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威斯坦·休·奧登的《焦慮年代》中的空間實踐 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授: 楊麗敏 先生 Advisor: Li- Min Yang. 立. 治 政中文題目 大. ‧ 國. 學. 威斯坦·休·奧登的《焦慮年代》中的空間實踐 英文題目:. ‧. Spatial Practices in W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生: 涂善妮 Name: Shan-Ni Tu 中華民國 105 年 6 月 June 2016. v.

(2) Spatial Practices in W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. A Master Thesis Presented to. 政 治 大. Department of English,. 立National Chengchi University. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. In Partial Fulfillment. engchi. i n U. v. Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Shan-Ni Tu June 2016.

(3) To My Dear Family. 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(4) Acknowledgement First of all, I would like to express the gratitude to my advisor, Professor Li-Min Yang, who enlightens my interest in urban discourse and W. H. Auden’s works during the postgraduate period. Professor Yang not only patiently sheds light on my thesis but also encourages me to do further research. Whenever I meet the difficulties during my study, Professor Yang always respects my decisions and guides me through the more complex issues. 政 治 大. I encounter. I appreciate especially her expertise and her altruistic patience about my thesis. 立. content and organization.. ‧ 國. 學. Next, I would like to particularly thank Professor Jing-fen Su, and Professor Li-hsin Hsu. Professor Su, who shares her personal experiences and gives me her suggestions, is a. ‧. reverential life mentor for me. Moreover, Professor Su provides me a part-time job as her. y. Nat. io. sit. assistant so that I have the opportunity to meet other scholars and expand my horizon on. n. al. er. different fields. Professor Hsu, who always shows her open-mindedness and her warmest. Ch. i n U. v. heart to listen to me, gives me much confidence facing the difficulties. I also thank Professor. engchi. T. J. Sellar and Professor Frank W. Stevenson who are my proposal and oral committee members and who give me their suggestions so that I can do a better thesis revision. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my dear families, who offer the unconditional love and the financial support during these years. Without their support, I may not finish this thesis and accomplish my MA degree.. .. iv.

(5) Table of Contents. Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………….iv Chinese Abstract………………………………………………………………………vi English Abstract…………………………………………………………...…………vii Chapter One: Introduction 1.1. Literature Review……..…………………………………………………….1 1.2. Methodology……………………………………………………………....13 1.3. Chapter Organization……………………………………...……………….15. 治 政 大 Introduction…………......…………………………………………………19 立 Reading through Walking …………………..……………………………..21. Chapter Two: Visual Space 2.1 2.2. ‧ 國. 學. 2.3 Reading through Taking Various Transportations……..…………………..31 2.4 Conclusion………………………………………..………………………..44. ‧. Chapter Three: Paradoxical Parallel in Auditory Space. 3.1 Introduction……………………………..…………………………………47. y. Nat. sit. 3.2 News: Displacement……………………………………………..………...52. er. io. 3.3 Commercial: A Fallacy………………………..…………………………...59 3.4 Unnamable Articulation: Detour…………………………..………………63. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. 3.5 Conclusion…………......…………………………………………………..69 Chapter Four: Mental Space. engchi. 4.1 Introduction…………………………………..……………………………71 4.2 Split between the Physical and Mental Space………………………..……76 4.3 Living in Between-ness: A Dilemma or A Possibility……..………………81 4.4 Inescapable Chaos…………………......…………………………………..88 4.5 Conclusion: Moving on……......…………………………………………..90 Chapter Five: Conclusion…………………………………………………………….93 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….97. v.

(6) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班 碩士論文提要 論文名稱: 威斯坦·休·奧登的《焦慮年代》中的空間實踐 指導教授: 楊麗敏 教授 研究生: 涂善妮 論文提要內容:. 立. 政 治 大. 本論文旨在探討威斯坦·休·奧登的長詩《焦慮年代》中個人空間實踐。分別討論詩. ‧ 國. 學. 中視覺、聽覺以及心靈空間。第一章檢視先前文章,認為之前的討論較偏重卡爾‧榮格 的心理分析並提出米歇爾‧德‧塞杜的《日常生活實踐》更能涉及詩中四位角色如何運. ‧. 用個人空間抵制極權統治。第二章探討詩中的第三部分,<七段旅程>,透過行走以及不. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. 同的交通工具創造多樣化空間。從不同的速度及高度,極權空間統一性將被翻轉。第三. n. 章提出收音機為次要角色,它不僅僅是做為媒介的傳播工具,更是極權的化身。經由不. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 同聲音的展現並質疑極權的單一表象及論述。第四章,詩中角色運用故事創造另一空 間,然而,故事卻是現實空間的延伸及模擬。四位角色在日常生活裡徘徊在個人及社會 空間,極權的政策以及個人的對策互相拉扯。生活在變動裡,帶來的可以是更多的選擇 也可能是如影隨形的焦慮。第五章總結本文論述並期望此論文能提供未來探討個人及社 會空間關係的參考。. 關鍵字: 《焦慮年代》 、《日常生活實踐》、空間、移動、個人、極權. vi.

(7) Abstract The thesis aims to explore multiple spaces in W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety, focusing on three main spaces: the visual, the sound, and the mental space. This paper examines how the individual resists the totalitarianism and employs Michel de Certeau’s spatial practices in The Practice of Everyday Life to demonstrate the resistance within a subjugated society. Through spatial practices, the dominated space is distorted. The first. 政 治 大. chapter argues Jung’s psychoanalysis as an archetypal way and proposes that de Certeau’s. 立. space theory offers a new perspective to appreciate this work. This thesis focuses on personal. ‧ 國. 學. spatial practices within the dominated space. Chapter two discusses about the diversity in personal practices through walking and various transportations and hypothesizes that the. ‧. unity can be disintegrated through spatial practices. In the third part, there are fallacies in. y. Nat. io. sit. space. Through the radio announcement, space is imperceptibly manipulated by the invisible. n. al. er. force. This paper claims that this ordered society is a delusion and covered by the. Ch. i n U. v. appearances. In chapter four, space is a chaos. Both the physical and the mental space are. engchi. inescapable from the simulacra. This paper concludes that the struggling between the totalitarianism and the individual is a continual oscillation and this between-ness evokes the sense of anxiety. This study offers a starting point for a further research on the individual and the society.. Key words: The Age of Anxiety, Michel de Certeau, space, movement, between-ness, totalitarian, individual. vii.

