國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
90
ordinary man can find nothing particular in fear. The fear turns out to be a guilt which is “insoluble” (CP 463) and becomes the “Incomprehensible comprehensive dread”
(CP 464). This dread is invisible but haunts everywhere. Because of the dread,
freedom is “lost” and the inner mind is a “zig-zag” (CP 465). The connection between the body and the mind is estranged. To see becomes not to believe but to doubt. The mind is occupied by the chaos.
This chaos makes the sense of existence ambivalent. As a result, Malin discloses that “We’re quiet in the dark: we do not / Know the connection between / The clock we are bound to obey / And the miracle we must not despair of” (CP 533). The ordinary man feels puzzled about the physical world and the inner life. Simulacrum is in every nook and cranny. Both the physical and the mental spaces are occupied by the illusions. The very dread is insolvable, and it evokes the anxiety. Wherever he goes, the ordinary man is always struggling between the visibility and the invisibility.
Malin indicates that the ordinary man would rather evade the dread than face it: “We would rather be ruined than changed, / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the movement / And let our illusions die” (CP 533). The ordinary man strives in the between-ness. Every character attempts to find a way out but each of them is always struggling without any solutions. The illusions constantly appear in both the physical and the mental space; hence, everywhere is nowhere. Nowhere is the way out.
4.5 Conclusion: Moving on
The four characters attempt to escape from the reality through their imaginations or memories. They invent other spaces in the mental area. These spaces offers the possibilities to split the artificial surface. The characters are detouring around the reality since their imaginations are the reproduction of the reality. Through constantly
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
91
producing and reproducing, the division between the reality and the imagination becomes nebulous. It is impossible to distinguish the differences between them.
Realizing that there is no way out from the delusions, Malin suggests that the possibilities will be “postponed” (CP 536). The ordinary man is still lingering in the between-ness. Puzzles occur everywhere as Malin discloses that “all species of space respond in our own / Contradictory dialect, the double talk / Of ambiguous bodies . . . is the same at all times, / That Always-Opposite which is the whole subject / Of our not-knowing” (CP 535). Both the physical and the mental spaces are filled with ambiguities. There is nowhere in this opacity. Therefore, the vagueness is
“Always-Opposite” and it is the not knowing. Auden does not provide any solutions in the poem. Therefore, the four characters can only move on their journeys as sun rises for a whole new day.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
92
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
93
Chapter Five
Conclusion
This thesis offers a new perspective to appreciate W. H. Auden’s The Age of
Anxiety through applying Michel de Certeau’s spatial practice to rethink about the
meaning of space. The previous critical studies primarily follow the Jungian allegorical psychoanalysis to discuss the work; however, this interpretation makes some critics feel puzzled. Space is not neutral but full of negotiations, especially between the authority and the ordinary man. The essence of space is paradoxical. The meanings of space are not determined and constantly change. The spatial practices are discussed mainly from three areas: the visual space, the auditory space, and themental space.
Visual is the first instinct to explore space as the characters are curious about the spectacles so that some say that “I shall look” (CP 498) or ask “What did you see?”
(CP 499), and so on. De Certeau indicates that walking is one way to invent the individual spaces since the walkers can choose their own paths that are beyond the designed boundary on the map. Besides walking, I argue that the transportations can be seen as the ways that can create spaces. The totalitarianism occupies space by the visible existence such as the institutions. These spatial dominations manipulate the visibility to go against time elapsing. The transportations multiply spaces. Various perspectives are the rebellions to go against the sameness on the map. Auden presents the paradoxical phenomenon in the relationship between the passengers and the machines. The transportation moves but the passengers do not. The sense of movement relies on the change of spectacles rather than the physical movements.
Interestingly, the visual alterations give the characters the sense of movement, that is, the mobility is within the immobility. The movements are the alterations of the
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
94
spectacles. Moreover, various spectacles alter the fixed images in space. The spectacles are selected by the viewer so that each spectacle might be enlarged or distorted during the interpretations. As a result, in the process of interpretation, the wholeness will be twisted into numerous fragmentations. The ways of seeing and being seen are the process of production and reproduction. The individual
interpretations reveal the invisibility within the visibility, that is, space will be changed and given different meanings based on the viewers.
