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The Death of the Moth
By Virginia
Woolf
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.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses,
and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from
side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him.
One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities
of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a
moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his
zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew
vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second,
flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner
and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the
downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic
voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching
him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the
world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he
crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He
was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that
was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow
and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings,
there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if
someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as
possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us
the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness
of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and
garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection
and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been
born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of
pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the
window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an end, I forgot
about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by him. He was trying to resume
his dancing, but seemed either so stiff or so awkward that he could only
flutter to the bottom of the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he
failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a
time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as
one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without
considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he
slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on
the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me
that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs
struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out a pencil, meaning to help him to
right himself, it came over me that the failure and awkwardness were the
approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the enemy
against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had happened there?
Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields had stopped. Stillness and
quiet had replaced the previous animation. The birds had taken themselves off
to feed in the brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the
same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to anything in
particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little hay-coloured moth. It was
useless to try to do anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts
made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen,
have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings;
nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of
exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so
frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One's sympathies, of course,
were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know,
this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a
power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep,
moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the
pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the
unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly
grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew
death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a
force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been
strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having
righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he
seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
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