Dure as Einstein-in-the-Heart

Dure as Einstein-in-the-Heart traces the trajectory of modernist interaction with Bergson and Einstein through the works of Virginia Woolf (18821941) and Mary Butts (18901937). It presents an overview of critical approaches that focus on time in Woolfs novels, and that foreground Bergson in their analyses of Woolf. It then examines how Woolfs formal experimentation, and theorisation of time, in Jacobs Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) relates to Bergsons temporal theories. This is followed by a discussion on the role Bergsons thinking played in the early formulation of Buttss ideas of time, and an analysis of how Bergsons ideas emerge in the short story Angele au Couvent (1923), concluding by highlighting points of contrast in the engagements of Woolf and Butts. The book then documents the growth of Buttss interest in Einsteins ideas and shows how she amalgamates these with Bergsons thinking in her journals and in the most intense of her fictional engagement with Einsteins ideas, the novel Death of Felicity Taverner (1932). It discusses Buttss responses to the popular science genre and examines the important role played by J. W. N. Sullivan and Arthur Eddington in the development of her understanding, and interpretation, of physics. It concludes with a discussion of Buttss antisemitic characterisation of Kralin, as purveyor of corrupted science, in contrast with the Taverners, who are conscious of dure and delight in the abstractions of scientific truth.