크리스티나 로제티의 시에 나타난 죽음의 마스크

Abstract

The Mask of Death in Christina Rossetti’s PoetryPark, RyungOver 450 poems of Christina Rossetti, that is, about one-third of all her poems concern death in some way. Death in Rossetti’s poetry can be approached not only thematically, but also aesthetically. Her female poetic speakers long for death to overcome the anguish that comes from the failure of romantic love, and find temporary peace before rising into the eternal Paradise. Furthermore, for Rossetti’s posthumous female speakers, the mask of death is a self-protective and self-possessive strategy to observe the living without being observed, and, thus, they transform themselves into powerful subjective beings directing the living’s response to them. The posthumous female speakers are no longer weak and sacrificed beings; they are omniscient beings beyond the cycle of time and troublesome life. Among several poems examined in this paper, “A Portrait” describes the speaker’s self-transformation through the mask of death. “Song,” the most famous poem of Rossetti, is a dead woman’s ironical valediction addressed to her lover, showing her triumphant indifference over the living’s anguish and sadness. In “Day-Dreams,” the dead woman is completely beyond the lover’s reach and controls his deep concern for her. In “An End,” Rossetti’s female speaker purposefully rejects the realized love, seeking the blessed self-transformation in art.