Camden Town, seitens der Städte, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Keats,

LONDON, CAMDEN TOWN 2009
Fotos:G.Ludovice

Camden’s famous faces
Science, literature, entertainment, philosophy – many of the borough’s people have made their mark on the world

John Keats 1795-1821. One of the key poets of the Romantic movement, John Keats lived in Wentworth Place, on the edge of Hampstead Heath for two years. The setting would influence much of his work including perhaps his most famous, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Largely dismissed as a middle-class interloper during his lifetime, he died poor, loveless and unrenowned at just 25 from TB, only achieving fame posthumously. His former residence is now a popular museum, Keats House.

Charles Dickens 1812-1870. Dickens lived in various parts of Camden at different times, including Bayham Street and 48 Doughty Street, which is now a museum. Camden’s streets feature in many of the writer’s novels: Dombey and Son deals with the impact of the railway on the Camden Town of Dickens’s day; in The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Nell is described fleeing London across what is now Hampstead Heath.

Friedrich Engels 1820-1895. Friedrich Engels was a German social scientist and philosopher who co-authored the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. After his father sent him to Britain to work in the textile industry, Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which is based on his personal observations of the appalling conditions of the Victorian urban poor. From the 1870s until his death in 1894, Engels lived in Regent’s Park Road.

Sigmund Freud 1856-1939. Considered the godfather of psychoanalysis, Austrian-born Freud had a major impact on 20th-century thought. Freud used his concepts of the id, the ego and the superego to analyse the psyche of individuals and the development of civilisation. Fleeing Nazism, Freud left Vienna and travelled to London, where he continued to work, giving lectures at Hampstead’s Tavistock Clinic. His home at 20 Maresfield Garden is now a museum.

George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, can lay claim to being one of the most quoted men in British History. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London aged 20. He was one of the founders of the London School of Economics, and founding member of the Fabian Society in 1884. From his house in Fitzroy Square, he penned some of his 60 plays, including Pygmalion and Heartbreak House.

HG Wells 1866-1946. The novelist made Hampstead his base and placed a number of his literary characters in the surrounding streets. In his alien invasion story The War of the Worlds, he had his aliens die on the slopes of Primrose Hill – before they had the chance to lay waste to the area he called home.

Virginia Woolf 1882-1941. Born Adeline Virginia Woolf the English novelist and essayist, was a feminist ‘before her time’, and part of the so called ‘Bloomsbury Group’. She is regarded as one of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), and Orlando (1928) – both national curriculum staples. Following a second nervous breakdown and the death of her father, Woolf moved to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

Krishna Menon 1896-1974. A diplomat who campaigned for Indian independence from British rule, Krishna Menon lived in London for 24 years. He worked as a barrister, a journalist and in publishing. Elected as a Labour Party councillor to the old St Pancras Council, he was later awarded the freedom of the borough, a privilige only George Bernard Shaw had received before him. For 10 years, he lived in Camden Square, Camden Town. After India’s independence, he was appointed India’s first High Commissioner in London and worked with the United Nations.

Denis Compton 1918-1997. Denis Compton was a unique sporting hero, representing England at cricket, as well as playing for Arsenal FC. The Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1939, Compton was a right hand bat and slow left arm bowler. For Arsenal, he played on the left wing, culminating in FA Cup success and a winners medal, when The Gunners beat Liverpool 2-0 in the 1950 final at Wembley Stadium. Compton was also the original poster boy, when he appeared in adverts for the men’s hair product Brylcreem.

Peter Sellers 1925-1980. Peter Sellers was a comedy actor who collaborated with Spike Milligan in The Goon Show, broadcast from the Camden Hippodrome (now Koko) in the 1950s and starred in films including Dr Strangelove and The Pink Panther. He was well known for his comedy accents and troubled private life. Sellers briefly lived with his mother, a variety theatre performer, upstairs at the Bedford Music Hall, which stood on Camden High Street before it was demolished in the late 1960s.

George Orwell 1903-1950. George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, one of the 20th-century’s greatest chroniclers and polemicists, who lived in Hampstead, Parliament Hill and Kentish Town. Orwell was a relentless opponent of totalitarianism, which was the subject of two of his best-known books, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. His experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War feature in his Homage to Catalonia, and earlier works included The Road to Wigan Pier which chronicled life and the class divide in the north of England.

Sylvia Plath 1932-1963. Born n the US, Sylvia moved to England after winning a scholarship to Cambridge. In 1956 the poet novelist and children’s author married poet Ted Hughes and they lived in Chalcot Square before settling in an idyllic Devon village. The couple split up less than two years after the birth of their first child. Sylvia described her first suicide attempt in autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published in 1963. She returned to London with her two children, and lived in Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill. She took her own life on February 11, 1963.