(8) Chapter One Introduction 1.1. Literature Review W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1944-46)1 is a contemporary poetic drama that is challenging and ambivalent. It is challenging for the lengthy content; it is ambivalent for its equivocal meaning of the context. In his introduction of The Age of Anxiety, Alan Jacobs mentions that “The Age of Anxiety, then, is extraordinarily famous for a book so little read; or, extraordinarily little read for a book so famous” (xii). Its lengthiness and vagueness frustrate readers a lot. For. 治 政 大 longest poem, at over 130 instance, Tony Sharpe indicates that “[t]his was Auden’s 立 pages, and is probably the one that readers have found hardest to love” (59). Peter. ‧ 國. 學. Porter even claims that “it does not reach to the heart of his [Auden’s] genius” (134).. sit. y. Nat. 1948.. ‧. Nevertheless, Auden’s genius accomplished the poem the Pulitzer Prize of poetry in. io. er. The honor comes two years after Auden converts the citizenship from the Britain to. al. American in 1946. Auden has a strong mobility and the theme of movement also. n. v i n C hThe movement alters appears constantly in his work. e n g c h i U Auden’s notion of space and. time. Auden’s concept of time is different from the usual understanding. He presents time in a paradoxical way and pastiches various texts from different eras in The Age of Anxiety. For instance, this is a contemporary setting but he employs Anglo-Saxon. 1. In this thesis, the citation of The Age of Anxiety is from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson in 1991. Another source of The Age of Anxiety: The Baroque of Eclogue comes from the new version, edited by Alan Jacobs in 2011. The citations are from Mendelson’s edition, and the textural explanations are from Jacob’s introduction. In order to distinguish the two works, I use the abbreviation CP for Collected Poems to distinguish the two versions. The subtitle, eclogue, has some features. In his “The Failure of Caliban and Ariel,” Herbert Greenberg quotes the extract from Monroe K. Spears’s definition of eclogue. The features of the eclogue are: “the slight dramatic form, with dialogue; the singing contest; an elegy; love-songs and laments, with courtship of a shepherdess; formal ‘artificial’ diction and meter” (168). Edward Callen also indicates that eclogue also appears in Swift’s A Town Eclogue (1710) (“The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress” 204).. 1.

(9) alliteration to compose this poetic drama. Moreover, some short poems are inserted in the beginning of each section in the poem. The bizarre collage makes time disordered. The change of nationality brings about the issue of identity which is also discussed intensely by the critics. In his paper, “Auden’s New Citizenship,” Robert L. Caserio has discussed Auden’s concept of citizenship. Citizenship involves the sense of rootlessness, movement, and loneliness. Auden attempts to emphasize the citizenship without certain nationality, specifically, the concept of cosmopolitanism. This thought might be influenced by his witness of wars during his life. Auden was born in York,. 治 政 大 of wars. Therefore, (1914-18), the Second World War (1939-45), and other small-scale 立 England, 1907, and died in Austria, 1973. He underwent the First World War. his life is composed by the various movements without any definite destinations.. ‧ 國. 學. The Age of Anxiety is composed during the postwar period. Many critics consider. ‧. this work as a war poem in light of time relevance. For instance, Daniel Jean suggests. sit. y. Nat. that “The Age of Anxiety, very much a war and postwar text, finished in the morally. io. er. confused years after the war, contains as a central concern the need for a redefinition of human experience” (83). Auden pounders about the meaning of war in The Age of. al. n. v i n C his Not Greek’ Auden’s Anxiety. In Arthur Kirsch’s “‘Our Grief e n g c h i U Poems on War,” he. indicates the characters in The Age of Anxiety suffers “the actual human horrors of. war” (47). For Auden, the essence of war is the same and war is the “irrational form of human behavior” (Kirsch 32). War does not confine in certain places or happens to certain people. It is everywhere. Kirsch, therefore, considers that Auden’s poem on war manifests “his transcendence of nationalism” (34). Auden shows the cruelty of war as a common phenomenon all over the world. For him, wars are the same. Wars will not be waged in certain nations; therefore, wars are beyond nations. The concept of citizenship also emphasizes its existence without any nationalities. 2.

(10) Citizenship is in movement, drift-ness, and between-ness. Caserio expounds that “the dignity of citizenship inheres in a concretely enacted state of being between or among nations, and not in or of one” (sic) (91). This idea of citizenship could be possibly implemented in America2. Auden tells E. R. Dodds that “America gives one the chance ‘to live deliberately without roots’” (Caserio 93), and he talks to Robert Fitzgerald that “‘America is the place because nationalities don’t mean anything here, there are only human beings, and how the future must be’” (Jenkins 43). The very essence of the citizenship is “the one without a country” (Caserio 95) and contains the. 治 政 大 Auden was granted experiment on the new meaning of citizenship. Although 立 sense of detachment. America turns out to be the place for Auden doing the. American citizenship after 1946, he would like to call himself a New Yorker rather. ‧ 國. 學. than an American since a New Yorker has “a sense a citizen of the world” (Kirsch 34).. ‧. The idea of citizenship is depicted in The Age of Anxiety as well. According to. sit. y. Nat. Caserio, this work contains “a celebration of rootless refugees, of post-national. io. er. wanders, motivates the intricate vagaries of the poet’s voices” (96). Three of the four. al. are diaspora, and all of them assemble in a nameless bar in Manhattan. The setting of. n. v i n bar is one of Auden’s 1940’sC features; “The American Auden: A Poet Reborn?” h e ninghisc h i U Peter Firchow suggests that “[t]he poems of the forties are set with suspicious frequency in speedy metropolitan bars where alienated people gather to lose themselves in dark” (454). Physically, the four move from the bar to Rosetta’s apartment; that is, most of them stay in domestic areas. However, the shifting spectacles change the concept of immobility. Auden presents a new perspective of Americanisation plays a significant role in Auden’s life. Numerous critics have illustrated in their criticisms. For instance, Stan Smith mentions that “Auden’s Americanisation was always a matter of playing at being what he had chosen to become” (The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden 8). America is the place for freedom as Auden says that “the ‘primary freedom conferred by America has little to do with democracy: it is the freedom to make experiments’” (Jenkins 42). America means a lot for Auden. It is his blueprint for his ideal cosmopolitanism, globalization, and the world citizenship.. 2. 3.

(11) movement. Although the physical experience is immobile, the change of spectacles can evoke the sense of movement. The mobility does not merely indicate the physical movement but also can be the visual change or the flow of consciousness. In other words, the mobility exists within the immobility; therefore, this paradoxical phenomenon influences the way people experience space. This movement makes the characters stay in-between-ness. Movement plays a significant role in the work. In his “Auden in America,” Nicholas Jenkins indicates the importance of movement: “modernity is movement and because movement is America . . . , America incarnates the real modern condition . . . ” (sic) (46). The Age of Anxiety, as a result, manifests. 治 政 Auden’s view on citizenship, on the existence of America, 大 and on the modern 立 condition in the twentieth century.. ‧ 國. 學. During his life, Auden travels constantly. The travelling experiences become his. ‧. ways to see the present era. He travels to Berlin (1929), Iceland (1936), Spain (1937),. sit. y. Nat. China (1938), the United State (1939), Italy (summers from 1949-57), and Austria. io. er. (summers 1958-73) (Kirsch 34). War and traveling make Auden keep moving during. al. his whole life, and also influence and cultivate his way of thinking. In The Age of. n. v i n C h are constantly presented Anxiety, the scenes of war and movement from the very engchi U beginning to the end.. Movement is not only crucial in Auden’s life but also pivotal in this work. There are six sections: “Prologue,” “The Seven Ages,” “The Seven Stages,” “The Dirge,” “The Masque,” and “Epilogue” in The Age of Anxiety. The four protagonists are Quant, Malin, Rosetta, and Emble. They drink in a bar in the Third Avenue at All Soul Night.3 In “Prologue,” the unknown narrator introduces the setting of the poem and. According to Tony Shape, the All Soul’s Day is on 2 November. It is a “Roman Catholic rather than an Anglican observance” (60). 3. 4.

