ABSTRACT
In Moby Dick, Ishmael says of his friend Queequeg’s home island in the South Pacific, “It is not to be found on any map; true places never are.” Now this is a fascinating concept, because it represents a subtle idea that the true places of man’s awareness are those secret but intensely real places that live within his mind. In a recent essay I spoke of the secret place commented upon by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own to which she felt every soul should be able to retire, even though it might be only within his own mind, to rest and rejuvenate in that peaceful island that can be found on no map anywhere. It is almost platitudinous to suggest that such places should exist for every sensitive individual. However this may be, a galaxy of such unmapped but intensely real places have been created by writers. That these places of the mind are in all probability mere shadows of the real islands and private dwellings of those who create them need not concern us. It is enough that we have been allowed a glimpse of the places where these inventive writers lived a happier and more real existence than was theirs to all intents and purposes in actuality.