Lord David Pitt 1913-1994. Lord David Pitt of Hampstead became a Labour stalwart in the 1960s and 70s and is now considered one of the greatest black Britons. Born in Grenada, a doctor by profession, he was granted a life peerage in 1975.He was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement, using the basement of his Gower Street surgery as a makeshift headquarters. The father of two was also made president of the British Medical Association.

John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946 . The ideas of John Maynard Keynes spawned a new adjective, Keynesian, to describe an economic strategy for actively boosting the economy in times of recession. Critical of private sector investment, Keynes argued that reduced interest rates and investment in infrastructure were the best ways of tackling unemployment like that which occurred during the Great Depression. A Bloomsbury resident, Keynes was part of the so-called Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals, which included Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot.

George Gilbert Scott 1811-1878. Victorian architect who came to define the railway age with his workhouses, churches and cathedrals, was a Camden resident. He was also responsible for St Pancras railway station, built in 1865, which was the best known of all his works and at the time was the largest brick built building in the world.

Sir John Betjeman 1908-1984. The Poet Laureate was born in Lissenden Gardens and lived out his childhood on Highgate West Hill. Among his poems that celebrate his roots, he talks of the bells of St Anne’s Church, the red brick of Lissenden and the trolleybus that carried him home from Camden Town.

Claudia Jones 1915-1964: Claudia Jones was a feminist, black nationalist and community leader who is remembered as ‘the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival’. She was granted asylum in England after being deported from the US during the McCarthy witchhunts era. Active in campaigns to defend and promote the black community, she founded the West Indian Gazette and launched the forerunner of the Notting Hill Carnival in 1959 by organising a Mardi-Gras celebration. She died in Gospel Oak, aged 49, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
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seitens der Städte.. LONDON: Virginia Woolf

LONDON 2009

Kino:G.Ludovice

Virginia Woolf

Londres, 25 de Janeiro de 1882 — Sussex, 28 de Março de 1941

Foi uma das mais importantes escritoras britânicas.

Estreou na literatura em 1915 com um romance (The Voyage Out) e posteriormente teria realizado uma série de obras notáveis, as quais lhe valeriam o título de "a Proust inglesa". Faleceu em 1941, tendo cometido suicídio.
Virginia Woolf era filha do editor Leslie Stephen, o qual deu-lhe uma educação esmerada, de forma que a jovem teria freqüentado desde cedo o mundo literário.
Em 1912, casou-se com Leonard Woolf, com quem funda, em 1917, a Hogarth Press, editora que revelou escritores como Katherine Mansfield e T.S. Eliot. Virginia Woolf apresentava crises depressivas. Em 1941, deixou um bilhete para seu marido, Leonard Woolf, e para a irmã, Vanessa. Neste bilhete, ela se despede das pessoas que mais amara na vida, e se mata de forma triunfante.

A Riqueza de Espírito no Estado de Doença
Considerando como a doença é comum, como é tremenda a mudança espiritual que traz, como é espantoso quando as luzes da saúde se apagam, as regiões por descobrir que se revelam, que extensões desoladas e desertos da alma uma ligeira gripe nos faz ver, que precipícios e relvados pontilhados de flores brilhantes uma pequena subida de temperatura expõe, que antigos e rijos carvalhos são desenraizados em nós pela acção da doença, como nos afundamos no poço da morte e sentimos as águas da aniquilação fecharem-se acima da cabeça e acordamos julgando estar na presença de anjos e harpas quando tiramos um dente, vimos à superfície na cadeira do dentista e confundimos o seu «bocheche... bocheche» com saudação da divindade debruçada no chão do céu para nos dar as boas-vindas - quando pensamos nisto, como tantas vezes somos forçados a pensar, torna-se realmente estranho que a doença não tenha arranjado um lugar, juntamente com o amor, as batalhas e o ciúme, por entre os principais temas da literatura.

Virginia Woolf, in "Acerca de Estar Doente"

Virginia Woolf foi integrante do grupo de Bloomsbury, círculo de intelectuais que, após a Primeira Guerra Mundial, se posicionaria contra as tradições literárias, políticas e sociais da Era Vitoriana. Deste grupo participaram, dentre outros, os escritores Roger Fry e Duncan Grant; os historiadores e economistas Lytton Strachey e John Maynard Keynes; e os críticos Clive Bell e Desmond McCarthy.
A obra de Virginia é classificada como modernista. O fluxo de consciência foi uma de suas marcas mais conhecidas e da qual é considerada uma das criadoras.