(12) each character.4 Quant, who is an Irish immigrated to America when he was six-year-old and is obsessed with Mythology. Malin was once to be the Canadian Airforce and now becomes a Medical Intelligence officer. Rosetta5 is a Jewish department buyer and immerses herself into her meditations frequently in the poem. Emble is a Navy young man. At the outset, the four characters meditate on various subjects without any communications or interactions until they hear the radio news. In the second part, “The Seven Ages,” they have a discussion, which is similar to a symposium led by Malin. Malin summarizes each age and others will offer their personal experiences as the examples. In the third section, “The Seven Stages,” the. 治 政 大into an unconscious journey. four are drunken and fall into a dream that leads them 立. They call a cab to Rosetta’s apartment in “The Dirge,” and still feel confused about. ‧ 國. 學. the bizarre dream. In “The Masque,” Rosetta and Emble are attracted with each other. sit. y. Nat. “Epilogue,” Quant and Malin go home separately at dawn.. ‧. but Emble passes out after Quant and Malin leaves Rosetta’s house. In the last section,. io. er. Besides the historical linkage, other critics also associate the poem with the. al. psychology, especially the theory from Carl Gustav Jung, and the philosophy,. n. v i n C hKierkegaard. Among specifically the idea from Søren e n g c h i U these critics, Edward Callan’s. “Allegory in Auden’s The Age of Anxiety” (1965), and John Fuller’s A Reader’s Guide to W. H. Auden (1970) grasp some key elements in the poem. Callen indicates that the four6 characters represent the four faculties in Jung’s psychoanalysis: Malin as. About each name of the character, see Edward Callen’s “The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress” (206). 5 Many critics pay much attention to the relationship between Auden and Rosetta. Firchow implies that Rosetta “the character who in some ways most closely approximates his own self, given her British origins and her obsession with a fantasy British landscape” (“The American Auden: A Poet Reborn?” 455). Beth Ellen Roberts demonstrates that Rosetta is Auden’s “female lover,” Rhoda Jaffe (91). As far as I am concerned, to discuss the real identity of Rosetta seems to be insignificant and trivial. 6 John R. Boly connects the four characters with William Blake’s four Zoas: Malin as Urizen, Quant as Urthona, Rosetta as Luvah, and Emble as Tharmas (141). Susannah Young-ah-Gottlieb compares the four characters to the four in the Scholfs in “Time Tormented” (76): “the four in the Scholfs (castle in German) may, like those in the bar, be seeking to escape some generalized social or political anomie, 4. 5.

(13) Thought, Quant as Intuition, Rosetta as Feeling, and Emble as Sensation. The third section, “The Seven Stages,” is the most Jungian interpretation since every stage is seen as the Jungian allegory. Another philosopher who influences Auden immensely is Søren Kierkegaard7, who points out that “man’s anxiety in time” (Callen, “Allegory” 155)8. Fuller also pinpoints other thinkers that have the similar ideas with Kierkegaard, such as Reinhold Neibuhr, and Franz Kafka. Neibuhr defines anxiety as “man, being both free and bound, both limited and limitless, is anxious” (190); Kierkegaard also calls anxiety as “dread” which is named “angst” by Kafka.. 治 政 大and Art: The drifting might arise from the anxiety. In her “Faith, Fantasy, 立. Anxiety is a paradoxical existence, which stays in-between-ness. This sense of. Detective-Deliverer in W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety” (1988)9, Barbara Patrick. ‧ 國. 學. explains that Quant “is plagued by his various untruths,” Malin “by his lonely. ‧. solipsism,” Emble “by his bitter fear,” and Rosetta “by her persistent longings” (92).. sit. y. Nat. The four characters are fallen men. They are in fear rather than in innocence.. io. er. Fear is not only in the four characters’ minds but also in the whole society. In The. al. Age of Anxiety, the war news is broadcasted by the radio continuously; hence, the. n. v i n C h battles, death, U milieu is brimming with injuries, victories, e n g c h i and so on. Patrick argues but this escape takes the form of planning a sanitized world, which results in the eruption of a global war” (76). 7 Justin Replogle indicates that Auden’s thoughts are influenced by Kierkegaard’s philosophy: “Kierkegaard divides existence into two realms, the realm of God and the realm of man. Without the first, his philosophy is nearly identical to that of Marx-Engels. Both have an empirical epistemology. That is, both agree that all human perceptions, all human knowledge, are hypotheses. These hypotheses can never become certainties. They are never ‘objective’; they are always provisional affairs, subject to modification by subsequent experience. When Kierkegaard says ‘the certainty of sense perception, to say mothing of historical certainty . . . is only an approximation’ he is stating that ‘truth’ is not ‘objective’ or absolute, but an hypothesis” (sic) (50). I suggest that Kierkegaard’s idea of uncertainty is more relevant than Jungian allegory in The Age of Anxiety. 8 Edward Callen explains that Auden categorizes anxiety into three types: “‘his present anxiety over himself in relation to his past and his parents (Freud), his present anxiety over himself in relation to his future and his neighbors (Marx), his present anxiety over himself in relation to eternity and God (Kierkegaard)’” (“The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress” 204). 9 Alan Jacobs in his introduction of The Age of Anxiety mentions that Auden is enthusiastic about detective story. Auden once says that “if I has any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story, for once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it” (xxiii). 6.

(14) that the murder is unknown; therefore, the society falls into a suspected situation. The function of detective is to find out the murderer in the society. Moreover, this detective must remove the crime from the society and return the justice back. Patrick relates the role of detective to the role of Christ as she suggests that “just as the detective must enter the community in order to solve the crime, so too does Christ become human—the Son of Man— in order to redeem Man from his sin” (89). The crime cannot be solved by the fallen man; metaphorically speaking, the grace has to be regained by a supra-human power. This unsolved situation evokes the sense of. 治 政 大the critics. According to The issue of anxiety is widely discussed among 立. anxiety form the individual to the society.. Susannah Young-ah-Gottlieb, “dread is an unavoidable fact and constitutive element. ‧ 國. 學. of human nature” (87). It is engraved within the very human nature. In the poem, the. ‧. anxiety is the result of the alliteration. The alliteration brings about the sense of. sit. y. Nat. anxiety since the alliteration cannot be articulated clearly; therefore, it leads to. io. er. speechlessness, repetition, and chattering (85, 103). Anxiety is presented in various. al. aspects and forms. Another key element in the poem is Jungian psychoanalysis.. n. v i n C h interpretation about However, the archetypal Jungian e n g c h i U the landscape as human body in “The Seven Stages” is questionable for Jacobs. In his introduction of The Age of. Anxiety, he argues that “as the reader joins the characters in moving through this landscape, it is often impossible to understand how what [sic] they see relates to the features of any human body we are familiar with” (xxviii). Jungian interpretation about the landscape as the human body seems to be very irrelevant to each other for Jacobs. Although Jungian allegory is opposed by Jacobs, it still influences The Age of Anxiety immensely. Fuller also follows the Jungian pattern to read this poem. Fuller 7.

