ABSTRACT
As early as 1923, Virginia Woolf's sense of the mystery of the universe and the complexity of human existence is bound up with her feelings/for the sea. As a child Virginia Woolf did not, of course, understand the meaning of that experience, but only knew that something very special had happened to her. Half a century later she attempted to analyse those moments of being connected with the sea and St Ives in 'A Sketch of the Past'. The Waves, a more analytic and theoretic novel, attempts to convey more of the meaning behind the experience of transcendence in those moments. It is a mystical poetical work of verbal complexity on a ground base of simplicity and profundity. This is what makes the book so difficult and demanding. The surface texture often bewilders and enthrals.
