Pace and Epiphany

Epiphany, in narrative, seems to be the opposite of pace. Pace is a narrative’s large forward temporal movement; epiphany, its temporary timelessness. Pace extends chronologically from past toward future; epiphany lingers in an eternal present. Is there no coexistence of these two narrative phenomena? No movement of pace in epiphany, no epiphanic presence in pace? At stake in these questions is nothing less than the relation of the two dominant historical forces of “modern” fiction: realism and modernism.