¿Cómo es James? ¿Qué piensa de su padre y de su
madre? Así escribe Virginia Woolf los primeros párrafos de To the Lighthouse…
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But
you'll have to be up early in the morning," she added.
To her son these
words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were
bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years
and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within
touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which
cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects,
with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such
people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the
power to crystallize and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance
rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the
illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, provided the picture
of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was decorated
with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms
knocking, dresses rustling--all these were so coloured and distinguished in his
mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he
appeared the image of absolute and uncompromising severity, with his
high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning
slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide
his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and dignified
on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public
affairs.