City Of Dreadful Night Analysis

James Thomson’s, The City of Dreadful Night, provides insight into the restless psyche of a pre-modern subject trapped within an emerging urban space. Central to the rise of metropolitan centres was a shift away from pre-modern norms and conventions. Key historical events concerning immigration and the emergence of the money economy gave rise to a particular set of values attributed to urban life. In order to situate Thomson’s poem within the context of modernism, key ideas regarding the emergence of the urban centre (Soares), the birth of the modern subject (Williams) and the modern subject’s interaction with the metropolis (Simmel), are considered. With key ideas emphasised by Mills, Thomson’s poem explores the trauma pre-modern individuals
Thomson’s speaker appears to have developed a form of restlessness throughout the poem, a key characteristic of the modern individual. The poem was constructed within a world undergoing a physical as well as psychological transition from what had been previously attributed to pre-modern life. With reference to Thomson’s poem as a form of modernist art, Williams (p. 85) asserts the influence historical events had on various forms of art that were being produced at the time of
5). The blasé attitude enforces a sense of control over what ideas influence the subjects psyche through adjustment, and what ideas are rejected. Thomson’s speaker recognises the “dependence on difference” within the metropolis: “how naught is constant on the earth but change” (XIII. 7). The inability of the pre-modern subject to adopt a rational outlook within the metropolis becomes problematic. The inability for the pre-modern subject to detach itself from its primal psychological conditions, in term allows for the pre-modern subject to be more vulnerable to modern shocks. Central to the metropolis is its ability in creating the “sensory foundations of mental life, and in the degree of awareness” living within a society exposed to difference. On the other hand, the pre-modern subject is said to dwell within the “unconscious levels of the mind” (Simmel p. 2). The pre-modern sphere is one that “rests more on feelings and emotional relationships” which are inherently rooted within the “unconscious levels of the mind”. Relationships formed between pre-modern subjects, “rest on their individuality” (p.