『황무지』에 나타난 성애

Sexuality in The Waste Land: The Biographical Approach

This paper aims at probing into various aspects of sexuality in T. S. Eliot’s most enigmatic and ambiguous poem, The Waste Land, from the biographical perspective. Eliot’s personal grouse against life includes his first wife, Vivien’s extra-marital love affair with Bertrand Russell, Russell’s seduction and desertion of Vivien, Russell’s sexual relationship with Ottoline, Eliot’s homosexuality whose male partner was the French friend, Jean Verdenal, and his bisexuality represented in the speaker Tiresias the blind male and female seer. Main aspects of immoral and distorted sexuality are indirectly encoded and intricately interwoven in symbolic persons and their sexual activities largely in “A Game of Chess” and “The Fire Sermon.” Vivien is implicitly transferred in Mrs. Porter’s daughter, typist and Philomel, whereas Russell is embedded in Sweeney, a small house agent and King Tereus, Russell’s mistress Ottoline in Mrs. Porter and Procne, Eliot in Tiresias and the male speaker invited by Mr. Eugenides, and finally Verdenal’s homosexuality is embodied in Mr. Eugenides and Phlebas the drowned Phoenician.