셸리의 「몽블랑」: 타자로서의 "그대"

Shelley's "Mont Blanc": "Thou" as the Other

Shelley's "Mont Blanc" has a complicated structure of enunciation combined with monologues and dialogues. Throughout the 144-line poem the speaker changes his narration six times; monologue → dialogue → monologue → dialogue → monologue → dialogue. In his change of narration from monologue to dialogue, the speaker foregrounds the addressee, "thou." By means of foregrounding the interlocutor, the speaker enhances his enunciation, and makes his speech an interindividual discourse. In short, the speaker constitutes his subject through the dialogue with the other subject, "thou." It is through the intersubjectivity that the speaker achieves a sense of self. Jacques Lacan defines the subject as 'a position' adopted with respect to the other as language or law. In other words, the subject is relationship to the symbolic order. "Mont Blanc" demonstrates how the language operates for the formulation of the subject within one's self. The human subject is not a cause of but an effect of the language. The momentous split of the subject is a product of the function of language. The speaker constitutes himself as the subject through a dialectic movement between his speaking self and the other, "thou." The speaker's self-identity is, however, found neither in self nor in the other. His true subject is still 'in process' of constitution. In this process, the other functions as 'another I' to define a true self-identity and to constitute the subject.