(15) gives a very clear summary of each section but his textual evidence is so little that he cannot prove his arguments firmly. One example of textual shortages is that he considers “The Dirge” as “an elegy for Franklin D. Roosevelt” (198); however, he does not explain the reasons and offer certain texts so that he cannot verify his argument. As a result, Firchow in his “The American Auden: A Poet Reborn?” feels confused about Fuller’s interpretation and criticizes that: “Fuller, however, does not explain why it is not identified as such . . . or quasi-mythical allusions intended to evoke Roosevelt’s heroic stature” (457). The Age of Anxiety is too obscure to. 治 政 大 convince his readers provides a brief summary for each section, his arguments cannot 立 understand; therefore, the textual evidences are significant in the thesis. Albeit Fuller. and confuse them sometimes.. ‧ 國. 學. Landscape is significant in The Age of Anxiety. Auden puts the dedication to John. ‧. Betjeman10 under his title. Jacobs in his introduction of The Age of Anxiety discloses. sit. y. Nat. that Betjeman is “a poet deeply sensitive to the Arcadian appeal of certain English. io. er. places and landscapes, and, for one known as a ‘light’ poet, capable of deceptively powerful presentations of his ideal worlds and the emotions they prompted in him”. al. n. v i n C h love of place. U (xxiv). Betjeman is attracted by topophilia, e n g c h i Moreover, topophilia is. obsessed to certain degree of “visual imagination” (xxiv). Auden shows his respect to Betjeman and his passion toward space in The Age of Anxiety. Callan in his “The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress,” has pointed out that each character in The Age of Anxiety “has an affinity for a particular kind of topophile interest” (213). Auden portrays various landscapes from the land, the sea, to the sky in this poem. Topophilia is related to the visual sense. The importance of vision is also. Callen mentions that “Auden remarked on Betjeman’s genius for translating the surface appearance of cities –including the architectural detail of churches—into a topological poetry differing distinctively from the poetry of rural landscapes” (“The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress” 213). 10. 8.

(16) emphasized by John R. Boly. In his “The Romantic Tradition in The Age of Anxiety” (1986), Boly discusses about the differences between the exterior reason and the interior subconscious. The gap between the two creates a displacement. Boly, therefore, concludes that The Age of Anxiety has “the latent power of displacement” (140). Romanticism repels the standardization of the categorization as Boly implies that romanticism rejects both the “split between outer and inner man and the rationalist faith in the sole privilege of reason to govern the external world” (136). The romanticism goes against the systematical form.. 治 政 similar to Kierkegaard’s idea about the anxiety that大 “arises from a simultaneous 立. Romanticism exists in the between-ness. The concept of between-ness is very. awareness and refusal of the unrealized” (Boly 140). The oscillation which evokes the. ‧ 國. 學. sense of anxiety is a displacement. One example of displacements is the way of seeing.. ‧. Auden depicts various ways of seeing in The Age of Anxiety, and the detailed. sit. y. Nat. discussions will be in the chapter two. The displacement or the state of being. io. er. in-between-ness is the niche for resistance as Boly sees the displacement as “a revelatory and potentially evolutionary force” (140). Boly parallels romanticism and. al. n. v i n C h however, he stillUfollows Jung’s psychoanalysis to the displacement in his statement; engchi connect the landscape with human body and to focus on the consciousness. Anxiety is inescapable from the present moment. For Jacobs, one way to release the anxiety is to go backward to the past or forward to the future. Jacobs considers the past as an Arcadian and the future as a Utopian. These two worlds might be the ways of escaping from the present predicaments but they have different goals for existence. The Arcadian is nostalgic and innocent while the Utopian might create more social dangers than the Arcadian as Jacobs mentions that “. . . The Age of Anxiety is less concerned with the social dangers produced by the Utopian than with the personal 9.

(17) temptations facing the Arcadian” (xxii). Jacobs focuses on the past as he says that “Auden consistently identified himself with the Arcadians, and he could be withering about Utopianism” (xxi). The Arcadian turns out to be the perfection, the ideal one as Jacobs observes that “[t]he Arcadian wants to see his or her ideal society as having been perfect and innocent; and (still more) wants to believe that original state can be perfectly restored, can become again just what it was” (xxiii). However, this division between the past and the future is still nebulous in The Age of Anxiety. Albeit The Age of Anxiety is so little read, it has been discussed from many contemporary critics. Among them, I think Susannah Young-ah-Gottlieb’s “Time. 治 政 大 and complicated Tormented”: Auden’s Age of Anxiety” (2003) is the most detailed 立. criticism about the poem. She gives not only a brief summary of the poem but also a. ‧ 國. 學. deeper analysis for each section. She argues that “the condition of displacement. ‧. cannot simply be assessed by an objective record of movement; displacement, rather,. sit. y. Nat. is a function of time” (72). She sees displacement is related to time, which depends on. io. er. the situations. Gottlieb has a different viewpoint on the utopian from Jacobs. Gottlieb sees the utopian is “projected into both past and future” (73) but both of them cannot. al. n. v i n C hGottlieb provides the explain the function of time distinctly. e n g c h i U detailed discussions about the poem from the form to the religious aspect, especially in “The Seven. Stages,” the third section of the poem. The purpose of the journey is to search for the Messiah. In her analysis, Gottlieb adds many relevant issues to the poem. It is an informative article but each section might be read separately as a distinct article. The phrase “the age of anxiety” widely appears in the twentieth century. In Clair Seiler’s “Auden and the Work of The Age of Anxiety” (2015), she expounds the works that are influenced by this poem and demonstrates how this poem impacts on the modern society. For instance, Leonard Bernstein’s symphony in 1949 and Jerome 10.

(18) Robbins’ ballet in 1950 are inspired by the poem. The works which are influenced by Auden are: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. uses the age of anxiety in his book, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949); Scott Stossel employs these words in his book title: My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind (2014), Daniel Smith’s “It’s Still the Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It?” (2012) and, so on (Seiler 250). Seiler examines this poem by comparing with other works, especially with James Stern’s The Hidden Damage (1947) and Auden’s “Metropolis” (1946). She provides the historical evidences and the literature relevance to read Auden’s The. 治 政 大after he participates the United together but Auden loses the interesting of the project 立 Age of Anxiety. Stern and Auden originally decide to write The Hidden Damage. States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) in Germany. Seiler gives an awkward. ‧ 國. 學. conclusion that Auden gives up the project because “he was too busy” (252) and then. ‧. Seiler says that “[w]e simply do not know for certain” (253). Her argument seems to. sit. y. Nat. be very unconvincing. Transportation is one of the main themes in Auden’s work.. io. er. Seiler compares the transportation in “Metropolis” with The Age of Anxiety since the vehicles “keep the poem on track” (268).. al. n. v i n Movement is one of theCfeatures work. From the above discussions, h e ningAuden’s chi U. The Age of Anxiety can be seen as a war poem, as a representation of metropolitan citizenship, and as a simulacrum of human body. Jungian allegorical interpretation is archetype among these critics from Edward Callen, John Fuller, and so on. However, it is hard to connect with the landscape and human body as Jacobs has already pointed out. Moreover, these landscapes do no equally correspond to the same human organs according to some critics. Auden presents the landscapes from different angles through various transportations. These transportations have their features and speeds to experience space. From the previous critics, they do not discuss the relationship 11.

(19) between seeing space from the transportations and reading space from various angles. Therefore, I would like to explore the visual power in the poem. Space is multilayered not only through the visual but also through the auditory sense. The radio can be seen as a minor but important role in the poem. Most critics consider the radio only as a tool for broadcasting or a way of propaganda. However, the radio is not merely a sound but also a representation of a totalitarian system, which is dominated by a certain invisible force. Space, as a result, is controlled gradually, intangibly, and purposely by an unseen power in everyday life. It is. 治 政 大 through the physical In The Age of Anxiety, the multilayered spaces are presented 立. invisible but it exists.. sensation such as the visual and the sound, and the mental experience, that is, through. ‧ 國. 學. the characters’ mind. The mental space juxtaposes the varieties and breaks the. sit. y. Nat. spaces into infinity. Hence, space is multi-facets and individual.. ‧. boundary of space and time. The mental space creates more possibilities and expands. io. er. Space in The Age of Anxiety is not a neutral one but a paradoxical existence. It. al. contains the coexistence of the totalitarian force and the personal resistance. Space is. n. v i n C h through the veryUvisibility. Simultaneously, subjugated by the invisible totalitarianism engchi it is also the place for the ordinary man to go against the force. In order to read space more specifically and prudently, I suppose that Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) will be a suitable choice since de Certeau analyzes space through many aspects, also including the visual, the auditory, and the mental space in this work. Significantly, in The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau demonstrates how an individual operates his own ways to resist the force of totalitarianism. He examines how space is dominated by an invisible policy and how the ordinary man rebels against the power within the subjugation. 12.

