Commenting on the essays of Montaigne, Virginia Woolf wrote:
Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.
I’m struck by the line “by no means agrees with the life outside us.” Embedded there is the intuition of the difference between our public presentation, or personality, and our inner self.
In her appreciation of Woolf’s work, Maria Popova wrote, “Only by listening to the voice of the soul — a voice by definition nonconformist, rising above the din of convention and expectation and should — do we become fully and happily ourselves. To be aware of ourselves is to hear that voice. To be content in ourselves is to listen to it.”
This reminds me of e.e. cummings' admonition and gets at the distinction I was aiming at in Modernity replaces thick selves with thin personalities.
Last updated on June 24, 2024
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