Srimayee Basu

M.A. English (Previous)

Submitted to Dr. Brinda Bose

1/11/2010

A STUDY OF SPACE, TIME AND SELFHOOD IN THE

MODERNIST TRAVEL NARRATIVE

Space and time are nuanced concepts in the domain of Modernism. These
become particularly important in the Modernist travel narrative, which in
terms of its form, content and thought is significantly different from the
popular travel narrative of the eighteenth century as the “ease of
locomotion” and the “habit of flux”i that Ford Madox Ford discusses in The
English Novel, became an intrinsic part of modern life.
Con Coroneos’ work Space, Conrad and Modernity illustrates the shift from
‘Millenarian Geography’ to ‘Anarchist Geography’ii. Apart from the works
of numerous philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Franco Moretti,
Coroneos uses the works of Joseph Conrad as the primary point of reference
for his theoretical formulations on subjects such as geographical thinking,
colonialism and post-colonialism.
This paper seeks to analyse the significance of space, movement and time in
some key works of Modernist literature, namely, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, John Cheever’s short story
The Swimmer and T.S Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men. The analysis shall be
made chiefly through the clause of the observations given in Coroneos’
work.
It is significant to note that a dominant trend in the Modernist travel
narrative is the privileging of the journey over the destination. Modernist
travel, is one in which an external journey often leads to an inner journey of
introspection and self discovery. In Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out the
protagonist Rachel’s journey is a movement from a cloistered, Edwardian
life to one of intellectual autonomy. The external change in geographical
landscape has a significant connotation. The ship in which Rachel embarks
upon her journey sails from London to South America. The countries are
portrayed as metaphors for cultures and sensibilities which are widely
divergent. The regions in the external world reflect different states of the
protagonist’s mental landscapeiii. E.M Forster, in his study of Virginia
Woolf’s work describes this landscape in the following lines-“… a South
America not found on any map and reached by a boat which could not float
on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and
Atlantis.”iv
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness an explicitly imperialist voyage
changes to a journey of philosophical and existential questioning.
There is a certain debunking of geographical belonging in these narratives.
In the travel narratives of the earlier centuries, the traveler’s own cultural or
moral belonging was rarely in doubt. In Modernism, this displacement can
be described by what Conrad calls ‘Homo Duplex’v, or a social or moral
position which is equivalent to homelessness or multiple places of
belonging. This displacement of belonging can be seen in Conrad’s
protagonist Marlow. The river Congo in Conrad’s novel is depicted as a
geographical periphery between civilizations. Coroneos, writing on Conrad
observes- “The sea is an ideal space…in the sense that it emancipates
humanity from the distractions of land messiness, enabling it to act out
idealized relations in the midst of a life of work which is purified to an
elemental purpose…the two ‘spaces’ of land and sea thus present different
ontological conditions for action within Conrad’s work; but more
intriguingly, they suggest different ontological conditions for the act of
writing itself”vi.
The Modernist travel narrative often dwells in the realm of what Con
Coroneos terms “unnatural space”. In his work he alludes to this in the
following lines-“…The most familiar ‘unnatural space’ is probably the
vacuum, and anxieties to do with it appear at least as far as the Aristotelian
horror vacui.”vii This vacuum or dead space is portrayed in Eliot’s The
Hollow Men and John Cheever’s short story The Swimmer. Both these works
represent journeys which owing to their aborted endeavors, are ironic
subversions of grand mythic journeys. The “kingdoms” witnessed by the
“hollow men” of Eliot’s poem are lifeless landscapes where one’s appointed
destination after death is decided. The “cactus” land emblematizes the
amorality of the modern world. This condition of discontent is matched in
the moral state of the members of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition
described in Conrad’s novel- “Their talk was…of sordid buccaneers: it was
reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without
courage…”viii
In John Cheever’s The Swimmer, the central character wishes to transform
the banality of his existence by undertaking a voyage through the swimming
pools in the vicinity. The irony in this representation is amplified in the
manner in which the thematic exploration of suburban America is
reminiscent of a Homeric journey.
In his study of the movement from Millenarian geography, which was rooted
in Christian eschatology, to Anarchist geography of the modern ages,
Coroneos analyses the concept of ‘closed space’. He says that the concept of
‘Closed Space’ was first discussed by Halford Mackinder as “…a world in
which all earthly space is charted, claimed, interconnected, creating a closed
political system in which every explosion of social forces…(is) sharply
echoed from the far side of the globe”ix. Coroneos traces the link between
the human psyche, literature and geography, and asserts that the modern
geography is that of closed space, that is, increased accessibility has resulted
in greater human control and surveillance over the global landscape. The
