The concept of the moments of being.

Since Virginia Woolf was a modernist she wants to experiment and 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 CONCIOUSNESS 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 onrdinary 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 highlighTing the concept thet the novellists’s task is to CONVEY THE UNKNOWN SPIRIT OF ONE’S CONCIOUSNESS.

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:

 A)Moments of being

B)Moments of non being

Moments of non being appear to  be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of. Even as 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 conciously” 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.