“The fact is that I have little aptitude for reflection. I require the concrete in everything. It is so only that I lay hands upon the world. A good phrase, however, seems to me to have an independent existence. Yet I think it is likely that the best are made in solitude. They require some final refrigeration which I cannot give them dabbling always in warm soluble words. My method, nevertheless, has certain advantages over theirs. Neville is repelled by the grossness of Trumble. Louis, glancing, tripping with the high step of a disdainful crane, picks up words as if in sugar-tongs. It is true that his eyes—wild, laughing, yet desperate—express something that we have not gauged. There is about both Neville and Louis a precision, an exactitude that I admire and shall never possess” (Woolf 48-49).
It is the beginning of the summer holiday, and everyone is travelling home by the train. Here, the reader is inside Bernard’s consciousness, as he defines himself against his friends, Louis and Neville. Bernard says that he has “little aptitude for reflection,” and that he “(requires) the concrete in everything,” meaning that he lives primarily in the outside world, and not in his own inner thoughts, and that he understands the real or the “concrete” better than its assumed opposite, the abstract or imagined.
However, readers know that Bernard loves to tell stories, which is not a completely unimaginative activity. He says “a good phrase, however, seems (to him) to have an independent existence,” meaning that spinning stories to his friends, as imaginative as the process may be, always requires an audience, or the outside world, in order to bring his phrases to life. Thus, the “independent existence” of his words, or thoughts, or ideas is actually quite dependent on the presence of others, but independent from his supposed low “aptitude for reflection.”
Bernard then reflects how “the best (phrases, stories, or thoughts) are made in solitude. They require some final refrigeration which (he) cannot give them dabbling always in warm soluble words.” Here, Bernard is critiquing the primary way through which he experiences his own life and the world around him. He muses how phrases, stories, and thoughts are possibly best when “refrigerated,” or stored away and preserved until the right moment, and that he merely “dabbles” in language, using “warm” and “soluble” words. Not only is “dabbling” a somewhat anticlimactic self-description, but “warm” and “soluble” are partially self-deprecating in the context of Bernard’s consciousness as well. “Warm” implies “weak,” and “soluble” implies that Bernard believes his quick witted phrasing and random musings aloud are mutable, ever changeable, because they are not heavily reflected upon or written down, and are therefore less important, or not “the best.”
However, Bernard does go on to praise himself for the “advantages” of his “method” over the “methods” of both Louis and Neville. He remarks how Neville “is repelled by the grossness of Trumble,” a random fellow passenger on the train. Bernard suggests that Neville and Louis are missing out on lovely parts of the “concrete,” real world, by refusing to interact with it as regularly and willingly as Bernard claims he does. “Trumble’s grossness” is a great source of intrigue for Bernard. And it is quite possible Louis would never in a million years “pick up” the words to describe a character like Trumble, even with “sugar tongs,” or the delicate redrafting of his “refrigerated” stories, simply because he is not apt to interact with such a person.
Bernard then describes Louis as delicate, “tripping with the high step of a disdainful crane.” This description continues to reveal Bernard’s observation of Louis’s disconnectedness from not just reality but also other people, such as Trumble. Bernard’s metaphorical language supports reality, as Louis does, at times, “trip” and “stumble” through life, simply because he is often so focused on his own private world inside his mind. The image of Louis as a “disdainful crane” reflects Louis’s delicate physicality and the “disdain” Louis has for himself because of it.
Despite Louis’s physical fragility, Bernard thinks Louis’s eyes are “wild, laughing, yet desperate—(expressing) something that (he and people like himself) have not gauged,” a window to a soul not unlike his own, just more difficult for him to understand. He remarks, “there is about both Neville and Louis a precision, an exactitude that (he admires) and shall never possess,” solidifying his fundamental differences between himself and his two school friends, all while attempting to apprehend the type of internal fire that he does not believe he holds.
This passage in particular reminded me of the “ineluctable modality of the visible/audible,” Stephen speaks about in chapter three of Ulysses. Here, Woolf gives us Bernard’s commentary on his own filter system, “method,” or “modality” through which he experiences the world, and his thoughts on what he feels he is missing because of who he is. Although, ironically enough, Bernard does demonstrate an “aptitude for reflection”—the main quality he admires in his friends and the process he claims to lack. And it is no accident on the part of Woolf that Bernard utilizes self-reflection in a similar style to that of his peers. Perhaps self-reflection is simply one particular “modality” that Bernard is less comfortable using. Nevertheless, he uses it in his own way, and it is the only modality through which Woolf has chosen to bring the character of Bernard, and all of the other characters in The Waves, to life thus far.
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