modern traveller, equipped with technology and science, was aware of his
sovereignty, but the purposelessness which pervaded the journey and the
perpetual questioning of intent prevented the modern journey from attaining
the neat resolutions characteristic of its literary predecessors.
In a study of the Modernist travel narrative it is pertinent to include Con
Coroneos’ analysis of the figure of the spy which is seen in numerous novels
of the twentieth century. It is observed that the Modernist collapse of the
heart-literal and metaphoric, involves distrust not merely of feeling but of
the “functioning of an economic system”x. The figure of the spy is located in
this literary and social environment of distrust and secrecy. This discussion
is connected to the ideas of geography and space, and yet again to the idea of
‘closed space’, which is the social arena in which the spy operates. The spy
novel reached the pinnacle of popularity during the Cold War era where
every nation faced the threat of invasion. Almost inevitably, in these novels,
the spy defeats his adversary who is of a different national/racial belonging,
and has a brief affair with a woman of the same country, thereby completing
his chivalric victory. The spy novel, by depicting transcultural enmity and
romance thus reflects the intertwined nature of geography and sexuality that
Coroneos describes.
Coroneos employs Laforgue’s theoryxi wherein the Unconscious of the
human mind is compared to an “inner Africa” and explains how the concepts
of geography and selfhood are intrinsically linked. This can be applied to
understand Modernism’s reluctance to engage with sentimentality which
stems from deeply troubled ideas of selfhood and identity.
The “Self” and the “Other” are multifaceted ideas in these narratives. Franco
Moretti in his work Atlas of the European Novel remarks- “…indeed,
something is often located abroad in British novels: villains…”xii In fact,
Africa can be seen to be a recurrent motif in Modernist literature. During the
course of Marlow’s journey in Conrad’s novel, the geographical divide
between the Congo and the Thames rivers seems to fade. This erasure of
boundaries brings about a certain ambiguity regarding rigid beliefs and
values as Marlow recognises “darkness” to be a universal phenomenon.
Freudian analysis further broadens one’s understanding of the modernist
travel narrative. The different stages of a journey can be mapped by using
Freud’s conception of the Super Ego, Ego and Id. Thus if indeed the ultimate
destination is likened to the innermost recesses of the human mind, then the
modern traveller’s attempt to locate the ‘enemy’ outside of himself, that is,
in the racial or cultural ‘other’ is rendered futile as the ‘self’ and the ‘other’
become more often than not, extremely porous categories during the course
of the travel narrativexiii.
The Introduction to the Worldview edition of Heart of Darkness
observes-“Africa, then, came to figure not only in the geographical map of
the Europeans but also in their mental landscapes. The two were not
necessarily similar. Africa was now available to them in Edward Said’s
words in terms of their “imaginative geography”xiv.
Coroneos’ study reveals that, for long, geography was considered an anti-
intellectual subject in literary studies. It was only in the modern era that it
was assigned literary, political significance. Coroneos refers to the
philosophy of French philosopher Henri Bergson wherein space was viewed
as “sterile quantification” or the “dark side of creativity”xv. The dichotomy
between the intellectual status of time and space was noted by Michel
Foucault wherein time was considered to be “richness, fecundity, life,
dialectic”, whereas space was “the dead, the fixed, the immobile, and the un-
dialectical”xvi. Perhaps, the reason for this is the self-renewing potential that
time or the dialectical movement of history possesses. It is observed that it is
in the modern age that geography and space have been assigned a place
within literary studies. It is now widely agreed that space “…has a history,
that it is culturally produced, that it is an agent of knowledge…”xvii
Coroneos’ work refers to Homi Bhabha’s essay DissemiNation wherein the
specific social and political significance of different kinds of space is
discussed, such as ‘the space of liminality’, ‘the irredeemably plural modern
space’, ‘naturalised, nationalised space’ and so onxviii.
Franco Moretti refers to Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment in Atlas
of the European Novel wherein Raskolnikov’s writings focus on Napoleon,
Hegel and Carlyle, and thus locate modern culture in three European
countries-France, Germany and Englandxix. Alluding to Raskolnikov’s
assessment of Napoleon, Solon and Mahomet as criminals, Moretti
observes-“And as ideas move eastwards from this advanced Europe, they
acquire symbolic momentum, becoming extreme, intransigent: ‘what is only
a hypothesis in Europe’, says Ivan in ‘Brothers Karamazov, ‘becomes at
once an axiom with a Russian boy’; and Porfiry in ‘Crime and Punishment:
‘This is a case that involves dreams derived from books, Sir, a heart that has
been overestimated by theories…”xx.The manner in which philosophical
precepts move across nations, and their influence and interpretations in
various social contexts can be seen here.
Time and its varied ramifications occupy an important role in the modernist
travel narrative. The protagonist of Cheever’s short story realises during the
course of his journey that the season changes from summer to the inclement
wintersxxi. This change of season is metaphoric and coincides with his
discovery of his deserted home. The metaphor perhaps alludes to the
