Aspern Papers: An Internal Love Affair
...ndication in the provided passage that there is nothing normal about his drive for the papers. The given passage shows the narrator’s endless internal romantic affair with the collection of poems he wishes to obtain. Because he knows so little of their current disposition, he is forced to - and seemingly takes refuge in - creating a trivial and imaginary history of them. He also seems to find solace in this make-believe tale of the papers. This is proven through the usage of the passive voice throughout the selection. This indicates that his rendition of history is entirely speculative. There is no definitive history that the narrator can discuss, there is merely possibility. Take, for example, the following segment from page twenty-seven: It was also indispensable that he should have been accompanied to Europe by these young ladies and should have established himself there for the remainder of a struggling saddened life. There was a further implication that Miss Bordereaux had had in her youth a perverse and reckless, albeit generous and fascinating character, and that she braved some wondrous chances. The young ladies in the first sentence are imaginary. Their very existence is theoretical, as confessed in the following paragraph. In fact, the narrator has many fantasies about the letters and how they came to be. As he sits in the arbour, he mulls over these fantasies, caught up in the intricacies and finding comfort in their fairytale-like details. Here, the reader is first introduced to the narrator’s unhealthy distraction with the history of the papers. He is flawed, however, in that his struggle to know their past has distorted his plan to obtain them in the present. The reader can figure that he will never get the collection of poems, and that is especially evident in this passage. His obsession with them has jaded all common sense. Instead of focusing on methods to obtain them, he puts his romantic mind to work, developing a relationship between Aspern and Miss Bordereaux. He even goes so far as to pretend he knows of the circumstances of her status. At this point, the narrator begins to negate all attempts in obtaining the p...