서정 미학의 정치적 유효성

The Political Viability of Denise Levertov’s Lyrical Aesthetics

This paper examines the political viability of Denise Levertov’s lyrical aesthetics, in which the poet connects poetic imagination to the politics of immanence in wartime. Throughout the seven volumes published since The Sorrow Dance, Levertov has actively responded to war so as to demonstrate her politically engaged activism, which is of course based on her ideas of a lyrical aesthetics. Levertov argues that personal experiences are the most powerful political grounds to define oneself as an individual enmeshed within a web of communal relations. She thus expands the solipsistic “I” into the communal “we,” and develops her idea of solidarity through the power of imagination, which she believes can clarify a divine presence within each person―and indeed object too―to inspire thereafter a vision of cosmic unity. She insists that only poetry with such imagination can create empathy and provoke a collective voice, which is the source of strength for any social change. Levertov’s poetic efforts to change a traditional notion of literary imagination into a communal agent of political activism challenges readers to be aware of the political potential of lyric modes during times of urgency and emergency.