1816-7659 /04/09 23-31 © Nasser Maleki, Noorbakhsh Hooti and Majid Farahian Marang: Journal of Language and Literature Vol. 19, 2009
WOOLF AND JOYCE
Nasser Maleki, Noorbakhsh Hooti∗ and Majid Farahian**
Abstract
The concept of time, once easily defined, remains an abstract quality. The order in which we experience events has important implications for our interpretation of those events. Although events can be presented in a chronological and continuous sequence, skilled story tellers will often deviate from this. Heidegger (1927) acknowledged that da-sein as thrown-being-in-the-world comes across time as a series of “nows”. The importance of this attitude towards time and the understanding of the content and thought of modern novels, depend on the understanding of the treatment of time. It is in this context that this article attempts to provide a brief survey of two modern novelists, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce who exploited the displacement feature of language to defamiliarize our conception of time and chronology.
Keywords:Woolf, Joyce, moments of being, spiral, narration.
1. Introduction
Time, as Kant and other philosophers have observed, is the most characteristic mode of our experience. Each and every experience of man leads to a new awareness of change. Flux and change which underline all aspects of experience are an integral part of time. Time is also one of the main problems of Western philosophy and literature. Ever since the thinkers of classical Greece tried to understand the swiftness of our seconds, minutes and hours, the problem of time has haunted our imagination. It is even more than a problem, it is a mystery.
Throughout medieval and modern history of the west, time has generally been presented not as a circle but as a line or, more exactly, an irreversible process with a unique beginning and a unique end. In different artistic and intellectual periods of European history, the adaptability of the irretrievable process of the idea of time in Christianity from creation to judgment has been distinctly tangible. In its orthodox version, it has inspired some of the greatest works of pre-modern Western literature of the seventeenth century (Richardson, 2002). Nevertheless, the very same idea could be streamlined by the philosophers of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, who pioneered our modern, secularized version of time. From now on, the conception of time has varied, which is generally regarded as an endless process without any beginning and an end. The philosophical systems of the German 19th century idealists presupposed the idea of time as progress in the
∗Dept of English, Razi University, Iran. **
long run (and in spite of occasional back-lashes) bound for a brighter future (Haghighi, 1993).
At the beginning of the 20th century, as Richardson (2006) asserted, most of the leading 20th century writers did not look at time with an optimistic approach. There was a movement away from viewing characters in relation to 'public external time' or history, towards internalized and subjective experience of time, 'personal time'. James Joyce's and Virginia Woolf's emphasis on the 'privileged moment', that is, the moment of epiphany1 is an example of this new concept of time. This
has implications for plot forms, seen, for example, in new forms of plot: the 'one day novel', or novels of the growth of consciousness or the individual’s soul. Instead of moments being organized in some ongoing narrative, where the sense of the present is directed towards future outcomes, the moment stands alone in its singularity. Additionally, as Tobin (1978 ) has argued, the other attitude which has greatly influenced the modern novels is partly due to the influence of Giambattista Vico, the Italian historian and philosopher, who had a peculiar theory about the spiral development of world history through three successive eras, with a fourth one to connect the cycles called "ricorso". Vico divided the evolution of man into three stages: (a) the divine, (b) the heroic and (c) the human. This claim is very well established in both Woolf’s and Joycean literature. Modern writers such as Joyce, and Virginia Woolf condemned the traditional realist novel as too immature and incomplete to present the complexity and mutability of reality and human experience. As Nicholas (1987) has claimed, themes in Woolf's short fiction are intrinsically mingled with narrative form. Similar to Joyce's short stories in which epiphany is frequently an essential element, Woolf's short fiction often depends on “moments of being” to delineate themes. Whereas Joyce's notion of epiphany focuses on the power of a single event to reveal truth, Woolf's “moments of being” encompass various incursions into time and place. Thus, Lodge (2002) believed that the reader was not provided with a story; he was invited to have a deep journey in the character’s consciousness to trace these impressions as they flashed and flickered through her mind, leading to incongruous awakening of other thoughts.
