실패한 의식(儀式):『스위니 아고니스테스

A Fallen Liturgy: A Religious Approach to Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama

In Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama Eliot expresses dramatic ideas ― a chorus, colloquial speech rhythms, songs, flat characters, Greek conventions and sources under the horrible atmosphere. It is a drama of sterile or fleshy Sweeney. But Sweeney is also described as a modern man who plunged into the purgatorial experience by the murder of his mistress. In this respect Sweeeney Agonistes is the first dramatic version of the theme of Eliot's movement toward Christian belief represented by two significant epigraphs of this drama. The mystic figure, Sweeney, reenacts an ancient ritual of death and resurrection by expressing the world of boredom with “birth and copulation and death” to awaken modern men from their death-in-life. In other words, Eliot tries to make sin and horror of Sweeney into something significant to enable sterile modern men to go on to seek for higher things. However Sweeney's inability to communicate his new experience and awareness to others causes him in conflict and only evokes the joy or horror of life, death, purgation and renewed life. In spite of the fact that Sweeney Agonistes remains only unfinished fragments like a “fallen liturgy of Sweeney”, it is worth for studying it as Eliot's first attempt to show his concern for spiritual rebirth which has been modified but not fundamentally changed in his later successful plays.