Introduction of the concept of the moment of being of Virginia Woolf and of epiphany of James Joyce

Since she was a modernist she wanted to experiment like all modernists, she rejected the standards of the novelists she considered materialists like Bennett and Galsworthy. Because she wanted to focus the attention on the subjectivity of the character on the consciousness.

She thought that only subjectivity and consciousness could convey the truth of human experience, the truth life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rended the flown of consciousness, its stream explains for the rhythm of her prose and the use of language remanding the language of poetry. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are the means throw which she conveys the mentality of the character because this is the way the mind work. She adopted and was a skilled exponent of THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS given throw free indirect style, the eclipse of the narrator and the shift of the point of view and last but not list the interior monologue.

Her idea of life is well expressed in her The Common Reader (1925) where she invites the reader to look within and to look at life. Here she wants the reader to examine what happens in a mind, an ordinary mind on an ordinary day (the life of Monday or Thursday). She explains that the mind receives impressions of a different nature (banal but also very important). Such impressions are incessant and they create the shape of a day. Since it is such impressions that make up people's ordinary life, it is such impressions that writer has to convey to the reader. It follows that (there would be no plot, no comedy..). According to Virginia Woolf's thought therefore, life cannot be returned to the reader in a series of gig lamps. Virginia Woolf concludes that the essay highlights the concept that the novelist task is to convey the unknown spirit of one's consciousness.

MOMENT OF BEING (VIRGINIA WOOLF)

Virginia Woolf is recognized 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 unmemorable - even if the events themselves are unimportant - that they can be vividly recalled why 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 in the moment she experiences it.

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 embodied in "a kind of nondescript cotton wool".

It is not the nature of the actions that separate moments of being from moments of non-being. One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than others. 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, 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 all world is a work of art; that we are part 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 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 hidden reality.

Moments of being can be find throughout 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 to experience them, to perceive life more clearly and 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 most receptive in all of Virginia Woolf's fiction, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Waren Smith. Clarissa experiences her moment of being while in the middle of what appear to be trivial acts, indicating that IT IS NOT THE ACTION, BUT HER AWARENESS THAT SETS THE MOMENT OF BEING APART FROM HER 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 fact woman in the cab... did it matter that she must inevitable cease completely or did it become consoling to believe that somehow in the streets of London in the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived".

Throughout the way Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connection between herself and her surrounded. The moments of being are marked by particularly vivid and powerful language. Because they are moments of exact feeling, the language used to convey them must naturally be evocative and précised.

THE FORM AND CONTENT MUST BE IN PARFECT SIMMETRY.

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.