2. Discussion
Time is of prime importance to man because it is inseparable from the concept of the self. Psychology reminds us that man undergoes constant growth and flux. What we call the self is experienced and known only against the background of the succession of temporal moments and changes. The question what is man, therefore, invariably refers to the question, what is time. Thus, when Ernst Cassirer2 (1955)
1
Epiphany is a sudden revelation of an underlying truth about a person or situation. Taken from the Greek epiphaneia, the manifestation by the gods of their divinities to mortal eyes, the term was first applied to literature by James Joyce, who called his early experimentations with short prose passages “epiphanies”. Such moments of insight form the core of Joyce’s short stories, published in Dubliners
(1914).
2
stated that the existence of organic life firmly depended on its evolution, and further that the momentary state of an organism could not be dealt with in isolation until and unless it was linked with a future state for which this state was merely a point of passage, he showed the mportance of all the historical, organic and evolutionary theories developed during the nineteenth century.
Modern man is ever more conscious of time as a universal condition of life, and undoubtedly questions the stability of any part as solo. It is nothing more than a mere false fallacy to be beguiled by the belief that we have inherited the stability, the permanence and the order of the previous generation. The very nature of our experience is momentary, since it is conditioned by time. The past, the present and the future no longer exist as separate entities but consciously and unconsciously intermingle in our mind.
This has had severe repercussions on the status of an individual. With the collapse of the conventional family pattern, we witness the outrageous and rebellious nature of the individual against established order. S/he is a mysterious creature with incessant search for identity, and his/her constant rejection makes him/her feel derelict. Despite his/her rejection, s/he never gives up his/her search for the recapture of the past, which is all in vain. Both the quest and the failure reflect the same need to come to terms with the loss of continuity between the past and the future which was once provided by stable family relationships.
This emergence of time as a basic part of modern consciousness is also reflected in literature. Meyerhoff (1955) said that literature is a temporal art. Thomas Mann3 (1927) said that time is both the medium of narration and the
medium of life. Time has become a predominant theme in recent literature, and there is hardly a major writer who has not dealt with the problem of time and its relation to man. The modern novel as a whole reflects this attitude towards time, and the understanding of the content and thought of modern fiction without understanding of the treatment of time is out of reach.
Any discussion on the question of time must begin with an assessment of Bergson4 and Proust5 , not only because of their profound influence on
contemporary literature but because they were the first to delineate the problems of time within literature. Bergson (1960) in Time and the Free Will for the first time questioned the general conception of time as an orderly process of emotions and
feelings. He believed that time and space were confused and misconstrued. Space
connotes certain order and harmony, whereas time under a homogenous medium is a false concept and intrudes on the idea of space. Pure duration, or duree (as he calls it) is not influenced by the conception of space for here there is no order; rather all states melt into one 'clock' time, whivh is different from mind time. Bergson in Matter and Memory (1911) and Creative Evolution (1910)extended his
3
Thomas Mann (1875-1955), a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate.
4
Henri Louis Bergson (1859-1941), a major French philosopher.
5
idea of duration, approaching it as tantamount to life. Duration is the ceaseless growth of the past which keeps its steady progress in the future and swells as it advances. Furthermore, duration is irreversible and to relive an experience one would have to erase all that had followed that particular experience. Therefore, for Bergson, although the past exists in the present, it still remains the past, unlike the Neo-Platonists who see past, present and future as distinctions with no validity at all. Bergson’s contribution then has been to indicate a sense of truth in terms of man’s inner existence, and so release him from the artificial distinction of clock time (Harland, 1999).
Marcel Proust undoubtedly read and was influenced by Bergson, but he was more interested in the question of memory - the recall of the past. The central theme of all the volume of Proust’s novel A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu (1987) is the rediscovery of the past leading naturally to the problem of time. According to Proust (1987), La Memorie Invlountire (involuntary memory) is the sole device, which provides us with a simultaneous experience of the past and the present. He also believes that the past is hidden somewhere out of the domain of our reach, inaccessible to our intellect, and taken refuge in some material objects which we do not suspect. Our senses, he wrote, wait for us to recognize by association past experience with which they are connected. And then, in "the tiniest drop of their essence we may observe the vast structure of recollection" (Proust 1987: 23).
