Orlando

Di Virginia Woolf

Introduzione di Armanda Guiducci

Traduzione e prefazione di Maura Del Serra

Edizione integrale

L’autrice lo definì «libriccino» orchestrato «in uno stile burla». Nigel Nicholson «la più lunga e affascinante lettera d’amore» mai scritta, quella di Virginia Woolf all’eccentrica aristocratica Vita Sackville-West, alla quale la unì un complesso legame ventennale. È questo, in molteplici sensi, un libro di confine: tra la biografia romanzata, il poema e il saggio critico (che la Woolf mima con divertita disinvoltura secondo la tecnica proustiana del pastiche), ambientato tra l’epoca elisabettiana e quella contemporanea, che il libro attraversa con ironica incisività, giocato sull’intercambiabilità e l’interazione dei sessi del personaggio protagonista, incarnazione dell’androginia prediletta dalla Woolf, simbolo della libertà interiore e della completezza creativa propria dell’artista. «Orlando è un moderno mito, una metafora brillante e nostalgica del desiderio di fama e d’amore, delle illusioni, dell’immortalità e della caducità connaturate alla vita umana» (Maura Del Serra).

«Orlando non guardò oltre. Scese a precipizio la collina, rientrò per un cancelletto. Divorò la scala a chiocciola. Raggiunse la sua camera. Gettò le calze da una parte della stanza, il farsetto dall’altra. Tuffò la testa nell’acqua. […] Era pronto. Era rosso. Era eccitato. Ma era in grave ritardo.»

Virginia Woolf

nacque a Londra nel 1882. Figlia di un critico famoso, crebbe in un ambiente letterario certamente stimolante. Fu a capo del gruppo di Bloomsbury, circolo culturale progressista che prendeva il nome dal quartiere londinese. Con il marito fondò nel 1917 la casa editrice Hogarth Press. Grande estimatrice dell’opera di Proust, divenne presto uno dei nomi più rilevanti della narrativa inglese del primo Novecento. Morì suicida nel 1941. La Newton Compton ha pubblicato Gita al faro, Una stanza tutta per sé, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, Notte e giorno, La crociera, Tutti i racconti e il volume unico Tutti i romanzi.

• Lingua: Italiano
• Editore: Newton Compton Editori
• Data di uscita: 18 set 2012
• ISBN: 9788854141896

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, publisher, critic and member of the Bloomsbury group, as well as being regarded as both a hugely significant modernist and feminist figure. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.

Recensioni su Orlando

[andreablythe · Valutazione: 3 su 5 stelle]

Woolf presents a satirical biography of Orlando, a young man who lives for over 300 years and has a mysterious transformation into being a women along the way. It's never clear how it is Orlando is able to gain this immortality (perhaps his obsession with thought, words, poetry?) or how it is that Orlando becomes a woman, which worked for the way the story unfolded. I really wanted to be charmed by this, as I had been with other books by Woolf, but whereas the vibrancy of language and compactness of the stories in both To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway delighted me, Orlando failed to hold my attention. Also, I was deeply bothered the racism within the book, particularly the opening scene (in which Orlando toys with the head of a nameless dead Moor), but also by the Orientalism in the scenes in Turkey and the portrayal of the "gipsies." The fact that the story was "of it's time" is not enough to shake the unsettled feeling from me.

[bookomaniac-1 · Valutazione: 3 su 5 stelle]

Vreemde pseudobiografie van personage dat door de eeuwen heen van geslacht veranderd. Mijmering over de vrouwelijke (en menselijke) conditie. Fascinerend en wervelend geschreven, maar niet helemaal my cup of tea.

[tgamble54 · Valutazione: 1 su 5 stelle]

Not what I like about VW's writing. Didn't finish.

[toddsherman · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

"A poet is Atlantic and lion in one. While one drowns us the other gnaws us. If we survive the teeth, we succumb to the waves. A man who can destroy illusions is both beast and flood. Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth."—Orlando by Virginia WoolfParenthetical with pleonastic dalliances, Woolf’s “Orlando” was a joy to read aloud. Gender-bending throughout the ages, breaking the fourth wall of literature as well as sexual taboos, forging a weapon of fiction that was usually beaten on the anvil by calloused, masculine hands. Her work may not always resonate with me, but the echoes off the walls sure sound nice. A novel about a poet would normally push me to the wall, find a stud (or mare) and pound my brow flat with repeated blows. Writing about a writer is as dirty a trick as reading your own poetry in public, measuring one’s pink parsnip with a tape measure in a late night dick pic, writing yourself into a screenplay as the main character or revving your engine at a stoplight while scrolling through insipid social media. Fortunately, this classic was more about the interplay of sex in literature and whose voice will be paramount amongst the crashing icebergs in a freshly thawed river. And, zounds! Gerunds abound! Well, at least in the second sentence of this reviewnotreview of a manwomanman tripping over three hundred years. It’s all I’ve got time for. My own shit to scrawl. In a quarter of the time (if I’m lucky). And so:“Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful; he alone is at peace.”

