| Abstract: | 本專題研究計畫為期三年，旨在探討艾略特如何透過空間安置與位移、熟悉與恐惑、安身立命與流離失所、好客與排拒與敵視等觀念之辯證，重塑陌生者之面貌。本人以為，艾略特藉由陌生者之出現與越界，逼迫自我重新檢視自我認同與如何對待他者之議題。艾略特以陌生者/異鄉人/他者此三面向，衍譯探討陌生者之本質與定義。第一年之研究，主要側重於艾略特於1910-1920期間所書寫之法文詩。舉凡旅行/居留、書寫/迻譯、身份認同/居間性等糾纏牽惹之議題，皆載浮載沈於詩文行間，不若艾略特後期作品之沈澱潛藏。學界評論向來輕看艾略特之法文詩，以為不過是詩人年少稚嫩時期對心儀法國象徵主義大師們禮敬之習作，無足觀哉。本人以為，艾略特之法文詩中實為其創作生涯中之一重要指標作品，但見不同之旅人，行旅往來於歐洲、東方、非洲、美洲以及各個不同之他鄉異邦，見證書寫與陌生者遭逢以及身份認同之種種權術策略。第二年之研究以艾略特之《雞尾酒會》為主，旨在彰顯其作品中之有關陌生者內存外在於自我、自性與他性、敵視與接納與款待等議題。第三年之研究將以艾略特的兩部詩劇為主軸：《磐石》與《政治元老》將以「陌生者歸來」與「熟悉與恐惑」詩學，探討艾略特詩劇有關個人的、社群的、甚至文本之境內/境外的與陌生者遭逢之衍譯。
This is a three-year project which aims to explore Eliot`s reconceptualization of the Stranger embroiled in debates about emplacement and displacement, the canny and the uncanny, being-at-home and not-being-at-home, hospitality and inhospitality and hostility, host and guest. The figure of the Stranger bespeaks a liminal experience for the Self to identify itself over and against the Other. I propose Eliot expounds his concern with the Stranger encountered via a triadic model of the Stranger, the Foreigner, and the Other. In year I, I choose to focus on Eliot`s French poems, which are written in the early wave of Eliot`s work and in which the intertwined issues of traveling/dwelling, writing/translation, identity/between-ness are closer to the surface and less resolved there than in his later work. Eliot composed during the late 1910s the group of French poems, which have witnessed vicissitudes in its critical reception. Critics tend to dismiss Eliot`s French poems, disregarding them either as Eliot`s desperate attempts to get through his serious writer`s block at that time, or as Eliot`s five-finger exercises and apprentice`s homage to those French poets. Arguably, the French poems, written in French by an Anglo-American poet, represent a signature landscape of emplacement and displacement, the canny and the uncanny, being-at-home and not-being-at-home in Eliot`s oeuvre. The year II aims to explore Eliot`s The Cocktail Party via the concept of the stranger within and without oneself, oneness and otherness, hostility and hospitality. The Cocktail Party (1949) is Eliot`s first composition after winning the Nobel Prize in 1948. Presumably, the main difference made by winning the Nobel Prize was that increased Eliot`s anxiety regarding his future work—in Eliot`s own words: “The Nobel is a ticket to one`s funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.” Significantly, The Cocktail Party represents a signature landscape in the new peak of Eliot`s oeuvre which returns us to the haunted threshold of cultural encounter and translation where an enigmatic stranger occupies to epitomize the impossibility and inescapability of humans trying to identify themselves via others and their otherness. The year III deal with Eliot`s two plays: The Rock (1934) will offer a study on Eliot`s Being, the Other, and the Stranger, while Eliot`s last play The Elder Statesman (1958) completes the cycle of the hermeneutics of uncanny strange(r)ness that The Rock had begun by epitomizing Eliot`s recurrent theme of “the hollow man” haunted by the “ghosts” from the past. The question of the Stranger is directly involved with the question of the meaning of Being. The feeling of a disturbing and uncanny strange(r)ness remains at the horizon of any encounter with the Stranger. Eliot refuses to privilege a single, totalizing entity of Being, instead, Being is exteriority with an irreducible plurality of the otherness as its identity, and Eliot grants the Other the priority which was once unquestionably assigned to the Self. A new poetics of the Stranger is rendered possible via the concept of the stranger within and without oneself, oneness and otherness, hostility/hospitality, culture and desire. |