Apparently then Bergson and Proust have an identical view of time. It is time in which the present and the past exist together, each moment containing both. But Proust, repeatedly and insistently emphasizes that his novels do not stand under the category of Bergsonian novels. In Bergsonian philosophy, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory is not mooted at all. Involuntary memories were, according to Proust (1987), the basis of a work of art, the only means of creating a sense of reality in the novel form. The major conflict between Bergson and Proust is that Bergson saw duration as a continuous process while for Proust it was just successive states of being. Secondly, as Church (1963) has pointed out, there is a sense of discontinuity in Proust emphasized by his use of a catalyst to evoke the past.
It is out of justice not to mention Viconian theory of time. Vico saw human life as composed of various cycles - the Divine cycle, the Theoric cycle and the Human cycle (Donald, 1987). These patterns are repeated a number of times within a single life span. This theory had left a great impact on James Joyce as it is clearly tangible in the complex themes and structures of Finnegans Wake (1938). This circular progression is a prominent feature of the modern novel. This sense of regressing is a focal point in the work of Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Joyce. Since it is not inappropriate to place James Joyce and Virginia Woolf as the best examples of modern writers' concern with time and chronology, a study of their techniques is essential. This is nicely done by a close scrutiny of two of their important works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and To the Lighthouse (1927).
Victorian philosophy aided Joyce in his later work, but even in Dubliners (1914) his concern with the counteracting of linear time can be felt. This concern is emphasized further in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), but art and a sense of the Bergsonian persistence of the past provide temporary solutions. In
Ulysses (1922) this is reinforced by a sense of recurrence which is fully exploited in
Finnegans Wake (1938).
All the stories in Dubliners stress the need for an integration of past and present of subject and object. The integration is achieved in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Church (1963) has analyzed the various kinds of time in the novel. He stated that time includes a sense of the individual time of the hero, a sense of the persistence of the racial past, and a transcendence of time achieved by the artist. The development of Stephen’s sense of time and the contrasting time sense of others people with whom he comes into contact form the subject matter of the book.
The young Stephen has taken for granted that time is like an immovable mast. He finds the Christmas vacation and the day that he will finally grow up, all far-fetched. Gradually, however, he begins to realize the difference between actual or clock time and his own inner existence. He observes that the present is an amalgamation of the past and the present, and like Proust’s hero he too can recreate time. Visions of the past and the future mingle with the present, though the past casts a heavy shadow on all that Stephen does or thinks. The underlying sense of time in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is more Bergsonian than Proustian. Joyce does not emphasize the discontinuous moments of recall, but the integration of past and present is a rejection of clock time which distorts reality. The sense of racial past, that Jungian sense of time is also present in this novel (Bressler, 1980). Stephen’s memories of his personal past lead at times to a sense of the historical past. He remembers playing the piano and from this memory arises visions of Agincourt and Greensleeves.
These views of time are highlighted by the conflicting sermon of the priest in the famous 'Hell episode' of the novel. For the church, time has no importance because it is transient. The sermon propagates eternity as opposed to the sense of time. Instead of amalgamating the past and the present, as Stephen wished to do, the Church disintegrated them. "Time is, time was, but time shall be no more" (Joyce, 1921: 141). Stephen, who until now has linked time and eternity together, is forced to separate them. But this only creates fleeting consolation, for he later realizes the importance of time in relation to his own being. The name Stephanos Daedalus conjures up powerful visions, it is at once a legacy and a prophecy, it is the past and the future met in the present.
relation to the past and to the future. Stephen now realizes that eternity may be discovered within time and he goes to face the reality of experience again and again.
The concept of time and space, flux and permanence moulded the flowing growth of the Western philosophy all over the ages. James Joyce attempted a synthesis of these forces by the Victorian concept of recurrence. Like Joyce, Virginia Woolf saw that permanence must be sought in changing itself. Joyce’s influence on her works is undeniable, but doubtless there were others too, particularly Thomas Hardy (1919) whose moments of vision she often spoke of. Daiches (1987) stated that Virginia Woolf’s insights into experience depended on making patterns within time that did not depend on chronology. This point is important and is at the basis of Virginia Woolf’s time sense and is properly exploited through the central characters in her novels, characters who sense the distinction between actual time and clock time. Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse
(1927) is such a character representing flow and stability of time. In spite of her death halfway through the second section of the novel, she dominates while other characters become merely her projections.
