ANALYZING A POEM ON JOURNEY BY SAKUTARO HAGIWARA

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the poem On Journey by Sakutaro Hagiwara, abased on a theoretical framework combining Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, and Reader-Response Criticism. The context of Modernist literature will also be taken into account, based on a New Historicist approach, according to which literary works have their meaning created by the historical and ideological context of the age they belong to. According to the phenomenological approach, the lived experience becomes the source of both meaning and values assigned to it. The subjective approach is a constant in poetry and in Modernist literary works. This is because during the Modernist age, everything held as true started to be questioned. The possibility of an objective perspective on reality made no exception. The image of the journey lies at the centre of this poem, an image which can be interpreted both literally and figuratively. Figuratively, the conceptual metaphor of life as a journey can be mentioned, together with the image known to readers of the journey of initiation found in many fairy-tales and mythologies. According to the psychoanalytic approach, the journey could be interpreted as one of self-discovery. The approach which unifies all of the other approaches is that of reader-response criticism, since the readers respond based on the way they relate emotionally to the text of the poem, as well as based on an interpretation which relies on their background knowledge and which can include the perspectives created by the previously mentioned approaches.