time Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Home For Fiction

time

Symbolic Spring: From Rebirths to Temporal Distortions

May 8, 2023

Somehow reading my own title makes me think it sounds too academic. Serves me right for using a phrase – “temporal distortions” – I’m sick and tired of, after using it a godzillion (sic) times in my doctoral dissertation. But this post isn’t academic. Hell, Symbolic Spring sounds like an awesome title for a post-rock album.

This text is mostly stream-of-consciousness. It’s about experiencing – another pearl of experiencing in a necklace containing such stuff as almond trees and Greek coffee.

It’s a post I write just because I feel like it – though this is a trick statement: All posts I write because I feel like it.

Symbolic spring? The symbolic nature of spring? Spring as a symbol? Rebirth is a hopeless cliche in that direction, I hate it. Spring isn’t about a rebirth; it’s just another instantiation of the temporal pit all humans are trapped in.

(In case you haven’t realized yet, this post will likely feel nonsensical and incoherent to you. What can I say, every now and then I need to write such posts – and publish them – as a reminder that I don’t try to please anyone; I only write them for myself. In other words, proceed at your own risk)

(more…)

“Everything Is Evil”: Why Life Is Necessarily Flawed

August 22, 2022

Philosophy

life, philosophy, reality, time, truth

Unlike what you might think, the expression “everything is evil” is not an ethical assessment. Rather, it’s an existential one. This becomes apparent if we incorporate a bit more of the context: “Everything is evil. That is to say everything that is, is evil”.

These words belong to Giacomo Leopardi, an Italian poet of the 19th century – a literary giant with whom English-speaking audiences are not too familiar. One reason is that translating his poetry is considered notoriously difficult. Indeed, nobody dared to even attempt it until almost a century after his death.

At this point, I should make it clear: I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, an authority on Leopardi’s poetry. Not even remotely. What I’m doing in this post is literally taking one of Leopardi’s most (in)famous passages out of context, to discuss why “everything is evil”. That is, why life is necessarily flawed.

“There is no other good except nonbeing”, wrote Giacomo Leopardi. If everything is evil, life is **necessarily** flawed.

(more…)

Reality in Frankenstein: Dreams and Temporal Distortion

November 9, 2020

Criticism

academia, frankenstein, reality, sublime, time

Note: the following article on reality in Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 150-152) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which is available for free from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, presentations, etc. feel free to visit the relevant page on the main Home for Fiction website.

Reality in Frankenstein is a matter of temporal perception. On more than one occasion Victor Frankenstein alludes to a distorted sense of time, which effectively precludes the possibility of defining reality. As the grieving scientist admits, “[s]ix years had elapsed, passed as a dream” (F 61).

However, the most powerful sense of loss of reality for Frankenstein comes after his friend, Henry Clerval, is found dead. The hapless man mentions how everything “passed like a dream from [his] memory” (F 135), and a little later, while in prison, he insists saying “if it all be true, if indeed I did not dream” (F 136).

Furthermore, he confesses that his entire life passed before his eyes like a dream, causing him to doubt whether any of it was real, “for it never presented itself to [his] mind with the force of reality” (F 136).

reality in Frankenstein — Reality in *Frankenstein* is directly related to the perception of time

(more…)