[michaelbartley · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

strange book, at times especially in the first half, very thoughtful. the character goes from being a man to a woman very interesting way of exploring gender roles. at times the novel was funny. the last part seemed to go on forever, it lost my interest. but I do want to see the movie!

[thecriticaltimes · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

This is a book best read after you're 40. If you were forced to read this in college then I fully understand why this book made no sense to you whatsoever. Quite frankly I don't quite get it completely myself yet but I do appreciate its scope and intent. In a nutshell Orlando, a titled squire a few centuries ago can't find peace of mind and eternally asks the question: is this all there is? Through many abstract adventures and many decades of living he lands in Italy where he falls asleep for days only to awake a woman. From this perspective and this point on a similar story is told and Orlando still asks the question: now that I have this different perspective: does it matter?None of the questions stated above can be explicitly found in the novel. In fact nothing I said so far is really clearly described and if someone argued that the entire book is the retelling of a dream I might agree. Many passages appear to be randomly stitched together and certain facts which appear crucial are even casually mentioned and then dropped altogether (such as Orlando having a son). There is a reason for this I'm convinced.It is a short book written in archaic language that changes depending on the time period Orlando lives in. That makes the book difficult to read if the vagueness and dreamlike sequences weren't throwing you off in the first place. Reading Orlando is a lot easier of you've first read All Men Are Mortal by Simone de Beauvoir. That particular novel asks the same question and wants to know what this life we live is all about. But it does so by playing a man and a woman against each other so that we see our existence through their conflicts. In Orlando this idea is compressed by literally combining the two sexes into one.Virginia Woolf left out a lot of narrative detail because it isn't important for the question she asks. That is why we do not know how it happens that Orlando changes from a man into a woman. Or why nobody thought it weird that the owner of the mansion suddenly appeared quite different.Although Woolf goes into some detail regarding human relationships, she paints Orlando as someone intrigued by that part of humanity but who isn't completely invested in it. It is difficult to say what the author wanted Orlando to conclude about human existence but it seems she concludes that art and writing is the only valuable activity and product we can experience and produce in our lifetime. Then again I might have to read it again in about 20 years to see if my perspective has changed yet again about this novel.

[ffortsa · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

Everyone in our book circle agreed that this was a funny book, not what you would expect from Woolf, but it is after all a gloss on Vita Sackville-West and Woolf's complicated relationship with her. What is impressive: Well, for one, the brilliant evocation of such different times across the four and a half centuries of Orlando's existence. As Karenmarie mentioned, the evocation of a frozen Thames and the celebrations on the ice, and then the breakup and disaster that came after, are beautifully realized. And this continues through the coming times, in England and in Constantinople and in the gypsy camp. Then there are the changing attitudes toward women in society that Orlando lives through and adjusts to. And there are the sly sideswipes and writers past and present, which in some cases were laugh-out-loud funny.My edition had notes in the back to help readers who don't know the historical references. Sometimes they were a bit overdone, but often helpful.Sometimes it feels a bit like an adult fairy tale, or a fantasy adventure. Sackville-West's life has something to do with that, but to read this only as a roman-a-clef would do it an injustice. So much daring in Woolf's time and before had to do with breaking conventions that deserved to be broken, it's hardly avoidable to see this as a social commentary as well as a romp.

