The Waves Author: [British] Virginia Woolf Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House

Introduction · · · · · ·
The Waves was written during Woolf's heyday and was published in 1931. This poetic experimental work does not have a story in the strict sense, but is more like a musical work composed of nine movements: each introduction is an exquisite prose poem, which corresponds to the rise and fall of life with the rise and fall of the sun and the waves; following each introduction is the momentary inner monologue of six highly formalized characters without surnames at their corresponding stages of life - from childhood, school days, youth, middle age to old age. The introduction and the main text reflect each other, opening up an unprecedented and meticulous channel for the reader's senses, and maximally approaching the essence of life, time, consciousness and feelings.

This is a work that occupies an important position in the hall of modern literature. Even today, it still stirs our souls with its exquisite text structure and poetic style.

A little less and it would lose its poetry; a little more and it would fall into the abyss of the palace of art, becoming dull and pretentious. -EM Forster

The Waves is almost a long poem. Is it a poem? More accurately, it is an oratorio. Six soloists take turns to recite ornate monologues, singing out their ideas about time and death. - Maurois