The totalitarianism occupies space by the radio announcement. There are three types of information: the news report, the unknown product advertisement, and the babblings. The announcement is censored before broadcasting. Therefore, the voice behind the radio broadcasting represents a certain authority. The news should present the current situations but it is almost impossible to present the reality since the reality is only a reproduction. The announcement is a phantasmagoria. The totalitarianism depicts a triumph and powerful scene in the war. However, the cruelty of the war is ignored by the authority. After hearing the victory of the war, the four characters do not feel honor but distressed. They share their experiences and imaginations to reveal those concealments. Their interpretations multiply spaces. These multiplicities are also the reproduction of the war. The radio news presents the maximum within the minimum.
The advertisement makes the audience confused since no one knows what the product is. The more the advertisement promotes, the less the audiences understand about it. The object itself crumbles into several pieces: the functions, the provenance of the goods, the ways to uses it, and so on. The product disappears in the descriptive information. Consequently, the advertisement gets distorted. The last announcement is equal to a delirium, which keeps reminding the audience of its existence through its
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
95
volume. The delirium is meaningless but a sound. This sound has its volume but it is feeble. This sound is equal to voiceless. Therefore, the delirium is the voiceless within the voice. The three announcements fail to conquer space. The more they occupy, the less they achieve.
The characters multiply space in their minds, especially through the story. They think that the mental space might be a way to escape from the reality but they find out that it is only a simulacrum of the reality. The division between the outside and the inside becomes nebulous. In the mental space, they stay in a chaotic situation which is constructed by their stream of consciousness. They lose the sense of chronological time of the physical world. There is a juxtaposition of the past, the present, and the future. Moreover, the reality and the fantasy are impossible to determine. They are inescapable from the cycle of production and reproduction since they live in
phantasmagoria. There is no way out because they are inside a world with no outside.
This thesis presents the dilemma between the totalitarianism and the ordinary man in space. However, I think the issue about time may be a potential study for the future research. I consider the forms of time in legends, stories, or fantasies which are related to space but I do not offer a specific definition of time in this thesis.
Furthermore, the issue about the eclogue may possibly be another interesting topic to develop in the future. Last but not the least, the negotiations between the authority and the individual are endless; therefore, both of the authority and the individual live in a phantasmagoria which is the age of anxiety.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
96
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
97
Bibliography
Altieri, Charles. The Art of Twentieth-Century American Poetry: Modernism and After.
Malden: Blackwell, 2006. Print.
Auden, W. H. The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue. 1947. Collected Poems. Ed.
Edward Mendelson. New York: Random House Inc., 1991. 447-536. Print.
---. The Portable Greek Reader. New York: Viking Press, 1948. Print.
---. The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.
---. The English Auden: Poems, Essays, and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939. Ed.
Edward Mendelson Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. Print.
---. Forwards and Afterwards. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.
---. W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman: Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W.
H. Auden, 1939-1973. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Print.
---. “The World of Opera.” Prose. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2015. 290-307. Print.
---. “Words and the Word.” Prose. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2015. 308-324. Print.
Bahlke, George. The Latter Auden: From “New Year Letter” to “About the House.”
New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1970. Print.
Beach, Joseph Warren. The Making of the Auden Canon. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1957. Print.
Bergonzi, Bernard. “Auden and the Audenesque.” Encounter 44 (1975): 65-75. Print.
Black, Suzanne. A Voice Sought in Order: Poetry, Science and Knowing Self in W.
H. Auden, Fernando Pessoa, Francis Ponge, Paul Valery, and William Carlos
Williams. Diss. U of Michigan, 2000. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2000. Print.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
98
Boly, John R. “The Romantic Tradition in The Age of Anxiety.” W. H. Auden. Ed.
Harold Bloom. New York: Yale UP, 1986. 135-59. Print.
Bruce, Cicero. “Original Sin in the Later Auden.” Modern Age 44. 4 (2002): 341-49.
ProQuest. Web. 29 July 2015.
Brus, Teresa. “Essays in Autobiography: Wystan Hugh Auden’s and Walter Benjamin’s Faces.” Biography 33.2 (2010): 333-49. ProQuest. Web. 29 July 2015.
Callen, Edward. “Allegory in Auden’s The Age of Anxiety.” Twentieth-Century
Literature 10.4 (January 1965): 155-65. JSTOR. Web. 11 March 2015.
