminist already, and he did not need to be converted. By doing so, Borges understands A Room of One's Own as a conversation between women, but he also perceives it as a manifesto to convert men into feminism. Maybe he believed his mother needed that kind of teaching but that he did not, being an emancipated man. PHOTOGRAPHY

In 1939, Victoria Ocampo asked Gisele Freund, the famous photographer, to photograph Woolf, who did not like the idea at all. Woolf wrote a very nasty message about Ocampo's inconvenience on June 26: Dear Victoria, Its quite true-I was annoyed. Over and over again I've refused to be photographed. Twice I had made excuses so as not to sit to Madame Freund. And then you bring her without telling me, and that convinced me that you knew that I didn't want to sit, and were forcing my hand. As indeed you did. It is difficult to be rude to people in one's own home. So I was photographed against my will about 40 times over, which annoyed me. (L6: 342-43) Gisele Freund was taken by surprise to read Woolf's reaction in her diary and in her letters. She said the reality was a different one: After seeing the projection of my color portraits of writers on June 23, 1939, Virginia invited me to come back next day and photograph her.... In those days, color film was still so weak that you could not take indoor shots, and I had to count on the cooperation of my subjects. In looking at the photos of Virginia that I publish here, you will also notice that she is wearing different dresses. Indeed, she had suggested changing dresses because "one or the other will be more photogenic for the color film." Do you seriously believe that a person who goes to such lengths for the success of her pictures feels herself"violated"? (Freund 96) In the end, Woolf gave Freund the album of portraits taken by Julia Margaret Cameron, the photographer in Woolf's family. Unfortunately, Woolf did not see the magnificent

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photographs because of the beginning ofWorld War II aqd her subsequent death. Ocampo saw the pictures when Freund came to Argentina, fleeing Nazi persecution and taking refuge in Ocampo's house, where Freund stayed before going to Mexico and photographing Frida Kahlo. WRITINGS

In relation to Ocampo's writings about Woolf, I want first to reflect on the "Letter to Virginia Woolf," on Virginia Woolf In Her Diary, 1 and then on Ocampo's speech at the Academy of Letters. From the beginning of their acquaintance, Woolf motivated Ocampo to write, urging her to write her autobiography and to write from her position as a woman: Dear Victoria, I told you how very bad I was at writing letters, and now you will believe me .... I'm so glad you write criticisms not fiction. And I'm sure it is good criticism-dear and sharp, cut with a knife .... I hope you will go on to Dante, and then to Victoria Okampo [sic]. Very few women yet have written truthful autobiographies. It is my favorite form of reading. (I mean when I'm incapable of Shakespeare, and one often is) What are you doing in Paris? I have no notion: I did run up a ramshackle South America for you, when I saw you, bur what does she do from 10 to 4 in Paris? Whom does one see? And where does one walk? And-but I can't ask all the questions I want answered. (L6: 354) And Ocampo expressed similar views: You say it is important for women to express themselves, and to express themselves in writing. You encourage them to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast .... But here we come to what I, for my part, would like to confess publicly, Virginia: Like most uneducated South American women, I like writing. And this time "uneducated" should be pronounced without irony. My sole ambition is to one day write more or less well, more or less badly, but like a woman. If I could have a magic lamp like Aladdin and, by rubbing it, could have the power to write like Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Cervantes, or Dostoevsky, I truly would not take advantage of it. Because I believe that a woman cannot unburden herself of her thoughts and feelings in a man's style, just as she cannot speak with a man's voice. (1 03) We can see that their correspondence discusses women and fiction and, at the same time, it brings up some aspects of A Room of One's Own. Their dialogue represents a room occupied by two women discussing their position in a patriarchal literary tradition, their poverty in terms of tradition, and Ocampo's hunger for literature, which means rich creativity and many possibilities. Ocampo felt Woolf could nourish her hunger as a woman writer. She writes criticism as a common reader, following Woolf's suggestions in her own

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essay. Presently, we can understand her text as a kind of feminist theory, useful to the analysis of women writers. One month after their meeting in 1934, Ocampo published "Letter to Virginia Woolf," in which she describes her feelings about their meeting: Two other women talk about women. They examine, interrogate themselves. One curious, the other, delighted .... These two women look at each other. The two gazes are different. One seems to say: 'Here is a book of exotic images to browse.' The other, 'In which page of this magical story I'll find a description of where the key to the treasure is hidden?' But these two women, born in different environments and climates, one an Anglo-Saxon, the other a Latin American, one endowed to a formidable tradition, and the other endowed to the vacuum (au risque de tomber pendant l'eternite), the richest is the one which will be enriched by the encounter. The richest will have immediately gathered a harvest of images. The poorest will have not found the key to the treasure. Everything is poverty among the poor and wealth in the rich. (1 01) Two women in a room talking about women and fiction: they have different gazes, they came from different places, but they have many things in common. Ocampo's text emphasizes her cognizance of the differences from and similarities to Woolf and other women writers. When Ocampo refers to Woolf's dislike of Bronte's anger, she places herself in the text, expressing her own anger and passion for writing. When Ocampo writes about Woolf, she is making a revision, a re-articulation, and a reinterpretation of A Room of One's Own. Ocampo is the fundamental mediator between Woolf and the Spanish-speaking world, as a main spokesperson who shares her gift with other Latin American women writers. Ocampo is inviting them to write about themselves, to fight for their own rights and to inhabit and occupy the literary patriarchal room. In this, we not only have two women in a metaphorical room, but many women writers from different nationalities, coming from different parts of the globe, with different gazes and ideas to enrich and enhance the dialogue about women and fiction, challenging and empowering one another to occupy the places they deserve. Similarly, at this conference, Virginia Woolfand her Female Contemporaries, we are inviting women to express their creativity. We are empowering them and encouraging them them to think back through our mothers all over the world, connecting and inspiring each of us. By doing so, we can show that writing is still a political act, an act of self-awareness and self-fulfillment. Ocampo starts Virginia Woolf In Her Diary by criticizing men's censorship of women's writing. She discusses Leonard Woolf's editing of his wife's diary and then moves on to discuss Leslie Stephen's influence on Woolf. Reading Woolf's diary leads Ocampo to think not only about Leslie but also about other Victorian fathers who tyrannized their daughters' lives. For her, both A Room ofOne's Own and Three Guineas (1938) are the real history of the Victorian fight between the victims (the daughters) of the patriarchal system and the patriarchal fathers. And she relates the same fight against tyranny in To the Lighthouse (1927), linking Woolf's political essays to her poetic novels. She compares Woolf's moments of being, her unspeakable experiences, to Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception. She analyzes Woolf's experience with time and her desire to express this experience:

