분열과 통합의 역설로 본 『황무지』

A Reading of The Waste Land in terms of the Paradox of Fragmentation and Unification

The Waste Land represents the aesthetics of extreme fragmentation. At the same time, the poem conveys an experience of unified feelings or emotions to the reader. The juxtaposition of fragmented images, the frequent use of allusions including even non-literary texts, and the introduction of multiple points of view, contribute to the rendering of the apparently chaotic world, which in turn paradoxically proves to be a unified poetic experience. It is noteworthy that this paradoxical situation in The Waste Land results from Eliot’s characteristic poetic theories: “impersonal theory” and “unification of sensibility.” The “impersonal theory” of avoidance of the poet’s personal voice in a poem must assume contradictory aspects, considering that a poetic work originally begins at the poet’s personal feelings or emotions. The uniqueness in Eliotic poetic world comes from this paradoxical poetics: the objectification of subjective material, even though Eliot does not aim for the absolute objectivity shown in the science. On the other hand, Eliot’s theory of “unification of sensibility,” which strongly suggests a monistic epistemological attitude reflected in Bradley’s “immediate experience,” gives the poet an idea of the oneness of the subject and the object, because the “immediate experience” means a state in which the subject and the object are not yet divided from each other. The presence of different voices in The Waste Land makes it impossible to identify a dominant voice in the text, contributing to the presentation of a unified poetic experience. Two or three voices can divide a poetic world, but such diverse voices as those in The Waste Land paradoxically make a unified experience, since they make the boundaries between each described experience lower. In a word, Eliot’s technical or aesthetic use of multiple voices can be said to result in the poem’ unified experience.