ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

unclear whether time flows forward, whether we have a single or an iterative scene,
or whether this is a representation not of actual trips to the beach, single or multiple,
but of a general state of mind to which the narrator, the sleeper, the mystic, and those
on the beach give voice (134). Meanwhile, the narrator’s musings often seem to stop
the flow of time entirely as, for example, when the narrator says of an
anthropomorphized divine goodness hidden behind a curtain, “our penitence deserves
a glimpse only; our toil respite only” (128). Such discourse, according to Genette,
does not even qualify as narrative, but is another sort of pause, a “commentarial
excurse” (Genette, Narrative Discourse 94n). Just as it is possible to view “Time
Passes” on the whole as a summary, it is also possible to view it as a non-narrative or
lyric section which does not narrate the passage of time, but instead offers
commentary on the idea of the passage of time. Finally, “Time Passes” is punctuated
by more conventional narrative scenes when Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast arrive. The
section is therefore a complex structure in which accelerating and decelerating
summary is both punctuated and bookended by scene, and in which the speed as well
as the frequency and even story-world existence of any particular passage is likely to
be unclear. We are approaching, then, the equivalent for duration of Genette’s
achrony, in which “temporal reference is deliberately sabotaged” (Genette, Narrative
Discourse 35). Herman is skeptical that indeterminate temporal order is truly
achrony, preferring the term “temporal indefiniteness” (75). Following Herman, it
seems best to say that, where the duration cannot be determined, “Time Passes” has
an indefinite speed.
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