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The time .... The age! She always comes back to the theme. At fifty, she asks herself if there will be still 20 years to work. The desire to write devours her. Writing before dying, always writing. (Ocampo 82) Ocampo questions the gaps, the moments of silence in Woolf's diary and asks whether they might it be due to Leonard's editing or to Woolf's own desire to silence the critical moments of her life before her death. In 1940, she felt the danger, the oppression, and the hostility of war, which could explain her silence. She thought that the last page of the diary would be the last page of her novel 7he Ulaves ( 1931), in which Woolf says: What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, 0 Death! (228) Ocampo was the first woman to join the Academy of Letters in Argentina in 1977; unfortunately, she died two years later in 1979. After a life fighting against the wind and the tide, after spending 37 days in prison in 1953 due to Juan Peron's fascist government, the 1977 recognition makes it seem that she had won a consolation prize and public recognition for her life's work. During her speech to the Academy, she mentions three important women who influenced her writing and who shaped her identity as a woman writer. The first one was Virginia Woolf, who encouraged her to write, to write about herself, to write as a woman. The second one was Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean Nobel Prize winner in 1945, who encouraged Ocampo to keep to her roots, to her identity. Finally, the third one was Agueda, her Guarani Indian ancestor, whom she discovered after her dialogue with Mistral. About the first one, Virginia Woolf, she said: In 1934, I dedicated the first volume of my Testimonios published by Revista de Occidente to Virginia Woolf. She had encouraged me to write even without knowing exactly to whom she was charging such a delicate task. She didn't read Spanish, but she wanted women to express themselves in any language in any country and about any subject, however trivial or vast it might seem. (Meyer 282) About Gabriela Mistral, she said: The Nobel Prize didn't change Gabriela Mistral, who was half Indian and was born in the Valley ofElqui. This is not a demagogic stance. I am as incapable of demagogy as I am of pedantry. But in my capacity as woman, it is both an act of justice and an honor to invite my Guarani ancestor to this reception at the Academy and to seat her between the English and the Chilean, not because she deserves as others do, to enter an Academy of Letters, but because I, for my part, recognize Agueda as inherent justice. (282) Ocampo wrote about Woolf all her life, and this helped her to understand better their relationship and how important Woolf was for her process of development as a woman

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writer. By accepting the appointment to join the Academy, she was opening the doors for other women writers. By that time, the world was changing. Ocampo joined the Academy in 1977, under a ruthless dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-81), the bloodiest period in Argentina's history, which lasted until 1983. This is the time of the desaparecidos (disappeared people) and the mothers of "Plaza de Mayo" claiming their disappeared children. At this time, Ocampo was just visualizing the beginning and the great need for democracy, in which men and women would benefit and would sit together in the literary tables of the Academy. Woolf envisioned this change in 1910: she felt the world was beginning to change socially and politically, especially for women. Ocampo fought to make this change a reality. In this sense, some critics considered Ocampo political acts as social feminism, because she believed that the changes in women's rights would change the fabric that weaves society. Others, such as Gayle Rogers, consider her feminism an international feminism, because it was bound to an international agenda, a European and North American one. It was also connected to her cosmopolitan position, since she was always traveling and working to build cultural, artistic, and literary bridges, which would break the isolation of Argentina and would help to spread the literary production of Latin American writers. Doris Meyer argues the bridges she erected-between people, continents, genders, and cultures-will unquestionably last longer than those constructed by her father in Argentina. I would say that they will last forever, and of course they will have a great impact on other women writers from all over the world. For my part, Virginia Woolf, I would like to confess that I, an uneducated woman from the fringes of the world, like writing, and, as a common reader, I like writing criticism, and one day I hope to write my own history, as a woman expressing my own vision. And like Ocampo, I would like to place both my African and Indian ancestors here between you and me. First, because they deserve to be here. Second, because I recognize their rights, and finally because it is in my power to turn them into flesh and word, because as Judith Shakespeare, they still live: great poets never die. Note 1.

I am using here the Spanish edition, Virginia Woolf En Su Diario (1954). The text "Carta a Virginia Woolf" or "Letter to Virginia Woolf" is presented as an appendix in the same book, and translations are mine. Ocampo's speech at the Academy of Letters is in the book Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and

the Tide, written by Doris Meyer.

Works Cited Meyer, Doris. Victoria Ocampo: Against the Wind and the Tide. Austin: Texas UP, 1990. Print. Ocampo, Victoria. Virginia Woolf En Su Diario. Buenos Aires: Sur, 1954. Print. Rogers, Gayle. Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print. Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf Ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. 6 vols. London: Hogarth, 1975-80. Print.

- . Moments ofBeing. Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. 2nd ed. San Diego: Harcourt, 1985. Print. - . The Woves. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.