IT IS AN IMPRESSIVE, paragraph-long sentence with which Virginia Woolf sets out to explore the relation of illness to literature, and creativity more generally, in 1925:

Motivation for her then to write On Being Ill was to lament the lack of attention paid to illness. The literary world, she claims, has not explored illness adequately. In her elegant ways, and loaded with poetic imagery— maybe to prove exactly that it is possible to write illness “literarily,” although the role models may be lacking—Woolf emphasizes the extraordinary point of view the experience of illness and pain can give writers (and other artists), grounding them in, rather than enabling them to transcend, the body. Dropping out of “the army of the upright,” thrown back onto their own physicality, ill writers not only recognize nature's indifference but can also appreciate illness, for the intensity of feeling it brings and as a liberating force in the social realm. In this sense, Woolf does “romanticize” the illness experience, with a view to valorizing it.