Ilse’s Reviews > A Woman > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 138 of 236
I realized that my critical facility had seemingly expanded and intensified; and that I had a kind of heartfelt nostalgia for all the things that my education had lacked. Poetry, music, the arts of colour and form remained almost unknown to me, while the whole of my body longed for the rapture they might bring; the thought by which I lived sometimes wanted to take flight, to mingle with light and with sound.
— Jun 21, 2025 02:16AM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 170 of 236
‘Feminism’, she exclaimed, ‘the organization of working women, labour legislation, legal emancipation and reform, divorce, the vote in local and parliamentary elections…All of this is important, an immense task, and yet it barely touches the surface: we need to reform the consciousness of man and to create one for women’.
— Jun 23, 2025 04:56AM
Ilse
is on page 68 of 236
To love, to sacrifice oneself, and to submit! Was this what all women were destined for?
— Jun 08, 2025 09:06AM
Ilse
is on page 40 of 236
I wanted to believe that I was happy and that I would be so in the future; I wanted to find a love that was beautiful and grand, the love that for a girl of sixteen embodies all the mysterious poetry of life.
— Jun 07, 2025 03:51AM
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Jan-Maat
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Jun 21, 2025 04:06AM
Interesting that longing for what she hasn't experienced and that the feeling manifests itself in her body
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Jan-Maat wrote: "Interesting that longing for what she hasn't experienced and that the feeling manifests itself in her body"Her longing is awakened by...reading books, seeing what she missed in her youth. The English translation had another, more earthly feeling to my ears than the Dutch, and looking up the original, not the word 'body' is used in which the feeling manifests itself, but her 'entire being' (just like in the translation:
Nessun libro aveva la virtù di sconvolgere le mie recenti convinzioni; e nessuno, di quelli che lessi in quel tempo, mi produsse grande impressione. M’accorsi che il mio senso critico, dopo la lunga paralisi, s’era come allargato ed intensificato; e insieme scopersi nel mio spirito una sorta di nostalgia accorata per tutto ciò che la mia educazione irrimediabilmente aveva trascurato in me. La poesia, la musica, le arti del colore e della forma, rimanevano per me cose quasi ignote, mentre l’intero mio essere aspirava all’estasi ch’esse suscitano; il pensiero di cui vivevo, avrebbe voluto talvolta farsi alato, confondersi coi raggi e coi suoni.
The sentence in English struck me as more powerful than the Dutch - and your comment made me understand why, thank you :), Yet the Dutch fits more into Aleramo's style of writing in the book, and her obliqueness about the body.
Entire being I would think is more wide ranging than the body and pushes the reader to imagine her consciousness, thoughts and feelings too
Jan-Maat wrote: "Entire being I would think is more wide ranging than the body and pushes the reader to imagine her consciousness, thoughts and feelings too"It certainly fits more in the voice and personality of the narrator and in this story on growing awareness of women - on the other hand, confining the effect to the body as the place of resonance makes it a more powerful and less exalted statement.
