Аурудың Әдебиеттегі Орны: Вирджиния Вулф Эссесі

Essay by Virginia Woolf

On Being Ill is an essay by Virginia Woolf, which seeks to establish illness as a serious subject of literature along the lines of love, jealousy and battle. Woolf writes about the isolation, loneliness, and vulnerability that disease may bring and how it can make even the maturest of adults feel like children again. It was then published as a standalone volume by Woolf's Hogarth Press in 1930, in a small edition of 250 copies typeset by Woolf herself. It was later included in two collections of her essays, The Moment and Other Essays (1947) and Collected Essays (1967). By 2001, however, it had been out of print for 70 years. In 2001, scholars were exploring the rare book collection of Smith College looking for overlooked works by Woolf to re examine for an upcoming conference on Woolf, which led them to the Hogarth Press copy of "On Being Ill." The essay was republished by Paris Press in 2002.

Woolf spends a great portion of the essay comparing her moments of illness to regular daily life. Her piece indicates that she preferred the former over the latter; in fact, while ill, she was greatly inspired creatively since there were no distractions or responsibilities in her way, and she could enjoy some of her favorite pastimes like reading books, or even simply staring at the sky. She loved to gaze at it so much that two full pages of the essay are dedicated to what she saw when she looked up. Whatever it is that she chose to do, she could do it without being judged, which she really appreciated. Another privilege of illness in Woolf's eyes is its aspect of childhood. When ill, she can get the same type of undivided attention from her caregivers as a child can get from their mother, which provides her with the sense of protection she always longed for.

Woolf's descriptions of mind and body indicate that the Cartesian answer to the mind body problem that says the two are separated did not resonate with her. She questions those who have so long written about the mind and its doings but ignore the body although they are "slaves" to each other, showing that she believed the two are one in the same and should be treated like so not only in literature, but in culture as well. This complements her idea that language does not do justice to what the body goes through in the face of illness. Her appreciation for the nothingness that being ill allows her to enjoy also shows her realization that this condition gives people the opportunity to be removed from the busyness of life and from the sense of belonging to society even if only for a second and perhaps start paying attention to the small details of the world that many times go by unnoticed. She even refers to these moments as "moments of being." In her eyes, what this ultimately does is that it gifts people with an almost mystic superpower to give a new meaning to things, as they are able to look beneath the surface and develop a completely new understanding of existence.