Many years ago, a friend and I somehow got on the topic of To the lighthouse, and hearing part 2 (“Time passes”) described simply sent chills down my spine. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to read this book, if only to get an idea of what that second part was about.

As it happens, I was not disappointed. To the lighthouse is a three-part book. The first part describes, in painstaking detail and reflection, an afternoon and evening in the life of the Ramsay family and their guests on an island in the Hebrides. The second part brushes over ten years of history in about 20 pages, with a swiftness that calls to mind time-lapse photography. And the closing part, in two-perspective style, covers the span of a morning in several dozen pages. Part 1 is at parts brilliant and profound, and at parts simply dull; part 3 is a conclusion that at times feels rather disorganized and all asunder; and part 2 may be simply the best piece of writing that the English language has ever seen. It describes, in vivid detail and keenly felt prose, that experience which is simply too ineffable, transient, and slippery for other writers to grasp: the passage of time.

Indeed, the passage of time is perhaps the main pre-occupation of this work. It organizes parts 1 and 2 in marked contrast, but moreover it motivates the characters in equally divergent ways. Whereas Mr. Ramsay looks to the future with anxiety about his work and it ability to stand the test of time, so does Mrs. Ramsay look constantly to the quickly-receding past, preoccupied with creating moments and memories that will justify her present lived experience. That difference in view is what animates the eponymous quarrel which begins on page 1 and lasts, as it turns out, for ten long years. While Mrs. Ramsay sees in the lighthouse an experience, an opportunity to create a memory and have an adventure, Mr. Ramsay sees instead a monument that symbolizes the ravages of time and nature, harsh truths that he hopes to teach his children (albeit, rather severely.)

Enter Lily Briscoe, who uses the lighthouse (or more accurately, the voyage to the lighthouse) as inspiration for her final, successful painting. (Apparently, a great deal has been written of Lily and her painting, which I’d love to get the time to read, some day.) It is a vision, a destination; a thing to glide towards and away from, much as the light of the lighthouse, itself, glides between far-off waves and the windows of a seaside home. Briscoe is a perfect synthesis of the opposing character of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, a modern woman who is not blind to the feelings of others, but not blind to her own artistic aspirations, either.

(I find it somewhat interesting that essentially no one of this book thinks of the actual functionality of the lighthouse - i.e. as a thing which helps ships navigate rocky waters - even though that is precisely the sort of thing Mrs. Ramsay does, guiding the ship of her dinner party through the dangerous shallows of social miscues, faux pas, and the like.)

Synthesis is a critical organizing element to this book. In addition to the synthesis of the elder Ramsays in the character of Lily Brisco, there is also a geographical synthesis: between the Ramsays’ house and the lighthouse, there is the sea, which the Ramsays finally navigate in part three. And of course, between the plodding, detail-laden pace of part 1 and the time-lapse pace of part 2, there is the steady, tangible progress of part 3 whereby - even in the absence of Mrs. Ramsay’s guiding hand, even after a chaotic and terrible ten years - it is still possible to take to the sea, to stretch a new canvas on a frame, and to finish what one set out to do.