Romantic Spaces: Desire, Attachment, and Dependency

Twenty-six hundred years ago, the Greek poet, Sappho, rejoiced in the return of her beloved and blessed her for putting an end to the time of separation and “longing” (Edmonds 249). Nine hundred years ago, the great Chinese poet, Li Ch'ing-Chao, wrote a poem about spring. The bulk of the poem concerns the transition from winter – the new grass, the buds of plum blossoms. Despite the change of season, however, the poem is ambivalent. “Spring has come,” she explains, but “Plum blossoms are slightly broken” (Hu 87). By the end of the poem, we understand the ambivalence. Addressing her husband, she explains, “Twice in three years you missed the spring,” and implores, “Do come back” (Hu 88). Here, she counts time not simply in seasons, but in the presence or absence of her beloved. As both poets suggest, time and space are not only fundamental to our epistemic relation to the world; they are equally fundamental to our emotional relation to the world. Our sense of both time and space is structured by feeling.

As to our sense of space, distances appear small or vast depending on our interests in bridging them. The most obvious coordinates of distance are bodily proximity. We might think of them as organized around the poles of disgust and desire. Disgust wants us to keep someone “at arm's length,” beyond the space of possible touch – ideally, beyond the range of smell.