THE CONCEPT OF THE MOMENTS OF BEING

Since Virginia Woolf was a modernist she rejected the canons of the novelists she considered materialists like Arnold Bennett.

She thought that any subjectivity and conciousness could convey the truth of human’s experience, the truth of life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rendered the stream of conciousness. That explains the rhythm of her prose and the use of language reminding the language of poetry. Flashbacks and flashforwards are the means trough which she conveys the inner life of her characters because this is the way to mind works. She adopted and was a skilled exponent OF THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECNIQUE given through FREE INDIRECT STYLE, THE ECLIPSE OF THE NARRATOR  and the shift of the point of view and the interior monologue.

Her idea of life is well expressed in the "Common Reader" where she invites the reader to look within and to look at life. Here she wants the reader to examin what happens in a ordinary mind in a ordinary day.( the life of Monday and Tuesday). She explains that the  mind receives impressions of different nature ( trivial and banal but also very important). Such impressions are incessant and they create the shape of a day. Since it is such impression that the writer has to convey to the reader. It follows that “ there would be no plot , no tragedy .. “ .According to Virginia Woolf’s thoughts , therefore, LIFE CANNOT BE RETURNED TO THE READER IN A SERIES OF GIG LAMOS SIMMETRICALLY ARRNGED.. Virginia Woolf concludes the essay highlighying the concept thet the novellists’s task is to CONVEY THE UNKNOWN SPIRIT OF ONE’S CONSCIOUSNESS.

Virginia Woolf is recognised as the one of the greatest innovators. Her experiments with points of view have influenced many writers that followed her. One particulary intersting tecnique that does not seem to reach such attention is her use of MOMENT OF BEING. To wonder why some moments of being are so powerful and memorable – even if  the events themselves are unimportant that they can be vividly recalled – while others are easily forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences:

-         Moments of being

-         Moments of non being

Moments of non being aappear to  be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of. Even as she /he experiences them Virginia Woolf notes that people performes routine tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about that. This part of the life is”not lived consciously” but instead is embodied “ in a kind of non descript cotton wall” . It is not the nature of actions that separates moments of being from moments of non being. One activity is not intrisecally more mundane or more extraordinary that the other. Instead IT IS THE INTENSITY OF FEELINGS, ONES CONCIOUSNESS OF THE EXPERIENCE, that separates the two moments.

A walk in the country can easily be hidden behind the cotton wool for one person, but for Virginia Woolf the experience is very vivid. Virginia Woolf asserts that these moments of being, these flashes of awareness, reveal a pattern hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life, and that we “I mean all human beings – are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of work of art”.
But the individual artist is not important in this work. Instead Virginia Woolf says of all people “We are the words; we are the work of art we are the music; we are the thing itself”. Thus for Virginia Woolf a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious, of his experience, a moment when he is not only aware of himself but catches a glimpse of his connection to a larger pattern hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life.
Unlike moments of non-being, when the individual lives and acts without awareness, performing acts as if asleep, the moment of being opens up a hidden reality.
Moments of being can be found throughout Virginia Woolf’s fiction.. Examine examples from her novels “Mrs Dalloway” to the “Lighthouse” and between the “Acts”. These are often moments of intense power and beauty.
Unlike Joyce’s epiphanies, these moments do not reveal something important for the character. But they provide moments of energy and awareness that allow the character who experiences them to see life more clearly and more fully, if only briefly. And some of the characters try to share the vision that they glimpse, making the work of art that is life.

Mrs. Dalloway presents the two characters who are the most receptive in all of her fictions: Clarissa Dalloway and Warren Sptimus Smith. Clarissa experiences her moments of being while in the middle of what appears to be trivial acts, indicating that IT IS NOT THE ACTION , BUT HER AWARENESS THAT SETS A MOMENT OF BEING APART FROM HER OTHER EXPERIENCES.

For example, as Clarissa watches taxi capb pass by she finds them “ absolutely absorbing”. Her thoughts reveal that “ what she loved was this,here, now, in front of her the fat lady in the cab […] . Did it mattered that she must inevitably cease complitely or did it not became consoling to believe that somehow in the streets of London ,on the ebb and the flow of things , here , there , she survivesd.

Throughout the day Clarissa is particulary aware of these threads of connections between herself and her sorroundings.

The moment of being ARE MARKED BY PARTICULARY VIVID AND POWERFUL LANGUAGE because they are moments of exact feelings, the language used to convey them must naturally be EVOCATIVE AND PRECISE.

The form and content must be in perfect simmetry . In her moments of being Virginia WoolfUSES A LANGUAGE THAT APPROACHESPOETRY. CLARITY IS PRECISELY WHAT VIRGINIA WOOLF ACHIEVES IN A MOMENT OF BEING.