Virginia Woolf "The Mark on the Wall"

Stream of Consciousness (both psychological and literary term)�psychological realism (stories more inside characters� heads than exterior actions) meets modernism

William James�invents term to express the flux of thought�the mind is a dynamic force/entity not a static �mirror�/slate/mechanical image�mind is not a clock, mechanism, but organic unit constantly reconstituting new �wholes��accurately observe and describe mental process

Henri Bergson�duree (duration)�experience of time�like a man walking on a road at night with a lantern lighting up the road a little before and behind him�allows us to experience unity (or unified series of impressions) (link to Impressionism

Psychological realism is still rooted in an objective ground of reality (outside view of real) � modernist tend to focus on subjective realities

�The Mark on the Wall��conflict between subjective and objective realities�the work itself embodies the theme�technique mirrors the conflict 

Circular vs linear thought processes (representations of time)�all things have potentially equal weight in the narrator�s mind (imaginations, impressions, etc.)

CHAOS!!!!

Cubist effect�marshalling image after image that floats past

Art ought to have ideas in it�traditional view of art/aesthetics

Modernism�does art �ought have ideas in it�?  No, not if by ideas you mean static, ossified forms of thought�rather art ought to demonstrate or reveal the mind in action---art becomes about the process of creating art (the mental act replacing the physical)

Woman with Mandolin (the �realist� painting on the right is no less based upon an assumption than the �cubist� painting on the left�it supposes the viewer is a static position able to view the 2-dimensional canvas in perspective)�loss of delineation of foreground and background in cubist work

Modernists�we don�t have the luxury of observing the world/reality from a static, immobile point of view�the process of perceiving art is art�instead of illusion of three-dimensional �realism� Picasso shows/reveals the process of turning fragmentary perceptions into a unified whole

We�re all riding the train of time/duration�no fixed point of view�Einstein�s theory of relativity (space and time are continuum) 

Heisenberg�s Uncertainty Principle�the process of observation changes the thing observed (the wave becomes a particle and vice versa)

�Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour�landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard....�

Images of duration/time and chaos�no fixed reference point�no fixed hierarchical social order (like Whitaker�s Table of Precedency�or masculine point of view)

The mark on the wall is a snail, but wasn�t a snail.  Ambiguity of mind. 

We don�t live in three-dimensional box of Newtonian physics.