Particular Particularities

When are bodies the body's?

It's a turn of phrase associated with Jinny in Virginia Woolf's The Waves. I first thought there might be a topographical error in the edition I was using. Then I noticed the hook was homophonic.

But my imagination is the bodies. I can imagine nothing beyond the circle cast by my body. My body goes before me, like a lantern down a dark lane, bringing one thing after another out of darkness into a ring of light. I dazzle you; I make you believe that this is all.

The phrase comes later in its other form.

I do not temper my beauty with meanness lest it should scorch me. I gulp it down entire. It is made of flesh; it is made of stuff. My imagination is the body's.

The body's bodies.

And so for day 1559
21.03.2011