Book Review: Spaces of culture: city-nation-world

Abstract

sibility of being in several places simultaneously or between places and the consequent disappointment of mundane and entrapping place. She considers the freeing sensation of liminality and the ecstasy of speed as well as the almost disembodied experience of being perfectly alone in one’s own space. For Richardson, communication with others is perceived as being spatial, characters cannot fully communicate unless they have the same understanding of space; and she shows how Richardson has relationships wither for lack of mutual spatial sense. By the end of the cycle the concern is less with communication than with contemplation, the possibility of freeing the self from space. Of course, all this excitement with essences, ecstasy and transcendence is very much of its time (the cycle was completed in 1938), and, with hindsight there are some very frightening undertones. Bronfen writes from Germany in the 1980s, drawing upon German phenomenology as she interprets the fictitious pathways taken by an Englishwoman half a century before. Miriam is attracted to Germany and Switzerland as places where she may find herself and is tempted to remain in the enticing alienation of foreigner status. Bronfen writes of that Germany as if it were as foreign to her as it is to Richardson’s character; like London, it is seen only through Miriam’s eyes. Victoria Appelbe’s translation is elegant and convincing, although it cannot have been a simple matter to have translated such a dense and subtle text. The book needs time and work; there is no quick way through it and it would be pointless to try to read it without taking notes. Reading it is a dry intellectual pleasure, which one seldom experiences today. The emphasis on the spirit and the individual psyche are very far from my own tastes and I shy away from the notion of dwelling, even when, as Richardson insists, it can be divorced from ownership, but this meticulous study has my nomination for the most sensitive and innovative cultural geography of the year – it is sobering to remember that it was written by a literary critic.