Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

 “curled and whole like a wave”.. On the basis of Froula’s insights I would like to claim that the 
reader’s attention is attracted because the moments of being described in Woolf’s fiction are rare 
moments of insight during her characters’ daily lives when they can see reality from a totally 
different perspective and understand the importance of details that typically seem inconsequential 
and vague. 
In her analysis of Woolf’s fiction, Lee (1977) also says that the novels of Woolf were deeply 
influenced by other writers and philosophers who had been experimenting with a new approach to 
time treatment years before she was born, and she was aware of their successes and failures. For 
instance, according to Stevenson (1998:107), Woolf’s ideas were strongly influenced by the 
philosopher Henri Bergson, who believed that the difference between time measured by a clock and 
time actually experienced is the distinction between a time patterned upon space and a time 
patterned upon pure duration. Indeed, Stevenson invites us to compare these two opinions 
concerning time and temporality. Bergson based his whole philosophy on the idea that 
chronological or clock time is unreal and that reality can be found only in man’s inner sense of 
duration, which is a state of constant flow existing within the mind in which the present, past, and 
future are intermingled and impossible to separate. By comparison, we can find similar ideas in 
Woolf’s fiction and especially in her essays where she expresses the claim that all states of time 
intermingle together, ignoring the unnatural succession which clock time attempts to impose. In her 

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diary, she often meditates upon the question of human life and the amount of time each person 
possesses and asks (1953:140): “Is life very solid or shifting? I am haunted by the two 
contradictions. This has gone on for ever; will last for ever; goes down to the bottom of the world – 
this moment I stand on. Also it is transitory, flying, diaphanous. I shall pass like a cloud on the 
waves. Perhaps it may be that though we change, one flying after another, so quick, so quick, yet we 
are somehow successive and continuous we human beings”. As the example illustrates, in Woolf’s 
opinion, internal time is pure duration, which may, in a single moment, contain the experience that 
gives significance to a lifetime.
Obviously, Woolf borrowed some ideas not only from Bergson but from Joyce as well. 
Influenced by the ideas of Joyce, she maintained that real time is not the time imposed upon man by 
space, but the time that occurs within his mind. Sanders emphasizes the fact (1994) that Joyce’s 
writing puts emphasis on instants of recall, the central theme of all his novels; the past is 
rediscovered many times. Indeed, Woolf supported Joyce’s understanding and use of the notion of 
time and thus, she can be called a novelist of multidimensional time, based on certain involuntary 
memory, which gives past persons and scenes a symbolic depth they never had before. For instance, 
in her masterpiece To the Lighthouse, the writer puts emphasis on memory as a method of 
interrupting the passing time. In the novel, as Sanders argues, a sound that the characters heard or 
an odour they caught long ago can be sensed once more in their memories, simultaneously in the 
present and the past, real without being of the present moment, and the past is felt by means of 
senses, visual and audible images. This can be clearly seen in the following short extracts from the 
novel (1927) describing the deserted family house during the war: 
(30) […] certain airs entered the drawing room, questioning and wondering. (144) 
(31) […] the wind sent its spies about the house. (151)