Abstract:
To enter the core of a novel, time and space are two important poetic dimensions, since both time form and chronotope style are effective expressions in a novel’s historical poetics. How to artistically coordinate the relationship between time and space in literary creation is an important basis for judging a writer’s maturity and profundity. To achieve the spatialization of time, Tokarczuk condensed and concentrated time elements into visible things in his literary works. Meanwhile, he also involved time and plot in the movement of novels, integrating space into time. This paper focuses on Tokarczuk’s Primeval and Other Times, concentrating on fate changes of three generations and the triple conceptual structure of time, space and spiritual home of the Archean, a mysterious country, as the full text. Using the spacetime theory, this paper discusses the characters’ triple experience of time and their perception of the space with the metaphorical meaning of home, in order to further reveal the deep meaning of the novel’s spacetime writing and analyze the symbolic meaning contained in the mysterious country of the Primeval.This paper holds that the subject’s experience of time and perception of space constitute the internal texture of the novel. As the spiritual home of human beings, the construction of the Primeval not only embodies the author’s reflection on the historical fate of Poland, but also implies the author’s deep concern and anxiety about the living state of contemporary human beings.