(20) 1.2. Methodology In Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), space and place are defined differently. According to de Certeau, on the one hand, space contains movements and includes “vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables” (117). Space, as a result, is dynamic. The alteration occurs within the movement. Therefore, the mobility increases the possibilities in the process of dynamics. The leeway within space transforms and stimulates the immobility into something else. Immobility is the essence of place. Place, on another hand, is designed as an. 治 政 大 configuration of positions” concludes briefly that “[a] place is thus an instantaneous 立. order. Things are located properly in their correspondent positions. De Certeau. (117). The position is organized and designed appropriately. There is no overlapping. ‧ 國. 學. in the same place as de Certeau demonstrates that place “excludes the possibility of. ‧. two things being in the same location” (117). Things are located orderly without any. sit. y. Nat. chaos. In short, space includes the active movements while place is well-organized.. io. er. Space allows the operations and the varieties within itself while place attempts to. al. make an order that expels any disorders.. n. v i n C space The relationship between is similar to tour and map. A tour h e nandgplace chi U. shows the movements and the directions while a map is “a plane projection totalizing observations (de Certeau 119). A tour indicates the ways of going through the itinerary while a map is designed to show the immovable objects and sings in certain locations. The relationship between space/ place and tour/ map are allied to each other. Their existences might be contrary but cannot be distinguished as binary oppositions. They are not the same but connect paradoxically together. The paradoxical coexistence is one of the features that both Auden and de Certeau would like to present and emphasize. De Certeau takes an example of Spanish 13.

(21) colonization and the local Indian subjection; it shows the relation between subjecting and being subjected. Albeit the Indian is subjected to the Spanish government, they [the Indian] made something else out of them; they subverted them from within—not by rejecting them or by transforming them . . . but by many different ways of using them in the service of rules, customs or convictions foreign to the colonization which they could not escape. They metaphorized the dominant order: they made it function in another register. . . . They diverted it without leaving it. (32). 治 政 oversee entirely while the weak is not subjugated passively大 in this correlation. In the 立. The relationship between the strong and the weak connects subtly. The strong cannot. cultural aspect, space can be divided into two parts: the strong and the weak.. ‧ 國. 學. According to de Certeau, the strong is parallel to the strategy while the weak to the. ‧. tactic. The strategy manipulates space by the visibility while the tactic operates space. sit. y. Nat. by the invisibility. The Indian as the subjugation of the Spanish cannot overthrow the. io. er. powerful rule but they operate the rules by their distinctive ways. They create. al. differences under the totalitarianism.. n. v i n In The Age of Anxiety, space isC under of the authority. This h ethen surveillance gchi U. supervision is ubiquitous, including the visual, the auditory, and the mental controlling within the society. However, this is also the same space where the rebellions occur. Individualism creates more possibilities to go against the totalitarianism. One of the resistant examples is walking. Through walking, the walkers invent the individual perspectives through picking their own paths that are beyond the boundaries and the designed routes on the map. Space is practiced and it is enunciated by the walkers according to de Certeau. In The Age of Anxiety, I argue that transportations can be seen as spatial practices as well. Walkers practice space 14.

(22) physically while the transportations practice space technically. Both of them create movements and various angles to interpret space. Ways of seeing multiply space. Consequently, space is altered by the invisible force. The visual makes no marks on space but changes it secretly. Space, as a result, is diverse. Sounds exist in every day. Various recorded sounds such as the “radio,” the “television,” and “the phonograph record” are “cut” into pieces and repeat constantly (de Certeau 132). The sound creates “a sonic landscape” or “a site of sounds” which is manipulated and codified by an unknown system (de Certeau 132). Space, therefore,. 治 政 大in the same space. It breaks the Sound combines the far distance and the present site 立. is subjugated not only by the visual domination but also by the invisible propaganda.. geographical limitation and juxtaposes the different locations together.. ‧ 國. 學. The last spatial practice is in the mental space. The mental space is outside the. ‧. daily repetition as de Certeau mentions that these mental spaces are “outside of and. sit. y. Nat. isolated from daily competition, that of the past, the marvelous, the original” (23). In. io. er. the mental space, time is the key element to change the present space. Memories,. al. dreams, fantasies, and stories disturb the current temporary and change it into a chaos.. n. v i n C h and mentally.UThe sense of the past, the present, Space can be transformed physically engchi. and the future becomes blurred in the mental space. 1.3. Chapter Organization This paper will focus on spatial practices in Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. This thesis is categorized into three discussions about space: the visual space, the auditory space, and the mental space. In the visual space, first of all, spatial practice is conducted by both the feet and the various transportations. At the very beginning, I will discuss how Auden creates space. Space is created by the spatial practitioners. According to de Certeau, the walkers are writing without seeing the space: “[t]hey 15.

(23) walk—an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (sic) (93). The walkers create the distinct spectacles through various paths. Space is filled with possibilities for taking adventures. Next, I suggest that the transportations are also the spatial practitioners. Besides walking, Auden also provides various transportations to experience space. They are: car, train, bicycle, airplane, and boat. Each of them has its certain speed to explore space. By different speeds, theses transportations offer unique spatial. 治 政 大 Space is multiple. The four characters create their spaces through the transportations. 立. experiences. Moreover, the manifold perspectives offer peculiar angles to see space.. Therefore, I will also discuss how space is altered by the transportations.. ‧ 國. 學. The next chapter will discuss the auditory space, which include the sound of the. ‧. radio and the listeners’ interpretations. The radio sound is an anonymous and. sit. y. Nat. impersonal voice which is controlled by an invisible power. As de Certeau has stated. io. er. that there is “no such ‘pure’ voice, because it is always determined by a system . . . and codified by a way of receiving it” (132). In daily life, the mechanic voice haunts. al. n. v i n everywhere. However, the listeners C canhgo against the authority e n g c h i U through expressing their thoughts. In daily life, the totalitarianism dominates space to create a uniform surface through the designed codes but the listeners can disobey and decode it. In the last section, I will discuss about the mental space. There are stories and. fantasies that allow the four characters break the boundary or the rules of the society in the mental space. The mental space creates a displacement of being here or over-there. These spatial practices resist the established regulations and invent opportunities beneath the dominated society. The confusion about time and space makes the four characters uncertain about the present. Consequently, the sense of 16.

(24) uncertainty also gives rise to the sense of anxiety. Space is full of possibilities and multi-facets. Instead of using the Jungian archetypal psychoanalysis, I apply de Certeau’s theory to analyze Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. Through this methodology, this poem has a new way to appreciate. By different spatial practices, the characters create their own spaces. Therefore, through the individual interpretations, the ordinary man can find ways to resist the dominated space.. 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 17. i n U. v.

