![]() ![]() ![]() Each reading of Orlando hits a bit differently, because the context of my reading is never the same twice. ![]() Like its title character, Orlando exists within the confines of our rules about what the world looks like and what it requires, but it simultaneously slips through the cracks of what’s allowed, challenging and smiling all along. But the beauty of Orlando is that it endures, it adapts, it’s ever-changing. Each reread of Orlando hits a bit differently because the context of my reading–my personal context, yes, but the broader context of the rest of the world as well–is never the same twice. Just like Orlando regularly returns to an ongoing poetry project century after century, a different writer each time she approaches it, I find rereading it like a return to a familiar place that I experience differently each time I visit, like going back to an old childhood haunt or the movie theatre where you had your first date and having a moment of understanding that it’s not the place that’s changed, but you. The novel-presented as a biography of a character of the same name and following its protagonist through unexplained several centuries of life and a just as unexplained overnight transformation from male to female-has become my ritual to welcome in Pride month. ![]() Ever since I was introduced to it in an English lit class my sophomore year of college, I’ve reread Virginia Woolf’s Orlando every June. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |