『성회 수요일』 Ash-Wednesday의 주제와 이미지

Abstract

Published in 1930, Ash-Wednesday is Eliot's first real attempt to examine the religious experience that a Christian who is pursuing union with God can have. The poem deals with an issue similar to that which Dante presents in his Purgatory in that each poet describes a pilgrim vacillating between the world which he has known and the world in which he now finds himself. Eliot abandons the horror of the sterile and dead life found in his contemporary world and the mindless adherence to ritual found in his early poems such as The Waste Land and The Hollow Men and replaces them with a willful, but simultaneous, rejection and acceptance of belief. One of the most notable characteristics of Ash-Wednesday is that the theme of rejection and acceptance is very well portrayed by the use of relevant poetic images and symbols, most of which are based on the Scripture and Dante's The Divine Comedy and which help the poem to express a universal message. Through these various and vivid images, the reader can participate in the spiritual experience of the narrator of the poem. Good poetry, however, cannot be fashioned simply by listing a series of images, no matter how excellent these images may be. Throughout his works Eliot continuously attempted to compose artistic and polished poems not just by finding striking and relevant images, but also by successfully interweaving these images with the theme of each poem. The theme and images in Eliot's poems, including Ash-Wednesday, are very religious. Nonetheless, Eliot never sacrifices artistic quality when writing devotional verse, which is his most significant achievement.