“Fiction . . . is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web . . .”

Virginia Woolf continues, “attached ever so lightly, perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves.” It’s only when the web is torn in the middle, says Woolf,  that we see that the webs are fragile, the work of “suffering human beings” who are attached to houses, money and health. This is part of her answer to her question, “What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?” Her exploration – supported by  metaphors, poetry, reasoning, and imagination — will astonish you.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Harcourt, 1989), p. 41.

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