T. S. 엘리엇의 시(詩)에 대한 실존적 연구

Existential Approach to T. S. Eliot’s Poetry

Paul TilIich said that existential philosophers in France, England, and America as well as in Germany insist that ‘Reality or Being in its concrete-ness and fullness is not “essence. 1t is not the object of cognitive experi-ence, but rather “existence is Reality as immediately experienced, with the accent on the inner and personal character of man’s immediate experience.’ Tillich continues to say, ‘They consequently take their place with all those who have regarded man’s “immediate experience as revealing more com-pletely the nature and traits of Reality than man’s cognitive experience; we know that Eliot’s early works, including The Waste Land, are saturated with the poetic expressions of man’s existential suffering. This fact demon strates that his poetry is not based on the world of abstract cognitive ex-perience but on the world of “immediate experience which he himself lived through. Eliot, ih his famous note on The Waste Land, cites a paragraph from F. H. Bradley’s Appeara ce and R‘lality for the understanding of line 411. This paragraph of which we know well not only expresses the origin of man’s aloneness well, but also implies the possibility of an existential approach to T. S. Eliot’s poetic wroks. Man’s desperate Ioneliness and isolation, which result from his inability to make himseli understood and to understand oth-ers is the immediate experience in man’s existential suff ering. This kind of Eliot’s experience is shown in his early poetry in a pattern of scepticism, which develops from the cepticism about the world and gradually to the scepticism about religion and God. The problem of man’s existential suffering was Eliot’s ultimate concern throughout his Iife. In his famous existential definition of religion, Paul Tillich, who gives modern people a new vision of religion, defines that ‘Reli-gion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern.’ From the standpoint of Paul TiIlich we can say that the problem of man’s existential sufferin was Eliot’s religion. In every step of continuous pursuit of his re!igion, Eliot seems to find temporary answers which will relieve him from existential suffering, projecting them in hís poetry and poetic drama. This essay is an attempt to examine his temporary answers through the search for the developing process of his “ultimate concern and to reveal the existential character of the religion.