These have their syntactical counterparts: the “gathering” in loose, subordinate structures the “culmination” in the principle, actual predication, and the “shattering” in an afterthought. And that form is composed of three elements–the gathering, the culmination, and the shattering. The sentence, very simply has, the structural form of the wave which it describes. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled in hold like a wave which bore one up with it and threw went down with it, there, with a dash on the beach. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. And what was even more exciting, she felt, too as she saw Mr. The sky stuck to them the birds sang through them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love.
Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called “being in love” flooded them. …looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical, he is unjust and kept looking down, purposely, for only so could she keeps steady, staying with the Ramsays.
Here is the sentence I have in mind in its context (the italics are mine). For I think in that one sentence, can be seen in terms of syntax the play of forces which the whole novel addresses–and perhaps in this microcosm of style, the question and its possible resolution find their best expression. In the case of one sentence from To the Lighthouse, this method has seemed to me surprisingly fruitful. One way not–at all necessarily the best–to approach a question of style is to look at a passage in detail.
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