죽음의 미학

The Aesthetics of Death:The Eulogy of Death in the Poetry of Stevie Smith

The poetry of death by Florence Margaret-Stevie Smith breaks up at once the authority of death as an object of fear and nothingness. The fact that death is an end, was received as a kind of blessing by her because she thought human ego can be liberated from his/her suffering self-consciousness. Her vision of death somewhat fluctuates in between Christianity, agnosticism, and atheism. This paper aims to explore the Smith's indulgence in suicide and death in relation to narcissism and feminine (women) melancholia, using the perspective of feminist psychological criticism. The double negation mode in melancholia is similar to that in the gender formation of femininity. so that melancholia can be one of the crucial factors explaining femininity. Women are more vulnerable to melancholia because of their guiltiness internalized in the double negation process of gender formation. Her eulogy of death recognizes death, “the greatest of all the blessings”) as almost unselfish as the great Love of God because the latter(the great Love of God) is “beyond the human pattern”; the former(death) “a scattering of human pattern altogether, as an End.” Her perception of death as a process of living, is also interpreted in relation to post-modern feminism: the human fear of death, which has been strengthened all the more by the hell doctrine of Christianity, may be weakened or sedated by her feminine receptive attitude toward death. The traditional patriarchal dualistic view of death that death is a completely separated negative experience from life is overturned by the Smith's vision of death as a saving force for living. Her attitude of recognizing death is analyzed to come from the feminine affinity. In short, the man-centered fixations of death is parodied and deconstructed by her post-modern feminist view of death.