Although ignorant of Russian, I am interested in how cultures see other cultures, and languages see other languages, even if those perceptions are inaccurate.  Was this just a finely poetic notion in Woolf’s head, or was it based on something she knew or had heard?  But the idea of leaving sentences unfinished from doubt has an appeal.

‘But Sasha who after all had no English blood in her but was from Russia where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden, and sentences often left unfinished from doubt as to how best to end them.’

Source: Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, ed. with an introduction by Rachel Bowlby (Oxford: World’s Classics, 1992), p. 44-45

Photo credit: Anestiev at pixabay.com