Virginia Woolf meets the Matterhorn

Woolf's late short story 'The Symbol' is about a mountain. It really is! [1200 words 10min

I was going to write this week about Thomas Otley and his First Ascent of Sharp Edge on Blencathra. But while researching a future post on the Alpinist Lily Bristow, I came across this short story by Virginia Woolf. Which immediately joins my shortlist of altogether essential mountain reading.¹

VW in late life, photo Giselle Freund (National Portrait Gallery)

At 1200 words, ‘The Symbol’ is short but intense. If it were a climb, it’d be a classic single pitch route at American 5.6 or British trad grade Hard Severe. Given that Woolf died in 1941, more than 70 years ago, I was planning to paste her story right here into my Substack. But I ran into a strange quirk of copyright.

In the UK, a work unpublished in the author’s lifetlime is in copyright until

                       The first 1st January after the later of:
                        a) the author’s death plus 70 years
                        OR b) whichever’s earlier between:
                                    the date of first publication plus 50 years
                                    OR the year 2039

‘The Symbol’, written in 1941, wasn’t published until 1985. So it enters the public domain (here in the UK) on 1st January 2036. At which point, if I’m still alive myself, I’ll transcribe it into this Substack.

To keep you going in the meantime, here’s the opening paragraph and the third one. Together with the link to the full story at the London Review of Books, its original publisher.

The Matterhorn seen from Zermatt. The mountain is a symbol?

The Symbol (Virginia Woolf 1941)

There was​ a little dent on the top of the mountain like a crater on the moon. It was filled with snow, iridescent like a pigeon’s breast, or dead white. There was a scurry of dry particles now and again, covering nothing. It was too high for breathing flesh or fur-covered life. All the same the snow was iridescent one moment; and blood red; and pure white, according to the day. …

‘The mountain,’ the lady wrote, sitting on the balcony of the hotel, ‘is a symbol ... ’ She paused. She could see the topmost height through her glasses. She focused the lens, as if to see what the symbol was. She was writing to her elder sister in Birmingham.

To on-sight the story, just click the link above (do return to this page to comment afterwards). If you’d prefer to top-rope it, next week’s posting will provide the same link, plus commentary and context.

Mr Jonathan Otley will just have to wait.

1. The others including Coleridge’s description of Moss Force waterfall, Shelley’s poem on Mont Blanc, Alfred Mummery’s ascent of the Col du Lion, certain extracts from WH Murray, WH Auden’s ‘Mountains’, and the Mont Blanc summit sunrise by Virginia Woolf’s father Leslie Stephen.