[helenliz_1 · Valutazione: 3 su 5 stelle]

I'm not sure what to make of this. As a novel, far too many things are left hanging or unexplained. How come Orlando can live for 400 years and be 36 being just one... As a thought provoking piece of writing, however, it asks a lot of questions that are not uncontroversial now, so goodness only knows what it was like when it was published. On the face of it, Orlando is a biography of the titular character, an Elizabethan Nobleman who has too much time on his hands and a penchant for poetry. He goes to Constantinople as ambassador and comes back transformed into a woman. From that point, the love of literature persists, although the adjustment to life as a woman takes some time. The questions raised are about who we are, the face we present to the world. Orlando starts as a man, ends as a woman, and so has a lot of adjusting to do, in terms of what is expected of her now in her thought, speech, dress and behaviour. Why do we expect, even now, women and men to act differently in the same situations? Then there are questions about conformity, Orlando feels obliged to conform to the times she lives in, but how to do that while remaining true to herself. Some people are of their time, others appear to be ahead or living in the past. They're all equally valuable, should they conform and change their thinking to accommodate their times? There's a lot of what might be described as the thought police

[jimmychanga · Valutazione: 2 su 5 stelle]

I finished Orlando a couple of days ago. It was not really my thing. I understand that it started as a joke, but (even though I sorta know what she was making fun of) it just wasn't funny to me. I'm sure Virginia Woolf had a hoot writing it, though, so I'm happy for her.

Towards the middle, the "biographer's" voice started sounding very much like the "lecturer's" voice in A Room of One's Own. In fact, I was surprised at the similarity in tonality between the two works. It had that same quality of breaking the third wall, of creating a make-believe scenario that was obviously not true (i.e. written to illustrate a point), and also of that slightly didactic "here's what I want to say on the topic of the sexes" which I didn't mind as much in AROOO since it was an essay afterall.

Anyway, if you (like me) loved Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then don't read this expecting more of the same. You may love it or you may hate it. If you hated Mrs. Dalloway and her other Dalloway-like works, then definitely give this a chance. This may be your thing.

[amelish · Valutazione: 3 su 5 stelle]

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't really feel this book until I saw the movie (with Tilda Swinton). Not my favorite V. Woolf, but possibly more interesting.

[juliaboechat · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

Nigel Nicolson, filho de Vita Sackville-West, escreveu "The effect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and most charming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her in and out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her, dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops a veil of mist around her".

[rubya_32 · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

A brilliant, entertaining, disturbing text. One of my favorite examples of magical realism.

[raschneid_1 · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

I didn't realize that novels written in the twenties were allowed to be this fun. Instead of being a long, pretentious in-joke as I'd feared (it's adapted from Vita Sackville-West's biography), it's part decadent fairy tale and part meditation on the history of English culture and literature. And 100% awesome, which is what's important. Every sentence is crazily beautiful and perfectly formed.

I think it's really much more of a love letter to England than VSW, or maybe to England as it was personified in VSW.

[antao-3 · Valutazione: 2 su 5 stelle]

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Biological Constructs: "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf(Original Review, 2002-06-18)I’m probably in a minority, but I find Woolf hugely overrated. A snob in the way that Wilde was a snob before her, sucking up to the wealthy and titled and, like Wilde, happy to be unfaithful if it ingratiated her with the gentry. People go on about ‘a room of one’s own’ but have they read the whole piece? She thought only a few superior personages should be allowed to write, and then only for a select audience.

[margaretfield · Valutazione: 2 su 5 stelle]

about a person that changes genders and lives over several centuries

[anesamiller · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

An Elizabethan nobleman is reincarnated as a Victorian lady via an ambassador to Turkey and a hospitable gypsy tribe. Whimsy to the nth degree! This is not what I was expecting from the author of such a tragedy as THE VOYAGE OUT, but Woolf’s remarkably convoluted yet elegant syntax was sufficient to keep me entranced. I laughed out loud at the scene of Lady Orlando cheating at a game of “Fly loo.”

Elizabeth Bowen comments in the Afterword to the edition I read that Virginia was the idol of those who believed art exists for “sublimating personality into poetry”—for escaping from the personal, as I understand her. Bowen says these devotees were dismayed to find in ORLANDO a “prank [or] personal joke”—i.e., the author’s evocation of her own special friendship with Vita Sackville-West. Contrary to the aesthetes Bowen cites, I found that the aura of fantasy became so dense in the book’s latter pages it made me wonder if this might be a sublimation of the symptoms of mental illness. What more salutary use might one make of such affliction that to channel it into a book that makes readers laugh?