(25) 立. 政 治 大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 18. i n U. v.

(26) Chapter Two Visual Space 2.1 Introduction The third section11 of The Age of Anxiety, “The Seven Stages,” is typically interpreted from Jung’s psychoanalysis. Each landscape corresponds to certain human body. For instance, in Jacobs’ note on The Age of Anxiety, he sorts out various landscapes into a table, that is, the “high heartland” as “heart,” “the hermetic garden ,” as “ears,” or “desert,” as “back” (131). The journey in “The Seven Stages,” according to Callen, is also an unconscious journey that penetrates every character’s psyche.. 治 政 大 allegories converge” in the Callen also considers that “the psychological and spiritual 立 third section (“The Age of Anxiety and The Rake’s Progress” 209). The idea of. ‧ 國. 學. landscape as human body is also discussed in Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb’s “Time. ‧. Tormented.” For Gottlieb, the body is not merely the human body but also a divine. sit. y. Nat. body of God. She interprets this work from a religious perspective and sees the. io. er. journey as a quest for Messiah.. Besides the archetypal perspective to see body as a symbol, Auden’s poetry is. al. n. v i n full of images. In her articleC “Auden’s Paola Marchetti points out that the h e nlandscape,” gchi U. landscape in Auden’s poetry is “both real and symbolic” (200). Most discussions tend to study the symbolic meaning in Auden’s work. Nevertheless, the real landscape images also play significant roles to present the kaleidoscope views in Auden’s work. Auden’s landscape writing is influenced by both Thomas Hardy and T. S. Eliot. For Herbert Greenberg, the stages represent the essence of existence. He suggests that “. . . ‘Stages’ depict, not stages of spiritual progress or stages of a lifetime, so much as modes of being or, perhaps better, of knowing, that we experience and rely on moving from sleep through the course of a normal day, each representing a different level of human resource to be soberly examined and found inadequate as a guide to existence” (“The Failure of Caliban and Ariel” 163). For Beth Ellen Roberts, “The Seven Stages” has religious symbols: “The Age of Anxiety includes several kabbalistic references in addition to the breaking of the vessels. He [Auden] indicated to Ansen that the symbolism of “The Seven Stages” section of the poem has a kabbalistic origin, explaining, ‘It’s all done in the Zohar’” (“W. H. Auden and the Jews” 102).. 11. 19.

(27) Marchetti mentions that Hardy influences Auden to see reality “from a great distance,” and Eliot teaches Auden to see “reality close up, from a particular, and often squalid, urban viewpoint” (201). In The Age of Anxiety, especially, in “The Seven Stages,” Auden demonstrates the numerous angles to see space. Seeing makes the spectator connect with space without physical touching. One of the critics, John R. Boly, has pointed out that the purpose of seeing is to search for human inwardness: “all man ever has seen or ever will see is, his own projected inwardness” (145). Boly considers that this inwardness can “recreate the world” (145). However, Boly’s viewpoint is also based on the archetypal. 治 政 大 and this psychoanalysis that this vison corresponds to human unconsciousness 立 inwardness represents the human body.. ‧ 國. 學. Previous critics mainly discuss this poem from the psychoanalysis perspective.. ‧. However, Auden portrays manifold landscapes in this section, including ponds, a. sit. y. Nat. messy inn, ports, country scenes, a city, forest, desert, and so on. These spectacles are. io. er. demonstrated from the individual angles. Moreover, these individual perspectives are ways of resistance to the totalitarianism. In “The Seven Stages,” there are many. al. n. v i n C h is planned by an U spectacles that demonstrate how a space e n g c h i unknown and invisible power. Therefore, the four characters create their own ways to escape from the totalitarian society. The four characters take the different transportations to see space. De Certeau expounds that “to read is to wander through an imposed system (that of the text, analogous to the constructed order of a city or of a supermarket)” (169). Seeing is not bound to a certain location or fixed by the limitation. It moves, links, and combines with varieties. De Certeau illustrates that the reader has no place: his place is not here or there, one or the other, but neither the one nor the 20.

(28) other, simultaneously inside and outside, dissolving both by mixing them together, associating texts like funerary statues that he awakens and hosts, but never owns. In that way, he also escapes from the law of each text in particular, and from that of the social milieu. (sic) (174) In “The Seven Stages,” the four characters keep moving toward various places and they see space via different angles. They are a group of outsiders and never belong to the local community. They float to elsewhere, especially through the visual changing. Space and the visual sense are closely connected since space has its meaning only through the readers’ interpretations. Different readers’ responses will invent multiple. 治 政 大 experiences. The spaces, which mix the interpretations with the individual 立. relationship between space and the reader is not like the one between a subject and an. ‧ 國. 學. object. The readers do not always focus on one point; they move. They see space but. ‧. never possess it. Through seeing, they escape from the present circumstances.. sit. y. Nat. Consequently, in this chapter, I would like to see how the four characters view. io. er. space through walking and taking transportations and how these individual operations. al. go against the totalitarian strategies. Space oscillates between the visible. n. v i n C htactics. The oscillation manipulations and the invisible e n g c h i U makes space uncertain and. multiple. 2.2 Reading through Walking Walking which is “a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation” (de Certeau 97) is the first way to create space. The walkers create their personal spaces by selecting different routes and link places together. They produce their personal trajectories in daily life and do not follow the directions of map, which is planned by the official. The personal trajectories include shortcuts, detours, or getting lost in space. Therefore, through these distinct ways of exploring space, walkers 21.

(29) invents their unique paths in space. Walking is not merely a physical linkage with the land but also a way to resist the systematically designed routes on map. Walking, moreover, is an enunciation of space. Walking enunciation is parallel to the utterance of language (de Certeau 98). De Certeau indicates three characteristics of walking speech act: the present, the discrete, and the phatic (98). Through the present, the walker can create more possibilities, that is, he crosses the roads, drifts way, or makes a stop. He increases the possibilities of the routes and has his will to make the choices instead of following the official map directly. Therefore, he. 治 政 大 invents discrete space ways such as turning left or right and going straight, the walker 立. developes the multiples spaces through choosing various routes. By selecting his own. that is individual. The walker employs some adverbs to show the directions such as. ‧ 國. 學. here or there when he is walking. Theses walking indicators are phatic, which makes. ‧. space into fragmentations. De Certeau has concluded that walking is not merely as a. sit. y. Nat. movement from one point to another but also as a spatial enunciation.. io. er. One of the walking characteristics as de Certeau points out is that “[t]o walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper”. al. n. v i n C hThe walker keeps himself (103). Walking remains in uncertainty. e n g c h i U aloof from the. surroundings. He merely passes them or has a glance of them without involving in. The walker searches for his propriety through constantly moving. The desire of looking for the proper is similar to the condition in The Age of Anxiety that the four characters explore their quests. Walking includes variety, uncertainty, and being absent at the same time. The walker is always away from the present and lingers between leaving and arriving simultaneously. In the following sections, I would like to discuss the four characters as walkers to explore space, and to see how they interpret space when they are walking. In “The 22.

