트라우마의 구조 : 『서곡』과 시간의 점들 다시 읽기

Abstract

In The Prelude, Wordsworth represents a specific experience in his childhood through “spots of time,” which tells us about the trauma occurring at the moment of a later writing. Central to the very immediacy of spots of time is a gap that carries the force of the events; it does so precisely at the expense of simple knowledge and memory. The traumatic event, for example, in the boat-stealing anecdote is not experienced fully at the time but only belated in their repeated possession of the speaker who experiences them. Only in later time does the speaker identify “the grim shape” as “the Wisdom and Spirit of the universe.” In another anecdote, the poet in youth is lost and comes to a spot where there was once a murder and the murderer's initials suddenly and mysteriously appeared soon after and were carved by an unknown hand. When the murderer's name is combined with the accident of his being lost, it evokes irresistible fear in young Wordsworth's mind. He flees in fright and confusion. The shock of his mind's relation to the threat of death in the anecdote is not direct experience of the threat of the murderer, but precisely the missing of the experience, which is the fact that the meaning of the traumatic event has not yet been fully known. Every time an overwhelming event occurs, an intense feeling erupts and traumatizes the speaker. The catastrophic events operate as an indicator of the fact that something happened before, which is often thought to be an “office”. The traumatic experiences show how the text and the reader are linked, in trauma, around which what is not known or not fully experienced.