“신성한 마음의 난파”-선불교와 필립 웨일런의 대항문화 시학

“Wreck of the Divine Mind”: Zen Buddhism and Philip Whalen’s Counterculture Poetics

This paper explores how American poet Philip Whalen has sought to expand the Beat Generation’s counterculture poetics in the 1950s by utilizing Japanese Buddhist philosopher D.T. Suzuki’s modern Zen theory. For Whalen, Suzukian Zen, especially its emphasis on Zen as everydayness and freedom, provided a critical aesthetic principle as he tried to challenge the idea of cultural conformity largely mandated by Cold War US ideologies. By closely reading his early Buddhist poems such as “Harangue from Newport” (1957), “A Reflection on My Own Times” (1959), and “NEFAS” (1966), I show the ways in which Whalen enacted what Jack Kerouac calls “spiritual emancipation,” a term that highlights the essence of the Beat spirit against US nationalism and Cold War containment culture in the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, I ultimately suggest that Whalen’s Buddhist poetry creates an open space of dialogue and social criticism between those who have engaged in American counterculture movement.