---. “The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress.” Auden: A Carnival of Intellect.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983. 204-217. Print.
---. “The Development of W. H. Auden’s Poetic Theory since 1940.” Twentieth
Century Literature 4. 3. (1958): 79-91. JSTOR. Web. 29 July 2015.
---. “W. H. Auden’s First Dramatization of Jung: The Charade of Loving and Terrible Mothers.” Comparative Drama 11.4 (1977): 287-302. ProQuest. Web. 28 October 2015.
Cappeluti, Jo-Anne. “The Caliban Beneath the Skin: Abstract Drama in Auden’s Favorite Poem.” Style 33. 1 (1999): 107-75. ProQuest. Web. 28 October 2015.
---. “For the Love of Nothing: Auden, Keats, and Deconstruction.” Philosophy and
Literature 33 (2009): 345-57. ProQuest. Web. 28 October 2015.
Carpenter, Humphrey. W. H. Auden: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.
Print.
Caserio, Robert L. “Auden’s New Citizenship.” Raritan 17. 2 (1997): 90-103.
ProQuest. Web. 27 May 2015.
Cuordileone, K. A. “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety’: Cold War Political Culture and
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
99
the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1969.” The Journal of American
History 87. 2 (2000): 515-45. JSTOR. Web. 29 July 2015.
Dodds, E. R. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety. New York: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.
De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley:
U of California P, 1984. Print.
Engle, Paul. “Five Years of Pulitzer Poets.” The English Journal 38. 2 (1949): 59-66.
JSTOR. Web. 29 July 2015.
Firchow, Peter Edgerly. Strange Meetings: Anglo-German Literary Encounters from
1910 to 1960. Washington, D. C.: Catholic U of America P, 2008. Print.
---. “The American Auden: A Poet Reborn?” American Literary History 11. 3 (1999):
448-79. JSTOR. Web. 29 July 2015.
Fuller, John. A Reader’s Guide to W. H. Auden. London: Cox& Wyman Ltd, 1970.
Print.
Gottlieb, Susannah Young-ah. “Time Tormented.” Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety and
Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.
68-134. Print.
Greenberg, Herbert. “The Failure of Caliban and Ariel.” Quest for the Necessary: W.
H. Auden and the Dilemma of Divided Consciousness. Massachusetts: Harvard
UP, 1968. 117-70. Print.Hamilton, Craig Anthony. Opaque Enigmas: Mind, Body, and Metaphor in W. H.
Auden’s Poetry. Diss. U Maryland, 2001. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2001. Print.
---. “Mapping the Mind and the Body: On W. H. Auden’s Personifications.” Style 36.
3 (2002): 408-27. ProQuest. Web. 29 July 2015.
Hecht, Anthony. The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden. Cambridge: Harvard
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
100 UP, 1993. Print.
Hoggart, Richard. Auden: An Introductory Essay. New Haven: Yale UP, 1951. Print.
Hopper, Stanley Romaine. “W. H. Auden and the Circumstance of Praise.” Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 43. 2 (1975): 135-52. JSTOR. Web. 29 July
2015.Hynes, Samuel. The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the
1930s. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1972. Print.
Jacobs, Alan. What Happened to Wystan: Continuity and Change in Auden’s Poetry.
Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 1998. Print.
---, ed. The Age of Anxiety: The Baroque Eclogue. By W. H. Auden. 1947. New Jersey:
Princeton UP, 2011. Print.
Jarrell, Randal. Kipling, Auden & Co.: Essays and Reviews, 1935-1964. New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1980. Print.
---. Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden. Ed. Stephen Burt. New York: Columbia UP, 2005.
Print.
Jean, Daniel. “Stages in Life’s Way: Theatres of W. H. Auden.” Auden at Work. Ed.
Bonnie Costello and Rachel Galvin. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 69-85.
Print.
Jenkins, Nicholas. “Auden in America.” The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden.
Ed. Stan Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 39-54. PDF.
Jones, Chris. “W. H. Auden and ‘The ‘Barbaric’ Poetry of the North’: Unchaining One’s Daimon.” The Review of English Studies 53. 210 (2002): 167-85. JSTOR.
Web. 11 March 2015.
