Concept of Time in Literature

German Nobel Prize Winner, Thomas Mann in his novel ‘The Magic Mountain’ writes: “What is time? It is a secret – lacking in substance and yet almighty.” The concept of time has been treated differently in different periods of time. In ancient Greece time was treated as a circle. Hesoid, the Greek historian of 8th century B.C. divided time into five ages of mankind, beginning with the golden age of the distant past when men lived in peace and continuing upto the contemporary Iron Age where fights and warfare prevail. But in medieval and modern times time has been treated as a linear process. Saint Augustine in his ‘City of God’ favoured the linear concept of time and labelled the Greek cyclic time as a mere superstition.
Time has been mentioned in literature in different ways. Even the mythical and cyclic depiction of time had influenced many writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’), Octavio Paz (his poem ‘Piedra de sol’). Even T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Geronation’ gave to us the negative document on human life just as Paz. According to the linear concept time is an irreversible process; in Christianity from Creation to Judgment Day. An illustration of this in literature can be seen in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. William Faulkner, the winner of Nobel Prize Winner in literature in 1949, in his celebrated novel ‘The Sound and the Fury’ – gives in detail the downfall of a wealthy and prosperous family in the southern United States.