Suas reflexões sobre a arte literária - da liberdade de criação ao prazer da leitura - baseadas em obras-primas de Conrad, Defoe, Dostoievski, Jane Austen, Joyce, Montaigne, Tolstoi, Tchekov, Sterne, entre outros clássicos, foram reunidos em dois volumes publicados pela Hogarth Press em 1925 e 1932 sob o título de The Common Reader - O Leitor Comum , homenagem explícita da autora àquele que, livre de qualquer tipo de obrigação, lê para seu próprio desfrute pessoal. Uma seleta destes ensaios, reveladores da busca de Virginia Woolf por uma estética não só do texto mas de sua percepção, foi reunida em língua portuguesa em 2007 pela Graphia Editorial, com tradução de Luciana Viégas.

A Haunted House By Virginia Woolf
1882-1941, UK. From the collection of stories Monday or Tuesday (1921)
Source: http://www.bartleby.com/85/index.html
WHATEVER hour you woke there was a door shunting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain, one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room...” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The Treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between the trees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summer came—” “In winter snowtime—” The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

Sua primeira obra foi A viagem, publicada em 1915.

RETRATO DE VIRGINIA WOOLF AOS 30 ANOS, PINTADO POR SUA IRMÃ VANESSA

O romance Mrs. Dalloway ficou conhecido pelo filme As Horas, baseado na obra homônima de Michael Cunningham, filme no qual Virginia foi brilhantemente interpretada por Nicole Kidman, premiada com um Oscar por seu retrato da escritora britânica. As Horas conta várias histórias, mescla a vida da própria autora numa personagem e coloca algumas particularidades de Mrs. Dalloway numa dessas histórias. Em Mrs. Dalloway Virginia descreve um único dia da personagem, quando ela prepara uma festa.

Sua obra mais conhecida é Orlando, publicada em 1928. É uma fantasia histórica sobre a era elisabetana.
Após terminar As ondas, uma de suas obras mais importantes, Virginia Woolf estava exausta. Ela seguiu então para a sua casa de campo levando o livro das cartas entre os poetas Elizabeth Barrett e Robert Browning.

Na leitura, percebeu a presença permanente de um cachorro, Flush; resolve então, por diversão, escrever a visão desse cachorro do mundo à sua volta. Essa obra foi muito elogiada por fazer um relato minucioso sobre a época dos poetas. Ironicamente foi a obra que mais deu retorno financeiro à escritora e a mais traduzida em outros idiomas.

Sua última obra foi Entre os actos, publicada em 1941, posterior à sua morte.
No dia 28 de março de 1941, após ter um colapso nervoso Virginia suicidou-se. Ela vestiu um casaco, encheu seus bolsos com pedras e entrou no Rio Ouse, afogando-se. Seu corpo só foi encontrado no dia 18 de abril.
Em seu último bilhete para o marido, Leonardo Woolf, Virginia escreveu:

Querido,

Tenho certeza de estar ficando louca novamente. Sinto que não conseguiremos passar por novos tempos difíceis. E não quero revivê-los. Começo a escutar vozes e não consigo me concentrar. Portanto, estou fazendo o que me parece ser o melhor a se fazer. Você me deu muitas possibilidades de ser feliz. Você esteve presente como nenhum outro. Não creio que duas pessoas possam ser felizes convivendo com esta doença terrível. Não posso mais lutar. Sei que estarei tirando um peso de suas costas, pois, sem mim, você poderá trabalhar. E você vai, eu sei. Você vê, não consigo sequer escrever. Nem ler. Enfim, o que quero dizer é que é a você que eu devo toda minha felicidade. Você foi bom para mim, como ninguém poderia ter sido. Eu queria dizer isto - todos sabem. Se alguém pudesse me salvar, este alguém seria você. Tudo se foi para mim mas o que ficará é a certeza da sua bondade, sem igual. Não posso atrapalhar sua vida. Não mais. Não acredito que duas pessoas poderiam ter sido tão felizes quanto nós fomos.V.

Obras
A viagem (The Voyage Out) (1915)
Noite e dia (Night and Day) (1919)
O quarto de Jacó (Jacob's Room) (1922)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
O Leitor Comum (The Common Reader) (1925 - Primeiro volume)
Rumo ao farol (To the Lighthouse) (1927)
Orlando - Uma biografia (Orlando: A Biography) (1928)
As ondas (The Waves) (1931)
O Leitor Comum (The Common Reader) (1932 - Segundo volume)
Flush (Flush: A Biography) (1933)
Os anos (The Years) (1937)
Roger fry (1940)
Entre os atos (Between the Acts) (1941)
Contos Completos (1917-1941)

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