Seeing/Vision Semantics and the Role of Corporeality in the Poetics of Tan Twan Eng's Novel The Garden of Evening Mists

The aim of the article is to detect the role of corporeality and seeing/vision semantics in the mnemonic narrative of the novel The Garden of Evening Mists (2012) written by the anglophone Chinese Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng. To overcome the postcolonial interpretations of the novel, the narrative theory (G.Genette, V.Shmid) and the phenomenology of the body (M. Merleau-Ponty, V. Podoroga) are used as the methodological basis for this research. The role of the corporeality in the poetics of the novel is examined through a narratological analysis that reveals two temporal levels of narration in the text. These interconnected levels are additionally made more complex with multiple anachronic embeddings, reflecting the complexity of the novel's composition. On the first temporal level, the action and the narration of the autobiographic diegetic narrator (a former judge Teoh Yun Ling) are synchronized in the present, taking place in 1986. The narration of the second level is presented as a diary of Yun Ling in which she retraces her young years, her apprenticeship to the Japanese gardener Aritomo. The mnemonic narrative of the novel is guided by traces of the corporeal memory-by smells, sounds, and sensations, supporting recalls of the past events with particular expressiveness. Different forms of perception generate a particular "point of view" in which the narrating and perceiving selves of the protagonist interflow, while different temporal levels merge. With Merleau-Ponty's and Podoroga's works as the basis for the research, the author concludes that the body is a topographic center of the narration and pain is a source of self-determination for Yun Ling. In the self-reflexive narrative, pain, fears, and hatred are the strongest feelings, preventing the protagonist from "seeing" the essence of things. Through teaching Yun Ling the art of Japanese gardening and archery, as well as by changing her skin (making horimono on her back), Aritomo forms a specific vision of reality in her. He helps Yun Ling to cope with her traumatic past, giving her the way to determine herself in the context of Japanese culture and the Zen Buddhism world-view. The only way of obtaining freedom for Yun Ling is self-denial, self-oblivion, and purification from passions. These principles, born as part of Zen Buddhism, form the basis of all Japanese arts. Seeing/vision semantics in the novel has been revealed through the images with mirror semantics (old maps, ukiyo-e, horimono, mirrors etc.). These images are determined by the main principles of Japanese gardening (shakkei, playing with perspective, illusion, etc.), which Yung Ling perceived during her apprenticeship to Aritomo, and they influence the way of narration. The analysis of the seeing/vision semantics and the role of corporeality in the poetics of the novel shows that the problem field of Tan Twan Eng's fiction goes beyond the scope of postcolonial discourse and embraces a wide range of existential questions.

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