To Ithaca

No, “To the Lighthouse” is not the story of Odysseus (Ulisses for those who are not friends with him).

But, as with so many other great literature (Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is one that comes to my mind), Woolf’s masterpiece echoes Homer’s epic in many instances.

First things first. Not just because of that, To The Lighthouse is a superb book. It impresed me so much when I read it that it produced a change of heart about the other book I had read by her, “Mrs. Dalloway”, which I had hated.

Second things second: I am not a critic, or a literature expert, and — apart from a couple of people I read saying what I stated in the second paragraph (that it is a masterpiece), I am not acquainted to any possible commentaries on it. Someone must have seen this resemblance before, but I wouldn’t know.

Then, to the book.

The plot is not complicated, because most of Woolf’s stories happen in the characters’ minds, and I won’t spoil anything, but for those who have never read it, it starts like that:

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are in a family holiday in their home in the Isle of Skye with some guests. One of their children, James, wants to go to the lighthouse. Her mother answers with the opening line of the book, “Yes, of course, if it’s fine to-morrow; […] but you’ll have to be up with the lark”. After James’s joy wit the prospect of the trip is described, Mr. Ramsay and Tansley, one of the guests, spoil the fun, stating that the weather will be bad and they won’t be able to go.

The first part of the book (it has three) tells us about the holiday in itself and shows the characters interacting and introspecting. The second tells us what happens between the first and the third, which is a voyage to the same island, ten years later.

Yes, a ten-year hiatus that ends with a sea voyage was what the things tickled my odyssense. But in the first chapter itself there’s plenty more.

First, the lighthouse. What is it?

It is, of course, that tower with lights to guide sailors.

But the literal meaning of the word is “house of light”.

In our world, there is one place which can be called the house of light: the Eastern Horizon.

It’s not irrelevant that Tansley, “the little atheist”, expresses his conviction of the impossibility of they visiting the lighthouse by stating that the wind was “due west”, away from East — away from the house of the light, from home.

We also have a man and a son who cannot set sail. We have guests that feast, and a wife and mother who knits, hoping against all hope that her husband and son will be able to journey to the lighthouse.

And there is the need of Mr. Ramsay, our flawed and fragile Odysseys, to become someone better.