Though Lily, the artist and a significant character in To The Lighthouse, has had her vision, it is over, unrecognized by anyone but herself, resolving none of the pain those around her experience.
Among the various qualities given modernism (at least to literary works attributed to the period) is their dismay that the world is not, never was, and may never be whole. The fragmentation of narrative viewpoint and chronology presents this: that hubris, that single-minded confidence which led to the cataclysmic destruction of a world vision. The tragedy of modernism is the loss of satisfaction, of innocence, where there is life beyond Eden. Mrs. Ramsey is diminished to a purple triangle, and yet...and yet the text, if not the fictional painting, provides the comfort of companionship. The tragedy of the Ramseys can be extrapolated to serve the tragedy of the reader. Lily's painting permits her to know that she continues the work she started years ago.
There is a wisftul wandering tone in many modernist works. Tragedy reigned until other tones became necessary. And in due course other tones did become necessary, such as anger, mockery, naiveté, crass excess, and others. In due course, we might even imagine that heroism, grace, dignity will return. No matter how much we become convinced that each epoch must define itself, the fact is that it is all a matter of redefining.
The idea that there is nothing new need not be a point of hopelessness, but rather offer a lineage. Though the creative ego might desire spontaneous existence, the past provides for the future. The tragedy of Modernism was not that the satisfaction of empires had become ashes in the mouth, nor that innocence was lost, but rather that we continue to believe we must respond to that tragedy rather than observing the tragedies of our own age.
