엘리엇의 『네 개의 사중주』(Four Quartets)에 있어서의 인식과 표현

Communion and Communication in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets:Lyric Imagery, Buddhism, Music and Postmodern Writing

T. S. Eliot shows in almost all his poems that he strenuously wrestles with words to express the inexpressible. In his last poem, Four Quartets, he tries to write in an easier and simpler way by using lyric images, visual images and music, all of which just serve as methods to articulate the inarticulate. When Eliot speaks of the lyric, he is concerned not only with measured verse but also with a transmutation of thought and emotion into a communicable medium of language. His usage of lyric imagery is greatly influenced by his study of Dante and Buddhism. In Four Quartets, Eliot finds a way in music to compensate for dispersed and divided meanings of a word. Musical properties that he makes use of are the sense of rhythm and the sense of structure. He tries to write a poem with music of imagery for the secondary meanings of the words. The use of recurrent themes, images and symbols deepens and expands meanings of words. He makes a new whole out of superficially unrelated themes by weaving them together. He develops recurrent themes in Four Quartets through different subject matters such as air, earth, water, and fire. This method is similar to the development of a theme by different groups of instruments in music. The result is very similar to the strategy of Derrida’s writing as the trace. A word is inaccurate and incomplete, but necessary, and so it should remain legible being crossed out instead of being removed. This is why Eliot continues to write again and again, and the ceaseless writing is his text.