MOMENT OF BEING

“Moment of Being” is an expression coined by Virginia Woolf, which she defines as "[...] certain moments which break off the mass, in which [...] things come together in a combination of inexplicable significance, to arrest those thoughts which [...] are almost menacing with meaning" (Virginia Woolf, quoted in Schmauder, 11). 

For V.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.

Woolf emphasizes that these "moments of being" are not related to a religious way of life. On

the contrary, they are focussed on worldly pleasures and primarily bound to a passionate and

intense feeling of being alive.

EPIPHANY

Epiphany—This term, coined by James Joyce, designates the moment in a narrative when events, images, ideas, or any combination of these have reached critical mass and produce for the reader an explosive recognition of meaning.

Joyce himself never defined exactly what he meant by epiphany, but we get some idea of what

it means from the way in which the character Stephen Daedalus defines it in Stephen Hero, an

early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen says that epiphanies are a

sudden and momentary demonstration or exposition of one’s authentic inner self.

"By an epiphany J. Joyce meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments."