‘이머의 유일한 질투’(The Only Jealousy of Emer)에 나타난 주인공의 영웅적 희생, 사랑과 증오

Emer’s Heroic Self-Sacrifice, Love And Hatred in The Only Jealousy of Emer’

The purpose of this paper is to analyze ‘The Only Jealousy of Emer’(1919) rooted from the same subject in Cuchulain of Muirthemne and to explain how he expressed his unique tragic system in this play, differently from his other ones. According to Yeats’ unique tragic system, two opposite heros(or heroines) experience struggles in natural world at first, and then in supernatural world. After the hero winned in real world, he struggles against a supernatural hero who is the opposite in supernatural world again. As this play begins, Cuchulain is now in a state like death on a poor fisher’ house. Emer, his real world’s wife, comes here to return the death-like Cuchulain to the natural (real) world. In this course, Regardless of the jealousy toward Inguba, her opposite of real world, she asks Inguba to help Cuchulain come back real world on account of the hope of Cuchulain’s love coming back to her someday. But she feels jealous only to a woman of the Shide (Fand, who is a goddess of Moon in supernatural world), her opposite of the supernatural world, came to the intermediate area between the natural the supernatural to possess the Ghost of Cuchulain. Although she didn't feel jealous to Inguba, Emer has the feeling od competition and jealousy towards the woman of Shide. And the woman of Shide asks the Ghost of Cuchulain for a kiss of union to achieve a completeness(complete beauty) corresponding to the 15 Moon phase in the theory of the Great Wheel. But at the very point of the union, the Ghost of Cuhulain rejects her asking because of his real world’s memory and Emer. Watching the situation happening in intermediate world, the Figue of Cuchulain hurries to ask Emer for the renouncing love with the returned Cuchulain in real world. Emer falls in a ambivalence of love and hatred. But Emer is forced to cry out the renunciation of love towards the returned Cuchulain as a heroic self-sacrifice. And at last Cuchulain just returns to the real world. But she chooses the renunciation of love with Cuchulain in the real world due to the only Jealousy towards a woman of the Shide as a heroine but she has a ambivalence of love and hatred. So in the viewpoint of Emer, she cries out the renunciation of love with Cuchulain in the real world and falls in a state of a life in death. And the audience feels tragic joy or tragic fantasy and heroic self-sacrifice, a ambivalence of love and hatred in Emer’s state.