Virginia Woolf’s writing is not only poetic, but also wonderfully visual. At times her masterly fusion of language and visual imagery transcends mere language to become an alchemy of ideas. Take this example in The Waves when Bernard has a sudden epiphany about time:
'And time,' said Bernard, 'lets fall its drop. The drop that has formed on the roof of the soul falls. On the roof of my mind time, forming, lets fall its drop. Last week, as I stood shaving, the drop fell. I, standing with my razor in my hand, became suddenly aware of the merely habitual nature of my action (this is the drop forming) and congratulated my hands, ironically, for keeping at it. Shave, shave, shave, I said. Go on shaving. The drop fell. All through the day's work, at intervals, my mind went to an empty place, saying, "What is lost? What is over?" And "Over and done with," I muttered, "over and done with," solacing myself with words. People noticed the vacuity of my face and the aimlessness of my conversation. The last words of my sentence tailed away. And as I buttoned on my coat to go home I said more dramatically, "I have lost my youth."
'It is curious how, at every crisis, some phrase which does not fit insists upon coming to the rescue--the penalty of living in an old civilization with a notebook. This drop falling has nothing to do with losing my youth. This drop falling is time tapering to a point. Time, which is a sunny pasture covered with a dancing light, time, which is widespread as a field at midday, becomes pendant. Time tapers to a point. As a drop falls from a glass heavy with some sediment, time falls. These are the true cycles, these are the true events. Then as if all the luminosity of the atmosphere were withdrawn I see to the bare bottom. I see what habit covers. - p. 157
The merest of notes has furnished Bernard with this image, enabling him to give voice to the realisation that his youth has passed. By stretching time beyond the “old civilisation” he finds himself in, all the way to geological time, the sense of loss in his own life becomes palpable “as a drop falls from a glass heavy with some sediment”.
The Waves is divided into sections that mark the passing of time. At the beginning of each section a short passage describes the movement of the sun at that time of day, with the first starting just before sunrise. It is written in beautiful, painterly language, and I wondered how a text-to-image AI like Stable Diffusion would fare with this language.
Below is my attempt to create accompanying visuals for the first section using Stable Diffusion 2.0. Some were cherry picked after multiple rounds, while others were generated on the first or second attempt, The exact prompts I used are at the end.
The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.
Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.
As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously.
Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire.
Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.
The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down.
The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.
Prompts
1.
As the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky, by John Constable
2.
As the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky.
Monet, Ken Bushe, John Kensett
3.
Before
dawn, As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and
swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and
then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes
unconsciously.
Monet, Ken Bushe, John Kensett
4.
At
sunrise by the sea, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had
sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised
a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky
like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher.
Byron Pickering, Albert Bierstadt, Turner, Henry Moore
5.
The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out.
Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible;
an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.
Monet, Byron Pickering, Albert Bierstadt, Turner
6.
At sunrise, the light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another.
One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down.
The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind.
Edward Hopper, Claude Monet
7.
After
sunrise in the garden, the sun sharpened the walls of the house, and
rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue
finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window.
The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial.
Edouard Manet, John Constable, Henry Woods, Henry John Sylvester Stannard
Colab notebooks
Stable Diffusion 2.0 - Woctezuma
Stable Diffusion 2.0 - God of AI
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