Space And Place In Gary Snyder’s Mountains And Rivers Without End

Gary Snyder is the poet laureate of contemporary America. In the development ofhis intercultural poetic journey, Gary crisscrossed Asia and America, west frommountains of California in America, east to temples of Kyoto in Japan, physically,spiritually as well as culturally throughout his career. Snyder spent forty years incompleting his long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End. Through unfolding thespatiotemporal symbiosis and harmony between an ancient Chinese landscape handscroll painting and a contemporary American landscape long poem, this thesis is athorough investigation of Snyder’s particular sense of space and place.Based on Yi-Fu Tuan’s and Gary Snyder’s theoretical principles on space andplace, the thesis attempts to explore the sense of space and place in Mountains andRivers Without End. Yi-Fu Tuan contends that personal experiences have an impact onan individual’s attitude toward space and place. Space and place is a diad within thecontext of the physical and cultural worlds. They are complementary in that space andplace can be transformed in experience. However, there still exist some differences. InYi-Fu Tuan’s view,“space” means freedom, which gives a feeling of openness andinfinity, while “place” refers to security, which allows pause. In view of Snyder’sliving environment and life experiences, these factors help to form his sense of spaceand place, and then they are benefit for analyzing the process of space and place inMountains and Rivers Without End. In fact, the thesis will be thoroughly investigatedall in ranges from space, place and the interpenetration of space and place: firstly,how the poet employs his unique artistic technique to present space in lines, and howthe poet describes topographic space in maps from beginning to end; secondly, howthe poet selects particular places from his own experiences to write his poetry topresent his sense of place; thirdly, how the poet sets up a bridge between space andplace to present his ecological idea, so as to sublimate his sense of space and place.Through textual analysis and comparative study, the thesis maintains that thespace and place presented in Mountains and Rivers Without End have a closerelationship with his life experiences. The great ecological idea includingreinhabitation, sangha, and inner and outer worlds, to some extent, reflects Snyder’sdeep thinking in the cultural voyages pursuing the interpenetration of space and place.