자연과 하나 되기의 가능성과 한계:매리 올리버의 생태주의적 상상력에 관한 연구
Possibilities and Limitations of Being One with Nature: A Study of Ecological Visions in Mary Oliver’s Poetry
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This paper aims to examine Mary Oliver’s ecological visions by analyzing her poems, mostly from American Primitive(1983) and Dream Work(1986). In this process, we can see how she attempts to (re)connect the rupture between man and nature and self-consciously reveals the limitation of being one with nature at the same time. Oliver’s ecological projects start from her recognition of the split between man and nature. In “One or Two Things,” Oliver convinces us of human shortcomings by contrasting “prefectly” unrestrained movements of a butterfly and men’s artificial struggle to love their lives. “The Turtle” further widens the gap between man and nature by showing that everything in nature is tied to each other “by an unbreakable string,” while the speaker remains only an observer and imaginer. Oliver also shows her willingness to be one with nature by losing herself “on the black/ and silky currents” of nature in “White Night,” going back to the primeval state of life in “The Sea,” and moving around nature as a bear in “August.” These poems remind us of the congenial aspiration of Theodore Roethke to find the interconnectedness between man and nature. And they also differentiate her ecological visions from those of Gary Snyder who requests himself to show humility toward nature by subduing human desire to confine it in language. By contrast, her poems frequently adopt personification and pathetic fallacy which are not free from anthropocentric perspectives. However, Oliver does not persistently cling to her longing for interconnection. She also reveals her self-consciousness on the limitation of her ecological visions by recognizing in “The Gardens” the existence of “the unseen,” “the unknowable center” beyond human preception, and by repeatedly using “as though” in “Landscape” which weakens the possibility of being one with nature.
Abstract
This paper aims to examine Mary Oliver’s ecological visions by analyzing her poems, mostly from American Primitive(1983) and Dream Work(1986). In this process, we can see how she attempts to (re)connect the rupture between man and nature and self-consciously reveals the limitation of being one with nature at the same time. Oliver’s ecological projects start from her recognition of the split between man and nature. In “One or Two Things,” Oliver convinces us of human shortcomings by contrasting “prefectly” unrestrained movements of a butterfly and men’s artificial struggle to love their lives. “The Turtle” further widens the gap between man and nature by showing that everything in nature is tied to each other “by an unbreakable string,” while the speaker remains only an observer and imaginer. Oliver also shows her willingness to be one with nature by losing herself “on the black/ and silky currents” of nature in “White Night,” going back to the primeval state of life in “The Sea,” and moving around nature as a bear in “August.” These poems remind us of the congenial aspiration of Theodore Roethke to find the interconnectedness between man and nature. And they also differentiate her ecological visions from those of Gary Snyder who requests himself to show humility toward nature by subduing human desire to confine it in language. By contrast, her poems frequently adopt personification and pathetic fallacy which are not free from anthropocentric perspectives. However, Oliver does not persistently cling to her longing for interconnection. She also reveals her self-consciousness on the limitation of her ecological visions by recognizing in “The Gardens” the existence of “the unseen,” “the unknowable center” beyond human preception, and by repeatedly using “as though” in “Landscape” which weakens the possibility of being one with nature.
참고문헌 (16)
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