휘트먼의『풀잎』에 나타난 사랑의 이미저리

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to study the love imagery in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and examine his peculiar humanistic poetic art in which the themes of Christianity like love and salvation are humanistically extended and finely imaged. In fact, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is deeply influenced by the Bible. This can be proved not only by the fact that Whitman himself declared that Leaves of Grass is “Poetry of New Bible,” but also by researchers indicating Whitman makes extensive use of the Bible in his poems. However, Whitman’s literal and religious thoughts are not purely Christian, but are mixed with his liberal and transcendental ideas due to New England transcendentalism. The combination of humanism and Christianity is one of the great characteristics of Whitman’s poetry. A large number of love imagery in Leaves of Grass have been studied. Whitman fuses eros and agape by unifying soul and body and by emphasizing the goodness of the physical in general and of sex in particular. He regards human beings and the human body as divine like all God’s creatures. Whitman transforms philia into agape by identifying humane and secular love as divine Christian love. Instances of the love imagery, allusion, and ideas found in the poetry illustrate that Whitman not simply proclaims Biblical messages but transcendentally transforms Christian spirit into the religious art from a humanistic point of view. Whitman employs the Bible in such a way as to reinforce his own humanistic ideas, which are nurtured on the ground of Christianity, to create his unorthodox religious poetry and world. He designs and images his Christian thoughts using exquisite poetic language and imagery to proclaim that Christian spirits can recover mankind and lead individuals and society to a new “Paradise.”