Book, Death of the moth, A[LS]

“The Death of the Moth” is one of Virginia Woolf’s classic essays. Published posthumously, it was written at the end of his life, in the middle of the Second World War. However, nothing in the essay makes explicit reference to the war. There is no mention of the extermination camps that were built not far from where the moth observed by Virginia dies. But, Virginia being who she is, we know that this is what runs beneath her words and what comes to the surface in one sentence or another that leaves us astonished. The moth's efforts to sustain life are like the efforts of human beings: splendid, worthy, but also pathetic, pitiful. The same fate as the one next door to the little hay-colored moth “could, if it wanted, submerge an entire city, and not just one city, but masses of human beings.” Perhaps, then, what is still moving in this brief essay is precisely the resistance. Because “The death of the moth” is not so much about the end of an insect (apparently insignificant), but about its tireless struggle. Of his dignity to insist on life even in the face of a power that surpasses him and that can even subjugate him, but to which he will hand over everything he has. In this sense, the essay echoes themes dear to Virginia, for whom the smallest things in life hold something splendid within them. The implacable aspect of forces such as nature, time or war, which takes and destroys everyone, is contrasted with the tenderness of our (apparently insignificant) existence. There is something much bigger than us and our short lifespan: it doesn't matter if we are men, women, fish or moths. But that doesn't stop us on mild September days. It doesn't stop us from dancing, in the small square of glass that fits us. Ana Carolina Mesquita