7 April 1930 – 13 April 1930

What I now think (about The Waves) is that I can give in a very few strokes the essentials of a person’s character. It should be done boldly; almost as caricature. I have yesterday entered what may be the last lap. Like every piece of the book it goes by fits and starts. I never get away with it; but am tugged back. I hope this makes for solidity; and must look to my sentences. The abandonment of Orlando and Lighthouse is much checked by the extreme difficulty of the form—as it was in Jacob’s Room. I think this is the furthest development so far; but of course it may miss fire somewhere. I think I have kept stoically to the original conception. What I fear is that the re-writing will have to be so drastic that I may entirely muddle it somehow. It is bound to be very imperfect. But I think it possible that I have got my statues against the sky.

I read Shakespeare directly I have finished writing. When my mind is agape and red-hot. Then it is astonishing. I never yet knew how amazing his stretch and speed and word coining power is, until I felt it utterly outpace and outrace my own, seeming to start equal and then I see him draw ahead and do things I could not in my wildest tumult and utmost press of mind imagine. Even the less known plays are written at a speed that is quicker than anybody else’s quickest; and the words drop so fast one can’t pick them up. Look at this. “Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.” (That is a pure accident. I happen to light on it.) Evidently the pliancy of his mind was so complete that he could furbish out any train of thought; and, relaxing, let fall a shower of such unregarded flowers. Why then should anyone else attempt to write? This is not “writing” at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.