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May 16, 2025
from “The Death of the Moth”
in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays
by Virginia Woolf
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“...the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life.”
—Virginia Woolf
This week we take on a paragraph from “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf’s famous essay about the delight, struggle, and inevitable death of a mere day moth and the sense of wonder and pity its passing arouses.
The Paragraph of the Week
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy–blossom which the commonest yellow–underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay–coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid–September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
—Virginia Woolf
Commentary
The opening paragraph of Virginia Woolf's masterful essay begins with a matter-of-fact explanation over several sentences that a moth that flies by day is neither butterfly or night moth, the opening setting up the lovely description of “narrow hay-colored wings, fringed with a tassel of the same color” that illustrate the moth’s plainness sufficiently, and, in truth, probably would have been a better place to begin. I like the next sentence, too, with “keener breath” describing the onset of fall, and the slab-like beauty of plowed fields where “earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture.” The dactylic feel of “in from the fields and the down beyond” and “keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book” captures the “vigor” she hopes to convey, the energy flooding in on the merest bit of doomed life fluttering in the window. The paragraph ends with a flourish: the festive image of rooks rising above a tree “as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air,” especially when the net settles onto the tree—her phrase “slowly sank down” is perfect—and the knots appear as if by magic at the tips of twigs. Most daring of all, though, is that she repeats the image “with the utmost clamor and vociferation” when the black birds move to another tree, “as though” all this coming and going “were a tremendously exciting experience,” especially the going which is her theme.
—THE
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Announcements
The Beloved Republic Recognized
by the PEN Award Series
The Beloved Republic has been selected for the Longlist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
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PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centres in more than 100 countries.
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Other goals include emphasizing the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; fighting for freedom of expression, and acting as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views.
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The Beloved Republic by Steven Harvey
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The Humble Essayist Press
Closes Book Publication Arm
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The Humble Essayist Press has always needed to stay humble in its ambitions, and with the publication of our final book, Time's Passage by Robert Root, the passage of time has brought the book publication arm of the Humble Essayist Press to an end. Its editors have set off on other composing and editing projects with much appreciation and admiration for the texts that THE Press was allowed to bring into the world. We hope those books continue to have readers and to those authors we urge, “Write on.” Thanks so much for giving us what you did.
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