(30) Seven Stages,” the movements happen in the dream, that is, the four protagonists actually stay in the same place. However, Auden creates a movement that is within the immobility. At the same time, Auden presents the visibility within the invisibility. The images in the section are simulacra that are produced and re-produced by the kaleidoscope of spectacles; furthermore, the same spectacles will be metamorphosed into something different in light of individual interpretations and reflections. There are two main parts that I would like to focus on: the outside and the inside spectacles. Walking is the first way to explore space. The four characters walk separately and. 治 政 takes a while for them to adapt the darkness so that大 they can see gradually. In the dark, 立. search for water in the dark, where they can hardly distinguish the surroundings. It. their sights are poor; therefore, they tend to rely on other sensations to perceive space.. ‧ 國. 學. Sight is the first sensation to explore space. Quant is the first person to notice the. ‧. environment. He cannot see the surroundings clearly so he depends on his hearing:. sit. y. Nat. “Groping through fog, I begin to hear / A salt lake lapping: / Dotterels and dunlins on. io. er. its dark shores / Scurry this way and that” (CP 485). His sight is half covered by the. al. fog; therefore, he can only perceive space by half seeing. He hears the sound of water. n. v i n lapping and ducks stepping C on h the ground. Still, Quant e n g c h i U can hardly tell the place exactly.. Rosetta also explores space through sight. She starts to describe the scenes in front of her. There is a tarn which is “In the center of a sad plain” and surrounded by “rushes and moss” (CP 485). It is a desolate wilderness. Rosetta uses the word “tarn” which means “[a] small mountain pond” and “the term is used especially in northern England, in the Lake District and the Pennines” (Jacobs 132). Albeit the viewers stay in the same situation, they perceive and describe space by their own ways. The desolate spot, for Rosetta, is full of possibilities. She says: “Some oddling angler in 23.

(31) summer / May visit the spot, or a spy / Come here to catch a stolen / Map or meet a rival” (CP 485). With her fertile imagination, Rosetta turns the unknown place into a myth. “Oddling” means “[a]n odd person” and it is used especially in northern English (Jacobs 132). Since this spot is in a remote wilderness, it is a perfect location for a spy to deal with his business; he comes here to see a stolen map or to meet his alley. Space contains stories, which are mingled with personal affections and imaginations. Therefore, Emble puts his imagination on the earth: “The earth looks. 治 政 大a damp scene which is beneath / Their corresponsive spears” (CP 486). Emble sees 立 woeful and wet; / On the raw horizon regiments pass / Tense against twilight, tired. personified as an emotional figure. The earth is sorrowful and it sheds tears. On the. ‧ 國. 學. land, people hold spears with their hands and march sluggishly and exhaustedly. They. ‧. are “Slogging on through slush / By broken bridges and burn hamlets / Where the. sit. y. Nat. starving stand, staring past them / At remote inedible hills” (CP 486). These unknown. io. er. people trek through snow, broken bridge, and burnt hamlets. It is a damaged place,. al. which is destroyed by an external violence. Emble does not give any explanations. n. v i n C ahspectacle that a group about the traumatic view. He portrays e n g c h i U of people suffer from famine and stare those far away inedible mountains. Therefore, space is multiple in light of readers’ interpretations which make space meaningful as de Certeau argues. Space is created by vision. The third section of The Age of Anxiety is filled with images. Moreover, space involves multi-faceted aspects, including the nature and the culture, which coexist in the same space. Another example of exterior spectacle is the desert in the final stage. Desert in The Age of Anxiety is mostly seen as “human’s back” or “God’s back” (Gottlieb 110-11). Gottlieb explains that “Auden presents the wildness as [sic] the supernal back. The back is protective” (110). Boly argues that the 24.

(32) desert and the forest have the same meaning. Both of them are psycho repression: “[t]he desert as symbol is the companion of the forest, in that it shows the conscious displacements that emerge from the subconscious, both being offsprings of repression” (Boly 148). The desert is a wasteland for Boly since he claims that “[p]aradise is still the dry, sterile wasteland of untransformed phenomena, and the closest we get to vision is the mirages, the elusive displacements of the subconsciously obsessed mind” (148). The psychoanalysis is still a typical way to see space. The surface of the earth originally includes multiple climates and geography.. 治 政 大 it is a repression or has any symbols. 立. Desert is one of the geographic surfaces on the earth. It is not necessary to claim that. Walking half way of the seventh stage, the four characters travel to the desert. ‧ 國. 學. zone. The desert area is also created by the readers. Quant says: “Giddy with the glare. ‧. and ungoverned heat, / We stop astonished, / Interdicted by desert; its dryness edged /. sit. y. Nat. By a scanty scrub / Of Joshua trees and giant cacti” (CP 509). There is dizzy light and. io. er. uncomfortable heat in the desert. It is dry. There is nothing but some durable plants on. al. the ground, such as Joshua trees and cacti. The desert spectacle is the same. It is not. n. v i n necessary to distinguish the C exact on earth. The sand covers all the surface. h elocation ngchi U. The desert is a paradoxical spectacle. It seems to be the same but it moves, changes, and flows every moment. It is both movable and immovable. It is a “rainless region” and the best location for serpents. It is the crudest place for living but it is also the best place for some creatures. Malin also describes the desert view, which is empty and stillness. Walking in such a dull place, Malin claims that it “takes will to cross” (CP 509) the place. The climate is severe that challenges the physical limitation but it makes the walkers’ minds determined. The mind must be steadfast and brave to go through it. These exterior spectacles influence the interior mind. Space, therefore, 25.

(33) mixes the exterior and the interior division and makes it vague. Space blurs those dissents. The distinction between the reality and the fantasy is obscured in the mirage, in which the viewer could no longer see through. Therefore, the relationship between the reality and the fantasy is not a division but a coexistence. The four characters see “an image of humpbacked girls / Or plates of roasted rats / Can make the mouth water” (CP 509). They are both physically and mentally exhausted; hence, they are eager to find something familiar with. Nevertheless, these mirages are myths. The walkers. 治 政 always stays in “doubles any distance” (CP 509) wherever大 they move. Walking in the 立 cannot achieve those scenes at all. The distance between the walkers and the mirage. desert, the walkers could hardly believe whatever they see. When they see “Oases. ‧ 國. 學. where acrobats dwell,” they even cannot tell if these acrobats “were not / Deceiving”. ‧. (CP 510) them. Consequently, the visible spectacles turn out to be transparent. In the. sit. y. Nat. mirage, the visibility exists within the invisibility, which indicates that the authenticity. io. er. of seeing is problematic. In the desert, the motionless scenery is movable and the. al. spectacles before the viewers lose the sense of certainty. That is, the certainty is. n. v i n C hThe visibility and the within the uncertainty, and vice versa. e n g c h i U invisibility coexist paradoxically.. The four characters lose all sense of direction in the desert. However, in spatial enunciation, there are many directions that can create the spatial text. Walking as de Certeau has mentioned is “a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation” (97). Through their physical exercise, the walkers merge themselves into space. They combine both their physical experiences and the mental affections into space in which more possibilities can be expanded and explored. Walking is a spatial enunciation as de Certeau has claimed. Walkers can make 26.

