Strangeness and the City
Strangeness and the City
The Self among Fragmented Impressions
Moving on to Arthur Symons poetry, chapter 4 argues that in Silhouettes (1892) and London Nights (1895) the fragmented, impressionistic sensations and images of the city mirror the poet’s fragmented consciousness and state of mind. The city is a matrix of darkness and light that limits and specialises the art of gazing. Through their impressionistic lens, Symons’s speakers are flâneurs that perceive the phantasmagorias of London, or Paris, from new angles and perspectives. The city becomes a gigantic textual tangle of artificiality that invites deciphering. In this sense, the female figures populating it with their masks of make-up and dress are textual enigmas. The sexual encounter within private quarters, or the constellation of dancers in the music hall, becomes a mirror of the city exterior.
Keywords: Arthur Symons, the city, self-reflexivity, fragmentation, strangeness, Impressionism, artificiality, flâneur, dancers, gazing
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