예이츠와 보르헤스의 상호 텍스트성: 그 연접과 이접

An Intertextuality between W. B. Yeats’s and Jorge Luis Borges’s Poetics: its conjunction and disjunction

This paper is focused on the rather esoteric search wondering if the two masters of letters across the recent West would communicate with each other in that they commonly lived in marginal countries, were schooled in English-speaking cultures and interested in the ultimate and overwhelming themes on 'maximalism' that mainly tends to put value on life and death, eternity and transcendence. This moment that the sublime mission of critics practices concreteness of obscurity recurs to us. Yeats tries to represent the motives stemming from myths and legends, while Borges pursues the representation of fantastic states missing in library, labyrinth and maze, which means their sympathetic embodiment of 'bricolage' on permanence. And through doubt of inertia realized in use of language and creation of works, Yeats practices 'automatic writing' and 'theory of mask' for the objectification of his works which results in construction of reality, while Borges does 'self-reflexivity' which shows us deconstruction of reality as broken mirror in favor of sarcastic criticism of writing. For the political positions of their biographies, the masters have something in common with their prominent careers and activities in which Yeats served the senate and resisted the British empire and Borges contributed to professor of a state-run university and stood against the Peron regime. Henceforth, some conjunctional and disjunctional points on intertextuality between the two masters can be inferred from their views on Buddhism and poems. In the respect that we, who can't be creators of texts but their agents, only drive violent 'assemblage' of code to camouflage Things, the suggestion that the immortal poem of Sowol's, “Azalea,” imitated “He wishes for the cloths of heaven” and “The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love” of Yeats's is reasonable and natural, and it can be deduced that Sowol didn't duplicate Yeats's poems but borrowed masochistic imagery from them, which reminds us of T. S. Eliot's declaration that only the first rank poet unnoticeably can steal other poets' works. On the other hand, Borges, through the parodized “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” shows us the meanings of the text changeable with transitions of generations. Accordingly Sowol's poems tacitly responds to Yeats's poems, while Borges straightforwardly transcribes the original work in view of self-reflexivity. That Yeats's response to Shen-hsiu's and Hui-neng's Zen poems indicates that Zen can free people from the abstract mode of life fettering them is in contrast with Borges's reaction to Buddhism that 'a parable of arrow' and the high monk, Bodhidharma's insight de-constructing his pupil's faith of self-verification searching for his authentic mind only leads to meaningless groping of life. Although the masters's views seem different, virtually they are equal in the sense that life is nothing but some limited play in mood of 'tragic joy,' which is just like recognition of nothingness. Even if the entire works of Yeats's and Borges's can't be read, we can sense their themes converged under keynote of 'maximalism.' For pursuit of a Utopia, Yeats yearns for it, but Borges denies it. In recognition of reality and fantasy, Yeats tries to overcome reality through fantasy, while Borges thinks of reality as fantasy. Their positions on woman are extremely different in that Yeats exposes masochistic symptom, while Borges manifests 'carpe diem' mourning a beauty's fate finally encroached by the beast of time. For the ultimate theme of God, Yeats longs for unity with God, instead, Borges views God 'langue' as cultural and linguistic structure. Concerning cataclysm of civilization, the masters are of the same opinions in that Yeats asserts cyclic patterns of civilization to move from the one pole to the other pole and Borges songs a Nietzschean circulation.