(34) their decisions to choose the directions they prefer. In The Age of Anxiety, Callen considers these directions as Jungian psyche: north as thought, south as feeling, east as intuition, and west as sensation. However, in spatial practice, these directions create spatial text. For instance, besides walking alone or all together, in the second and the sixth stage, four of them are divided into two pairs to travel by different ways and go opposite directions. In the second stage, Rosetta and Emble go left while Quant and Malin go right. In the sixth stage, Malin and Emble go westward while Rosetta and Quant go eastward. In “Epilogue,” Malin and Quant go home separately: “Malin was traveling southward by subway while Quant was walking eastward, each. 治 政 大 their own ways to create to his own place” (CP 531). The four characters choose 立. space. Through various walking directions, the walkers multiply the facets of space.. ‧ 國. 學. Space is no longer silent; it has its rhymes that are invented by the walkers. Through. ‧. selecting various routes, they make space fragmented and cross the rule boundaries in. sit. y. Nat. the society. The systematical space cannot keep its grammatical structure in light of. io. er. the discrete signals that is fragmented. The walkers do not follow the official map. al. while they make their choices to explore space. They choose the directions and the. n. v i n C h transportations.UWalking is the spatial practitioner ways, especially by taking different engchi according to de Certeau but I suppose that the transportations can be considered as spatial practitioners as well and this argument will be discussed in latter part of this chapter. The four characters walk both outside and inside space. For instance, in the second stage, four of them assemble together in Mariners Tavern, where “everything seems somehow familiar” (CP 489). Malin describes the scene of the inn from an outsider: Every evening the oddest collection 27.

(35) Of characters crowd this inn: Here a face from a farm, its frankness yearning For corruption and riches; there A gaunt gospel whom grinning miners Will stone to death by a dolmen; Heroes confess to whores, detectives Chat or play chess with thieves. (CP 489) The chaos and freedom coexist in the inn. Malin thinks that the inn has the “oddest collection” of the spectacle. People from different backgrounds such as farmer, miner,. 治 政 大where the social status hero, whore, detective, thieve, and so on assemble in the inn, 立 seems to be effaced. Heroes and whores stay together. Detectives do not carry out. ‧ 國. 學. their mission to arrest the criminal while they chat and play chess with thieves. There. ‧. is no social rule or order to bind people in the inn. Everything mixes and the chaos. sit. y. Nat. ensues. In the inn, people are merely the residents and they can talk freely without. io. al. er. worrying about their positions or social titles. The inn space allows the residents to. n. escape from the ordered system and to meet different others. The chaos in the inn makes them become displaced.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The noises also make space chaostic. Quant observes that “it hard to fall asleep here. / Lying awake and listening / To the creak of new creeds on the kitchen stairs / Or the sob of a dream next door” (CP 490). The air is full of various sounds: the creak of the kitchen stairs or a sob from neighbor. Space is full of sounds that penetrate into every corner of the room and these sounds derive from everywhere. The locations of the sounds are vague; therefore, the vagueness makes space uncertain. Another example of interior space is in the fifth stage when the four characters come across a desolate mansion. When they arrive at the fifth stage, Rosetta is the 28.

(36) first person to speak. She says enthusiastically that “I shall go, out I shall look” (CP 498). To see turns out to be the first instinct to explore space. The mansion is deserted for a long time. Quant describes the mansion that “The façade has a lifeless look” and “no one uses the enormous ballroom” (CP 498). After Rosetta comes back, Emble asks curiously that “Well, how was it? What did you see?” (CP 499) To see is the first step to explore. Rosetta describes specifically the scenes she sees in the mansion. She answers Emble that: Opera glasses on the ormolu table,. 治 政 In a bath-chair facing a big bow-window,大 立. Frock-coated father framed on the wall. I got what is going on. (CP 499). 學. ‧ 國. With valley and village invitingly spread,. ‧. Inside the mansion, every object is a past trajectory. Rosetta tries to trace the past. sit. y. Nat. through the decorative objects which are well placed in the room: a pair of opera. io. er. glasses are put on an ormolu table; a piece of frock-coated is hanged on the wall and a bath-chair faces a window. Through Rosetta’s eyes, these objects are described in. al. n. v i n detail and even the material C of the can be portrayed carefully. Through this h eobjects ngchi U detailed description, Rosetta presents the very realistic spectacles for her listeners as they could see those objects themselves. Nevertheless, this representation is only a phantasmagoria. Rosetta’s discourse is the reproduction of the domestic space. Through her telling, she rearranges the order of space and dismembers the wholeness into the fragmentations. The furniture and the objects exist in the correspondent position and each of them has its place. Rosetta enlarges the spectacles inside the room. The volume of each object is distorted and occupies the reader’s attention. The metamorphosis of the inanimate objects confuses the readers and makes them forget 29.

(37) the present surroundings. The spectacles in front of Rosetta become uncertain; therefore, this uncertainty evokes Rosetta’s curiosity, and lures her to go through deeply as she claims that “I got what is going on” after her exploration. Space is a subjective creation rather than an objective one. The objects in front of the spectators are the same but they will be rearranged and given different stories according to readers’ interpretations. The objects are the anchors that link the viewers’ imaginations with space. The background of the mansion is obscure; therefore, the viewers fabricate the story about it. Through watching the appearance of the mansion,. 治 政 大 A scholarly old scoundrel, 立. Quant invents a story that:. Whose fortune was founded on the follies of others,. She died in childbed; he died on the gallows,. sit. y. Nat. The property passed to the Crown. (CP 498). ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Built it for his young bride.. io. er. The owner of the mansion, according to Quant, made his fortune by chance and built. al. it for his bride. However, she died in childbirth. Because of his ill-gotten wealth, he. n. v i n Cthe was punished to death by hanging on After his death, this mansion h egallows. ngchi U. transferred to the Crown. No matter this story is true or not, space contains myths. Theses myths offer more possibilities for exploring. Quant’s story is a phantasmagoria as well. To see is no longer to believe. The objects in the domestic space have no meanings; they are only the inanimate existences. Through the viewer, space has the sense of time and mysteriousness. The relationship between space and story will be further explored in chapter four. Walking makes the walkers link their sensations with their surroundings. They rely on their sense of the visual to explore space. Once the vision is not clear, they 30.

(38) will depend on other sensations such as hearing. Seeing can evoke the viewers’ imaginations. Space turns out to be a text and the objects are the notes that create the mythical movement. 2.3 Reading through Taking Various Transportations12 In “The Seven Stages,” the four characters see space from various angles by transportations. Through distinct heights or speeds, space constantly changes its spectacles. There are many transportations from the land, the sea, to the air. The transportations on the land include train, car, trolley car, and so on. Other two types of. 治 政 大 the transportations can The spatial practitioner is no longer the walker. Furthermore, 立. transportations are airplane and boat. Theses technical devices make space multiple.. also act the role of spatial practitioners to explore space.. ‧ 國. 學. Train is the first transportation in “The Seven Stages,” and it first appears in front. sit. y. Nat. The railroads like the rivers run for the most part. ‧. of the Mariners Tavern. Emble illustrates the scene of train:. io. al. n. On a clear day both coasts are visible. Ch. And the long piers of their ports.. engchi. er. East and west, and from here. i n U. v. To the south one sees the sawtooth range Our nickel and copper come from, And beyond it the Barrens used for Army Manœuvres; while to the north. 12. Auden pays attention to the relationship between human and technology. Nicholas Jenkins implies that “For Auden, the future was being determined not by collective loyalties but by the supra-national impact of technology, hypostasized as ‘The Machine’, which had created a quite new historical complex, ‘The Machine Age’. This idea becomes an obsession in Auden’s early years in America. His 1940 review ‘Tradition and Value’ asserts that ‘men no longer have neighbors tied to them by geography, only a far-flung association of personal friends kept in touch with by machinery’, and argues that the ‘effect of the machine on life overshadows completely any political effects’” (“Auden in America” 45).. 31.

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