THE MOMENT OF BEING - Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is recognised as one of the great innovators of modern fiction. Her experiments with point of view have influenced many writers that followed her. But one particularly interesting technique that does not seem to reach much attention, is her use of "moments of being".

«...to wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable - even if the events themselves are unimportant - that they can be vividly recorded 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 she/he experiences them.

Virginia Woolf notes that people perform routine tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about that. This part of the life is «... not lived consciously...», but instead is embodies in «... a kind of non-descript cotton wool...».

It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non-being.

One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary that the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness 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, revive 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 the 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 the 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 Woolf's fiction... examine examples from her novels, Mrs Dalloway, To The Light-house and Between The Acts, these are often moment of intense power and beauty.

Unlike Joyce's Epiphany, 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.

Mrs Dalloway presents the two characters that are most receptive in all of Virginia Woolf's fiction: Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith.

Clarissa experiences her moment 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 cabs 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 completely... or did it not become consoling to believe that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived».

Throughout the day, Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connections between herself and her surroundings.

The moments of being are marked by particularly vivid and poetical language. Because they are moments of exact feeling, the language used to convey them must naturally be evocative and precise.

The form and content must be in perfect symmetry.

In her moments of being, Virginia Woolf uses a language that approaches poetry. Clarity is precisely what Virginia Woolf achieves in a moment of being.