[janesteen_1 · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

Where I got the book: public domain freebie on Kindle.This is one of those novels I've been promising myself I'd read for years, especially after visiting Knole Castle where Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West grew up and which provided the inspiration and location of this tale of a man-or-is-it-woman with many lives. It also houses the manuscript, so you can see just how hard Woolf worked on her prose which is GLORIOUS.This novel is just...Sublime.Weird.Funny.Tragic.Quotable.Luminous.Picturesque.Driven.And a good many other adjectives. I remember once reading an extract from Woolf's diary where she describes her writing as being like those times when you go to the loo and have an endless crap; you think you're done and then another lot comes out, and another. This was a writer who wrote because she couldn't help herself and when she wasn't writing, she read, endlessly. And if she couldn't read or write she thought. Her head must have been like heaven and hell at the same time.And that somehow gets into Orlando: the voices, the ages, the fear of death, the fear of life, the striving for immortality and the knowledge that immortality is a tragedy. Woolf understands that gender is just happenstance, and that we've all got a bit of both sexes inside us; so she makes her main character both male and female and points out that the female version is by her very nature less free. And at the center of the action is the great house that endures through the centuries, changing but never changing. The Sackvilles still live there, and visitors are told that if they hear children's voices, it's not ghosts; it's people, occupying a space that's been in their family since 1566. Ain't that grand?

[delightedlibrarian · Valutazione: 1 su 5 stelle]

Possibly one of the strangest novels I've ever read. So... flexible (for lack of a better term) in time and gender, not to mention the legality of identity. I finished it thinking how the story worked which was amazing because logically it doesn't work what so ever.

[thedivineoomba · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

I read this one not knowing exactly what it was about - and I find a very funny, well written, Satire-ish book on what it means to be man or a woman in the British England. First - this is a book you have to read carefully. Orlando doesn't age like a regular person, so years pass, societal beliefs, and general culture change in a blink of an eye. But, it is written in an easy style, with a light touch that makes it a very accessible book. It's a completely different style than Virginia Woolf's other books (Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, etc.)Ms. Woolf has a way of writing that manages to capture the absurdity of culture's expectation of both being Male and being Female. Orlando, being both at different times, shows just how limiting both are sexes are. Its also a critique of Victorian England and how stifling it is to women.

[lyndatrue · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

One of Virginia Woolf's best works, it presents the impossible as believable, and is one of the very few novels I've ever seen taken to the screen that kept the improbable becoming possible without insult to the intellect, and with respect for the beauty.

[schmerguls · Valutazione: 2 su 5 stelle]

This was published in 1928 and is fiction, telling of Orlando who starts out as a man in the time of Queen Elizabeth (I) but at age 30 turns into a woman. She ages very little and the story ends with her in London in 1928, she having married and had a son. There is some humor, which accounts for the generous rating I give the book. This is the fourth book by Woolf I have read, the others being To the Lighthouse (read 30 Aug 1950), A Room of One's Own (read 22 Aug 1998), and Mrs. Dalloway (read 21 May 1999).She does not talk to me so I won't read anything more by her.

[auntieclio · Valutazione: 3 su 5 stelle]

Orlando is odd, and I can't quite put my finger on why I think it's odd. It's not the gender bending, although the "and one day Orlando woke up and was a woman" was definitely odd. Finding that one of her lovers had been pursuing her in drag was not so odd as puzzling. The three centuries Orlando lives in this tale is a little odd. I understand the parody of biography Woolf is writing, and the pokes she takes at rigid cultural mores which insist women must behave in certain ways and are not allowed to have sexual interest in other women. I just found the whole book odd, and a bit of a slog and finished it because I've never read Virginia Woolf before and felt I owed it to myself to finish.

[kratzer-2 · Valutazione: 1 su 5 stelle]

Hat mich überhaupt nicht geschafft zu fesseln. Musste abbrechen.

