『황무지』의 하이퍼텍스트성

Hypertextuality of The Waste Land: The Logic of Metaphor

T. S. Eliot’s grumbling voice of desire is echoed in his poem, The Waste Land, in terms of hypertext structure and its logical form. He might call it “impersonality” or “objective correlative” in a sense of poetics. It is noted that the poem goes beyond an aesthetic structure as seen in print literature: succeeding ideas, developing metaphors and metonymy and words functioning to develop a coherent and strong structure in terms of cyber literature. This can be called hypertext poetry (hyper poetry) or hypertext poetics and we can see from the hyper structure and form of the poem hierarchical text(s) in a logic of metaphor signifying desire. Putting together the cyber nodes, which appear by clicking and also alluding to human desire, we can find the source in the internet web, applying the relevant theme from the source to newer literary works. The virtual reality in the hypertextual poem is perceived to be full of Greek satyr images signifying improper behavior, degradation and mutation, not love or beauty. In so doing, Eliot persistently and carefully arranges many symbolic personas in tradition, mythology, and art by grave ironies and absurdities of life. In a sense of hyper poetry, Eliot uses such personas with desire, or in anima, to construct hypertextuality as a way of characterizing textual behavior to let us think about the relationship between the poem and hypertext culture. Eliot focuses on the technical structure of arrangement within the text, the linkages and points of connection between and within its different lines, styles, and entire fragments. This paper examines the internet sites of the poem to consider Eliot an arranger, computer programmer, and internet site organizer in terms of hypertextuality. He becomes a precursor for cyber literature, especially hyper poetry in contrast to James Joyce’s hypertext narrative, Ulysses. Consequently, the cyber links look very knowledgeable, thus taking hold of both allusions as a literary device, and hypertext as a study device. Both work in such a way that each reaches its full potential, making Eliot’s text more widely readable with all of its connotations, and giving us a better opportunity to study and understand its form and meaning.