葉慈《塔》中書寫之場所及想像旅程

Abstract

本論文探討葉慈之詩集《塔》與詩人位於愛爾蘭高威郡之灞列力塔之間的關聯。灞列力塔乃詩人之藝術象徵，亦為其書寫之場所。筆者認為《塔》描繪了一想像旅程，且反映了詩人對於其祖國創建之刻之持續關憂。本論文分為三章，第一章分析《塔》中詩作寫作之歷史背景，並探討促使葉慈回到一九二零年代愛爾蘭政治與文化中心之兩重要因素。第二章探討「塔」在葉慈所熟知之文學及神秘學傳統中的意象，並探究灞列力塔於地誌上之重要性，以了解該塔如何補全葉慈建構之「塔」的意象，並成為詩人書寫之場所。第三章探討葉慈於《塔》中對當代歷史之沉思，筆者認為詩人之沉思，乃循一重複進行之遠離與貼近之軌跡，始於詩人對年老之危機及藝術家身分產生的質疑，經「夢回」愛爾蘭多變及暴力的一九二零年代初期，後發掘其對群體及個人圓滿性之理想意象，而終於意識「漫遊」之平靜與滿足。藉由以上討論，本論文冀望能提供重新檢視並欣賞葉慈《塔》之不同觀點。

This thesis investigates the relationship between The Tower and Yeats’s Galway tower, Thoor Ballylee, as his symbol of art and place of writing. I argue that The Tower represents an imaginative journey and reflects Yeats’s sustained meditation on the founding moments of his native country. The first chapter offers a background survey of the historical context in which most of the Tower poems were written, and examines the two main factors that had motivated Yeats’s return to the political and cultural center of Ireland in the 1920s. The second chapter beings with an investigation of the literary and occult associations of the tower symbol most relevant to Yeats’s understanding, and seeks to tease out the topographic significance of Thoor Ballylee in completing the tower symbol and becoming Yeats’s place of writing. The third chapter analyzes how The Tower can be read as an imaginative journey of the poet’s repeated disengagement and reengagement with contemporaneous Irish history, which begins from the problem of old age and questioning of the artist’s role, through a “dreaming back” of Ireland’s volatile and violent recent past in the early 1920s, discovers an ideal image for the unity of being for both community and individual, and finally concludes in the contentment and equanimity of the mind’s “wandering.” In the process, the place of writing has also become the written place in the work. By doing so, this thesis hopes to provide new vantage points from which to reexamine and appreciate one of Yeats’s finest poetry collections.