Kirsch, Arthur. Auden and Christianity. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Print.
---. “‘Our Grief is Not Greek’ Auden’s Poems on War.” The Yale Review 96.4 (2008):
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
101 32-55. EBSCO. Web. 11 March 2015.
Marchetti, Paola. “Auden’s Landscape.” The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden.
Ed. Stan Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 200-11. PDF.
Mutter, Matthew. “‘The Power to Enchant that Comes from Disillusion’: W. H.
Auden’s Criticism of Magical Poetics.” Journal of Modern Literature 34. 1 (2010): 58-91. ProQuest. Web. 28 October 2015.
McDiarmid, Lucy. Auden’s Apologies for Poetry. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1990.
Print.
---. Saving Civilization: Yeats, Eliot, and Auden between the Wars. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1984. Print.
Mendelson, Edward. “Revision and Power: The Example of W. H. Auden.” Yale
French Studies 89 (1996): 103-12. JSTOR. Web. 11 March 2015.
---. Early Auden. New York: Viking, 1981. Print.
---. Later Auden. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Print.
Miller, Charles. Auden: An American Friendship. New York: Paragon House, 1989.
Print.
Nelson, Gerald. Changes of Heart: A Study of the Poetry of W. H. Auden. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. Print.
Page, Norman. Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Print.
Patrick, Barbara. “Faith, Fantasy, and Art: The Detective-Deliver in W. H. Auden’s
The Age of Anxiety.” South Atlantic Review 53. 4 (1988): 87-101. JSTOR. Web.
27 May 2015.
Pearsall, Cornelia D. J. “The Poet and the Postwar City.” Raritan 17. 2 (1997): 104-20.
ProQuest. Web. 27 May 2015.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
102
Porter, Peter. “Auden’s English: Language and Style.” The Cambridge Companion to
W. H. Auden. Ed. Stan Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 123-36. PDF.
Roberts, Beth Ellen. “W. H. Auden and the Jews.” Journal of Modern Literature 28.
3 (2005): 87-108. ProQuest. Web. 3 November 2015.
Rodway, Allan Edwin. A Preface to Auden. New York: Longman, 1984. Print.
Replogle, Justin. “Auden’s Religious Leap.” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary
Literature 7. 1 (1966): 47-75. JSTOR. Web. 28 October 2015.
---. “Auden’s Marxism.” PMLA 80. 5 (1965): 584-95. JSTOR. Web. 28 October 2015.
Scholes, Robert. “The Monstrous Personal Chronicles of the Thirties.” Novel 31. 3 (1998): 414-29. ProQuest. Web. 29 July 2015.
Schuler, Stephen J. Augustine Auden: The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on W. H.
Auden. Diss. Baylor U, 2008. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2008. Print.
Seiler, Claire. “Auden and the Work of The Age of Anxiety.” Auden at Work. Ed.
Bonnie Costello and Rachel Galvin. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 250-74.
Print.
Sharpe, Tony. W. H. Auden. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Smith, Stan. W. H. Auden. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Print.
---. “The Dating of Auden’s ‘Who Will Endure’ and the Politics of 1931.” The Review
of English Studies 41. 163 (1990): 351-62. JSTOR. Web. 29 July 2015.
---, ed. The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015.
PDF.
Spears, Monroe. The Disenchanted Island: The Poetry of W. H. Auden. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1963. Print.
Spender, Stephen, ed. W. H. Auden: A Tribute. London: Weidenfeld &Nicolson, 1975.
Print.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
103
Sultzbach, Kelly Elizabeth. Embodied Modernism: The Flesh of the World in E. M.
Foster, Virginia Woolf, and W. H. Auden. Diss. U Oregon, 2008. Ann Arbor: UMI,
2008. Print.Taylor, Paul Beekman. “Auden’s Icelandic Myth of Exile.” Journal of Modern
Literature 24. 2 (2001): 213-34. ProQuest. Web. 3 November 2015.
Wasley, Aiden Robert. Postmodern American Poetry and the Legacy of Auden. Diss.
Yale U, 2000. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2000. Print.
Wetzsteon, Rachel. Influential Ghosts: A Study of Auden’s Sources. New York:
Routledge, 2007. Print.
Wood, Michael. “We all Hate Home: English Poetry since World War II.”