Mr. Ramsay’s connection with the time then is realized in the important dinner scene of the novel. Among all the people seated there, only she can see the reality beyond the dining table. She understands that although time is fleeting, here is a moment that will never change. There is coherence in things; a kind of stability, something she meant is immune from change. She sees her guests, she hears them but for the moment she hung suspended. This moment of suspension is a frequent feature in all of Mrs. Woolf’s works. This is her epiphanic moment, the moment of revelation, when distinctions between past, present and the future cease and for a second every thing is luminous.
had reached before. Eternity for Virginia Woolf means a sort of permanent recognition or creation with life, like Stephen’s recognition of his role at the end of
A Portrait.
Virginia Woolf’s theory of time is somewhat difficult to sum up because it is composed of divergent points of view. She found the conventional time sequence inadequate and was compelled to find within the flux of life something which would prevail. This was done by means of a sense of return and by the epiphany, the arrested moment within which the return was affected. The four major novels, The Years (1937), The Waves (1931), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Mrs. Dalloway
(1926) illustrate Virginia Woolf’ssense of circular time.
These are two of the ways in which modern writers have tackled the problem of time and reality in their work. Other writers, faced with the same problems, have found different solutions, Aldous Huxley employs the technique of multiplicity, Thomas Mann depends on the use of myth and the archetypal figure to lend a sense of eternal recurrence to his novels. Literary involvement with time is an important facet of the modern sensibility. As Meyerhoff (1955) commented, it was a striking expression of the fragmentization of time in the consciousness of the modern man. Modern writers are therefore attempting to overcome this fragmentization by revealing that even the chaotic stream of time can contain qualities of continuity, of duration in terms of which some concept of the self may be saved.
3. Conclusion
Modernist experimentation in narrative offered a forceful challenge to traditional concepts of time (among other things) which complicated the idea of what constitutes plot in fiction. Like her contemporary, James Joyce, with whom she is often compared, critics argue that Woolf revolted against the traditional narrative methods of her time and experimented with stream-of-consciousness prose and interior monologue. They note that she first introduced many of these formal experiments in short stories that often present “moments of being” - instances of intense sensibility during which unlike thoughts and events culminate in a flash of insight. Recent critical studies of Woolf's short fiction have investigated the symbolism of mirrors and glass in her work, traced revisions of her stories, assessed the influence of Bergson and Proust on her fiction. Most critics have acknowledged that Woolf's short stories have frequently served as experimental studies in which ideas for her longer works of fiction have originated and developed. Yet many commentators have contended that Woolf's experiments with poetic style, her psychological focus, and her subjective point of view have expanded the limits of time and perception within the framework of the short story, influencing and contributing significantly to the development of modern short fiction.
a subjective tone allows the reader to comprehend the fictional universe without the obtrusive voice of the narrator. In the exploration of the subjectivity of the protagonist, the short story presents a unity of space and time since most of the detailed descriptions are integrated with the character’s acquiring consciousness of his life and affections.
One of the noticeable characteristic elements of the modernist novel is the manipulation of a character's perspective. Individual's consciousness of the external world gives it a weight of importance. Within the context of the modernist novels, nineteenth century linear and objective representations of the world were being replaced by non-linear and subjective narratives in which time and space could only make sense through the consciousness of the character.
Henry Bergson's theories of memory as flux in time were appropriated by these two modernist novelists, specifically in their representations of the character’s mind. As Bergson (1960: 60-61) said:
Memory is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register....In reality, the past is preserved by itself....It follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it.
Due to their mythological approach, the work of both Joyce and Woolf adapt a spiral structure of narrative. They tell the same story again, but with various variations, while the characters are almost changing but are always the same. There are a couple of central ideas that keep coming up again and again, and control the narratives.
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