To the Lighthouse: Luminous Moments

Greetings.

Regardless of what you think of Virginia Woolf's fiction, I can't imagine that there aren't individual lines, images, passages, etc., that don't nearly take your breath away (you know, in the vein of "if I could just write one sentence like that in my lifetime, I would die happy!"). I don't know if I've ever encountered a better writer of similes. Anyway, I present you with a couple examples, and invite you to share your own.

How about that moment when Mr. Ramsay, in an endearing if ultimately unsuccessful way, tries to make amends with his son. The passage then moves into a positively stunning example of descriptive writing (amateur nature photographers like myself will appreciate the concluding image):

"Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day" (32-33)

Then there's the bee simile, which in many respects distills a major component of the thematic interests of this novel. We're essentially alone as individuals, it seems to say, and can only ever have access to the outer shells of others:

"How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people" (51).