딜런 토마스의 시--생태적 글쓰기와 생태인식의 함양

Abstract

This research approaches Dylan Thomas' poetry from an ecological perspective. To verify the ecological premise, this research deals with how Thomas looks at nature, how he sings nature and lastly, how his poetry allows the song of nature to sink into the reader. Dylan Thomas' poems are permeated with an understanding of the inseparable relationship between man and nature, based on the belief that man is just a recipient of the blessing of nature. Thomas’ preference of "intuition" to "reason" is consistent with his assertion that even the consciousness of man is cultured by nature rather than by human will or effort. In his poems Thomas assumes the role of a mere mouthpiece for nature, illuminating the subject of reference which is not the poet but nature itself. In conveying the voice of nature, his poems have few devices to artificially sift the coarseness, or naturalness of the language of nature. Like the "tawny grammar" of Thoreau, the natural language in Thomas' poems makes way for nature to speak with its own voice. As is fitting for the conveyance of natural language, his writing style is very effective in nurturing eco-consciousness because it awakens us to a sense of our real position of humility before nature. At first glance, Thomas' poems may seem offensive, and this disagreeableness results mainly from his poetry’s conversion of existing orders; the authority of religion is replaced by the divinity of nature and the position of man as a master of the earth is transposed to the more humble role of merely another of the many species in nature. The dissonance created by this intentional defamiliarization within Thomas' poems allows us to break the barriers we’ve constructed between man and nature, thereby revealing the original state of that relationship in which man was free in and harmonious with nature. Nowadays one of the most imminent tasks of literature is to lead man to a better understanding of nature and the relationship between man and nature. His poems show that listening and then acting in response to the voice of nature gives us freedom from all the cares of the present and future including death itself. Thomas' poems clarify how effective poetry can be in cultivating eco-consciousness.