Modern man’s deep anxiety with the changing world and the acute
awareness of life’s finitude.
In the narrative of Heart of Darkness, the very idea of linear time is
debunked. Inside the forests of Congo, the Western paradigms of time and
space appear rather inconsequential. The technique which the novel adopts
in order to subvert linearity is that of ‘delayed decoding’xxii wherein the
author does not reveal the protagonist’s immediate understanding of what he
sees or hears. In Eliot’s The Hollow Men, the space described can be likened
to a vacuum, devoid of time or progressive movement. This indeterminate
state has resonances of the essence of modern existence. Time in modernist
literature pertains to the literal quantification which gauges historical and
social processes as well as the Bergsonian concept of Durational timexxiii
wherein time is assessed as a part of human consciousness which can be
understood only through intuition or imagination.
In order to understand the idea of ennui in the Modernist travel narrative, it
would be relevant to refer to J. Hillis Miller’s discussion of the “Shadow” in
T.S Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men. Alluding to the “kingdoms” marked by
physical and mental inertia, Miller remarks- “The “Shadow” which falls
between idea and reality, conception and creation, emotion and response,
desire and spasm, potency and existence, (is) the paralysis which seizes men
who live in a completely subjective world. Mind…is revealed to be the
shadow which isolates things from one another, reduces them to abstraction,
and makes movement, feeling and creativity impossible”xxiv. The destination
that the “hollow men” seek is thus never realised and they remain suspended
in a situation of ceaseless inertia and disembodiment.
It would be important to gauge the cultural and political stance of the
modernist traveller in relation to the stock picaro figure from the picaresque
tradition. Helen Carr, in her essay ‘Modernism and Travel’ delineates the
different stages of travel in the modern era beginning from “the long,
‘realist’…instructive tale of heroic adventure” which prevailed from 1880-
1900, to travel writing which became “less didactic, more subjective, more
literary” in the following decadesxxv. This was thus inevitably accompanied
by a change in the figure of the traveller. The self-assured imperialist
traveller was gradually replaced by a character that was sceptical of the logic
of not merely the white civilising mission but also patriarchy. As is to be
seen in Woolf’s novel The Voyage Out, the male hegemony over travel
ended with the modern age. Travel thus underwent a transition from being a
genre dominated by gallant tales of conquering and discovery to one that
was at many levels identifiable with the bildungsroman tradition which
focuses on the psychological development of the protagonist through the
course of the journey.
It should however be interrogated if the Modern travel narrative is indeed
about thwarted expectations. In the works chosen for this essay, the
destination aimed for is seldom realised, and the end brings with itself not
triumph but alarming revelations, as is seen in Marlow’s discovery of Kurtz
and the degeneracy that surrounds the Inner Station of Congo, Neddy
Merrill’s discovery of his destitution and the “hollow” men’s consciousness
regarding their eternal suffering. In Woolf’s novel the protagonist Rachel’s
journey reveals to her the sordid substratum of the British Empire, while
simultaneously enabling her to come to terms with her repressed sexuality.
Though the protagonist’s brief engagement with freedom allows for a certain
degree of optimism in the narrative, Rachel’s eventual death prevents this
textual strand from reaching its point of fruition. This suspension of neat
resolutions is to be seen in most Modernist travel narratives. However, with
Modernism the essential definition of the end that is sought changes. The
traveller in modernist literature struggles with deep anxieties pertaining to
identity and interiority as is observed by Coroneos in his essay ‘Heartless
Modernism’xxvi. The convoluted course that travel, in Modernist literature
often assumes is thus perhaps necessary in order to bring this search for
individuality and meaning to its logical conclusion. The concluding lines of
Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men- ‘Not with a bang but a whimper’xxvii indicates
that conclusions in all works of Modernist literature were not marked by
apocalyptic moments. They were characterised by revelations that were
neither cataclysmic nor casual but marked by a finality which was a
reminder of the irrevocable changes in the social fabric of the world that
accompanied Modernism. This assertion can be well extended to the
conclusions of modernist travel narratives.
Thus, travel narratives in Modernist literature were informed by multifarious
and oppositional influences such as imperialism, existentialism and growing
transcultural relations. It was an amalgamation of these influences that
shaped its thematic concerns and contents.
i
. Carr, Helen-‘Modernism and Travel’, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge University Press,
Google Books, (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=dYTNOE7qkvkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+cambridge+companion+to+travel+writing&source=bl&ots=h-
HdHDwz7M&sig=JpejvzL-4psaHjuu2WhvYKswca8&hl=en&ei=lpzLTMbAEYeOvQ)
ii
. Coroneos, Con-Space, Conrad and Modernity, OUP, Google Books,
(http://books.google.co.in/books?id=EPKcKuVTEZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=space,
+conrad+and+modernity&source=bl&ots=CPRQnpEQ4t&sig=wBC2_xP7gwV6LvRg3e6DJajlktU&hl=en&ei=XaL
KTIa3N466)

