예술기호로서의 기억에 대한 연구

A Study of Memory As the Signs of Art in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

Until the early 20th century, most narratives followed a linear form, resembling the pattern of historical consciousness. But Virginia Woolf tried to look for a new form which could survey the methods of conventional fiction. Woolf attempted to overthrow the narrative technique of traditional novel and describe something existing beyond everyday consciousness, the idea of which is connected with Bergsonian ‘duration’ and memory. Memory allows linking current and past experiences in such a fashion that the two reflect upon each other; the present experience is rendered comprehensible by comparison with a previous experience, and the past is renewed and altered by its contact with the present. Memory allows for the time-filled moment of being. In To The Lighthouse, memory takes place as characters recall peculiar scenes from the past in which other characters figure. A good example of involuntary memory, specially regarding the relation between the lighthouse and James occurs in To The Lighthouse. For James, the lighthouse is in one sense an extended metaphor of his own repressed desire, but also stands for his experience of the ambivalence of life itself. The sight of the lighthouse returns him to a painful past, the day on which he felt abhorrence and resentment toward his father. James’s thwarted desire never goes away, and his sense of wonder is still suppressed when he finally makes a voyage to the lighthouse ten years later. However, the man for whom James used to feel an intense hatred is no longer there. What he sees is not an egotistical father-figure but an old man sitting and reading a book. Although James’s misery is still there, he simply chooses to give in and stops thinking about his mother. Ultimately the involuntary recollection here unites James and the lighthouse, in other words, unites him with his mother. His suppressed desire for a voyage and for his mother never perfectly disappears; hence his sense of loss resonates through the text to the end. Having ceased to think about his mother, James can proceed to his destination and complete his identification with his father, in spite of some enduring enmity toward him. The way in which James recalls the beautiful image of his mother and is anxious for reunion with her towards the end of the text recalls the narrator’s unconscious relationship with his mother. James’s recollection is much less intentional, and more unconscious, intuitive and physical. James, that is, does not go beyond the boundary of involuntary recollections. Hence he fails to release himself from the past and from his sense of loss entirely. This is one example through which Woolf suggests that the present experiences of her characters derive their signification from the past, rather than from an interior ‘spiritualization’ of the remembered object. On the other hand, in To The Lighthouse the distance between Lily and the lighthouse seems to represent the space between past and present, but in contrast with the case of James, her completion of the image seems to release her from the past and from her sense of loss. Lily can paint when she becomes closer to the essential self. She asks herself, ‘what is the meaning of life.’ Though the question was simple, ‘the great revelation had never come.’ As Deleuze suggests, the meaning(truth) is never in the impression nor even in the memory, but is identified with ‘the spiritual equivalent’ of the memory’. And that is what Lily seems eventually to achieve through her painting. Lily desperately tries to grasp something, which escapes her. Her anguish, pain and horror resulting from her sense of loss comes and goes many times but finally subsides when she attains the accomplishment of her metaphysical or mediated desire. The solution of the problem of Lily’’s painting here may be the unification of the two opposite leading characters, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay.