There is no shore of Time, no port of Man. It flows, and we go on. Literature introduces various conceptions of time depending on the literary genres. For instance, romantic poets like Alphonse de Lamartine and John Keats take into account the eternity of time by focusing on the ephemerality of men in order to share their melancholy. On the contrary, in response to Romanticism, realist novelist like Émile Zola and Charles Dickens set their feelings aside and tend to rely on scientific data to portray life as it is. The scientific conception of time, whether it is based on Einsteins theory of relativity or Quantum Physics, relies on clock time, that is to say the succession of the past, the present and the future. However, according to Henri Bergsons theory of duration, there are two aspects of time: objective, based on clock time and subjective, based on the human experience of life. Under the influence of Bergsons philosophy, Virginia Woolf argues that life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged [for it] is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. As a ma
tter of fact, this essay will show that her novel To The Lighthouse illustrates the theory of duration and pushes the reader to a critical reflexion on the ephemerality of men, by analysing the discrepancy between the physical conception of time and the human perception of it.
The novel introduces two aspects of the physical conception of time. In a first place, there is a human perspective of the physical time, as the use of the stream of consciousness demonstrates. Not only does it show that the characters belong to the present, but it also proves that they cannot escape it. For instance, Mrs Ramsays opening line Yes, of course, if its fine tomorrow shows her helplessness since the use of the conditional tense and the adverbial phrase tomorrow demonstrate that the characters cannot physically escape the present nor foretell the future. This idea is reinforced by Mr Bankess statement we must wait for the future to show, for the modal verb must and the verb wait turn the characters into spectators of life and time. In a second place, as Paul Sheenan explains To the Lighthouse also introduces a non-human perspective of the physical time.