MOMENTS OF
BEING by 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.