조이 하조의 시에 나타난 생태주의적 성찰에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper aims to examine ecological reflections of Muscogee Creek Indian Joy Harjo's poetry and the ways in which the reflections relate themselves to the history of colonizing Native Americans by European Americans armed with Christianity and English as the vicious tools of colonization. Harjo launches her ecological reflections with the diagnosis of the disconnection between man and nature facing the highly modernized American society. A prose poem, "The Flood" laments the disappearance of the mysterious watersnake in the age of reason, which in turn symbolizes the lost wildness of man disconnected from nature. Harjo argues that another culprit causing the disconnection is "the enemy's language," English. According to her, the English language denies anything other than that based on the European soul and consequently transforms the perceptions of indigenous people who regard nature as "something alive with personality, breathing, alive with names, alive with events." "What Music" and "Backwards" deal with the poisonous effects of the European rationalism represented by English. As a way of bridging the rupture between man and nature, Harjo suggests that we listen to the voice of the land alive with the myths, histories, and events of the past. However, looking back to the past does not mean the nostalgia with which Native Americans try to heal the deep psychological scars left in the process of colonization. Leaning towards the past is rather an active way of reflecting the ecological crisis of the present and finding clues to how man can live in harmony with nature. For a close examination of the ways in which the past is related to the future of human existence, the following poems are analyzed in detail: "For Alva Benson, and Those Who Have Learned to Speak," "Song for the Deer and Myself to Return on," "Remember," "Skeleton of Winter," and "We Must Call a Meeting."