iii
. Woolf, Virginia-The Voyage Out, Boson Books, C & M Online Media Inc, (http://www.vnet.net/boson/)

iv
. Majumdar, Robin , McLaurin, Allen-Virginia Woolf-The Critical Heritage, Pg.172, Routledge, Google Books, (
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=-
Rq0z8PYxBkC&pg=PA172&lpg=PA172&dq=a+south+america+not+found+on+any+map+and+reached+by+a+boat
+which+could+not+float+on+any+sea,+an+america+whose+spir)

v
. Joseph, Conrad- Heart of Darkness, Introduction, Worldview
vi
. Coroneos, Con-Space, Conrad and Modernity, Introduction (Pg. 9) (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=EPKcKuVTEZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=space,
+conrad+and+modernity&source=bl&ots=CPRQnpEQ4t&sig=wBC2_xP7gwV6LvRg3e6DJajlktU&hl=en&ei=EMz
KTMHIB42IvgPk46DgDw&sa=X&oi=book_re)

vii
. ibid

viii
. Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness(Pg. 34), Worldview
ix
. Coroneos, Con: Space, Conrad and Modernism, ‘Closed Space’(Pg. 15), (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=EPKcKuVTEZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=space,
+conrad+and+modernity&source=bl&ots=CPRQplxU1y&sig=tLilrS60xS_X6BsM7KurcvYPKs8&hl=en&ei=fPnM
TO7ZJoicvgPSnukP&)
x
. Ibid

xi
. Ibid
xii
. Moretti, Franco-Geography of Ideas from Atlas of the European Novel (Pg. 29-33), Verso, Google Books,
(http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=ja2MUXS_YQUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=atlas+of+the+european+novel&source=bl&ots=MGT5QDo_kf&sig
=KI6WKiCCsiIbyHt8LyfxBgSlOLw&hl=en&ei=V9PKTO_v)

xiii
. Freud, Sigmund-The Structure of the Unconscious, Background Prose Readings, Worldview
xiv
. Conrad, Joseph-Heart of Darkness, Introduction(Pg. 14), Worldview
xv
. Coroneos, Con-Space, Conrad and Modernity, Introduction (Pg. 3) (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=EPKcKuVTEZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=space,
+conrad+and+modernity&source=bl&ots=CPRQnpEQ4t&sig=wBC2_xP7gwV6LvRg3e6DJajlktU&hl=en&ei=EMz
KTMHIB42IvgPk46DgDw&sa=X&oi=book_re)
xvi
Ibid
xvii
Ibid
xviii
. Bhabha, Homi- "DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation," (pp.139-170),
(http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/dissemination.html)

xix
. Franco, Moretti- Geography of Ideas, Atlas of the European Novel (Pg 29-33)
(http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/dissemination.html)
xx
Ibid
xxi
. Cheever, John-The Swimmer, Anglo-American Writings from 1930, Doaba
xxii
. Conrad, Joseph-Heart of Darkness, Introduction, Worldview
xxiii
Bergson, Henri-Duration ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duration_(philosophy))
xxiv
Miller, J, Hillis- On ‘The Hollow Men’ from Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers, Harvard University
Press
xxv
. Carr, Helen-Modernism and Travel from The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge University
Press (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=dYTNOE7qkvkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+cambridge+companion+to+travel+writing&source=bl&ots=h-
HdHDwz7M&sig=JpejvzL-4psaHjuu2WhvYKswca8&hl=en&ei=lpzLTMbAEYeOvQ)
xxvi
Coroneos, Con-‘Heartless Modernism’, Space, Conrad and Modernity (http://books.google.co.in/books?
id=EPKcKuVTEZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=space,
+conrad+and+modernity&source=bl&ots=CPRQnpEQ4t&sig=wBC2_xP7gwV6LvRg3e6DJajlktU&hl=en&ei=EMz
KTMHIB42IvgPk46DgDw&sa=X&oi=book_re)

xxvii
Eliot, T.S- The Hollow Men from T.S Eliot-Selection of Poems, Doaba
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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