시간과 그녀가 결정(結晶)되는 두 가지 방식: 안젤라 카터(Angela Carter)의 『서커스의 밤』(Nights at the Circus)과 지넷 윈터슨(Jeanette Winterson)의 『열정』(The Passion)

Abstract

Two different, but correlated ways of capturing “she(s)” are explored in two separate frames of “time.” In Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter exercises her magical literary skill to stop and extend the moment, giving individuals the opportunity to have their own “proper time,” a time interval between two events in the theory of relativity, in which their singular existences are vividly crystallized as they fly through their own “world lines.” Moreover, within this “movable midnight feast,” the “bastard offspring of Father Time” share bodies and spirits, and indulge in romance commensurate with each other’s metabolism. In our experiential world, however, we are inevitably bound to Newton’s absolute timeline. Therefore, as illustrated in Jeanette Winterson’s book The Passion, even as we try to “box” up those who are our future and past into a particular moment, such attempts always fail as those whom we try to capture slip away between our fingers with the passing of time. As we see in Winterson’s passion for writing, one futilely yearns to capture others and make a story in the present. Only passion places us at a distant locus, and we helplessly try to contact those who remain unreachable in a forever-collapsing series of dominoes.