[nmhale_1 · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

This was the first novel by Woolf that I read, and her masterful skill with words held my attention, which is impressive, considering that the plot of this story begins with Orlando, a young boy, and ends hundreds of years later with Orlando, a mature woman. Orlando, the same person. Woolf offers no apologies for the passage of years, and only a very funny "explanation" of how Orlando changes gender midlife. The book claims to be a biography, and this tongue-in-cheek premise sets the stage for the droll humor that permeates the rest of the novel. Yet the novel manages to be profound and dramatic within this construct.Nevertheless, Woolf's language play is even more incredible than the storyline. She creates metaphors that are poetry in prose, and her creative use of lists is another strong technique. She also uses some very clever allusions. I love the characters Purity, Temperance, and Chastity, who physically make an appearance when Orlando changes gender and try to cover her, while cleverly providing a reason for Woolf not to describe how the miracle takes place. Her writing is lyrical.I read this book twice. First, just because I wanted to, and the second time for a group read. I'm very glad that I read it a second time. The first time, I was captivated by her use of words, but the story lost me several times, and I put it down frequently. The second time, already knowing what to expect plot wise, I was able to appreciate the craft of the novel, and at the same time, understand the story and characters more deeply and stay focused. This book has a lot to offer. Orlando's life spans several ages of London life, from Queen Elizabeth, through James and Victoria, and through the eyes of her main character, Woolf offers interesting criticism of each. Her perspective on gender is another central theme, which she can explore from two angles, thanks to her character's unique personality. Not content with those broad motifs, Woolf further ponders the themes of love and life. With her language, intriguing characters, and complex themes and metaphors, this story is well worth a read, and then another, to fully appreciate this work from Virginia Woolf.

[nickdreamsong · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

A quote from one of my favorite Woolf novels and one of my favorite books of all time:"Different though the sexes are, the intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above."

[saraprindiville · Valutazione: 4 su 5 stelle]

Seems like the very beginning of magical realism. I've never read anything like it from that time period. Extremely symbolic. The author is very interested in androgyny, but also, and mainly in coming to terms with oneself and the world. Balancing the yin and yang if you will.

[othemts · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

A fantastic novel in which a young courtier from the time of Elizabeth magically lives for four centuries without aging, even more magically changing sex from man to woman halfway through. This humorous book satirizes the politics of all the eras Orlando lives through, and more so challenges the gender roles across time. Very different from any other Woolf novel I've read. Sally Potter made an excellent film based on the novel staring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, but definitely read the book first.

[fleurdiabolique · Valutazione: 1 su 5 stelle]

You know, this could have been a good book. I am definitely interested in the sort of premise of the last two-thirds. But my potential enjoyment of the book was ruined by the fact that this book purports to be a biography, or at least a straightforward narrative, for the first third or so -- and then, without warning or explanation, our hero abruptly becomes a transsexual time traveler. Though the book has to this point been fairly realistic, no one reacts as though Orlando's gender switch is odd, and no one thinks it's strange that s/he suddenly appears again over a century after his/her birth. Again, this would have been _fine_ if it was set up. But it wasn't. Woolf begins in a realistic mode, and there is absolutely no good excuse, save sheer perversity, for turning the reader topsy-turvy in this manner. After 130 pages of apparently realistic prose, an abrupt shift (which makes use of an extremely trite use of allegorical figures, I might add) to the realm of the fantastic is confusing and illogical. And the book just goes downhill from there. People from the sixteenth century appear in later centuries -- again, without any explanation and without any expression of surprise on anyone's part. Orlando's house staff from the 1500s is waiting for her when she returns in the early 1700s -- but then they all die by the 1800s, though she is still alive. She marries, and after her husband leaves on a trip we pretty much never find out what the hell happens to him. She gives birth (when she actually got pregnant is yet another question), and her child isn't mentioned after that moment. Jumps in time during the course of the narrative are profoundly unclear. And why doesn't anyone around Orlando seem to remark on the fact that she seems to be immortal?! And of course, woven through all of this at intervals is intolerable "philsophical" prattling which rarely has any depth.As usual, Woolf is too busy trying to be unusual and shocking to bother writing something actually readable. It is so frustrating, because there are a few beautiful passages, and the idea behind the last two-thirds or so of the novel is really interesting and could have made a wonderful book on its own. But these sparks of something better are drowned in Woolf's usual overly-self-conscious, self-indulgent prose. If you really must read any of this (and I advise against it), go only as far as the point where Orlando falls into a trance in Constantinople. There is absolutely nothing worth your time and energy beyond that point.

[rebeccler · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

Magical realism saved Orlando from being targeted for obscenity. A delicious tale of a writer's growth into herself, and out of himself. The biographer's commentary is often hilarious, and do pay special attention to the cross-dressing section for hints of the "obscene" according to Lord Campbell's Act of 1857. It isn't there, but it is there.

[gwendolyndawson · Valutazione: 5 su 5 stelle]

The story begins with Orlando as a passionate young nobleman in Queen Elizabeth's court. By the end, Orlando is a 36-year-old woman three centuries later. Orlando witnesses the making of history from its edge. A close examination of the nature of sexuality and the changing climate of the passing centuries. Very novel and engaging if a bit loose-ended at times.