T. S. 엘리엇 작품과 여인들 ―에밀리 해일을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper intends to reveal Emily Hale’s positive influences to Eliot’s poems and plays. Emily Hale who was 40-year-old lover and friend with T. S. Eliot contributes and influences so much the life and the works of T. S. Eliot as the muse. T. S. Eliot didn’t want to disclose his personal evidences such as letters and recordings, because of the fact that he loved Emil Hale for 40 years as well as his guilty consciousness toward his first wife. T. S. Eliot had a deep religious feeying, so he felt a contrition that is much shameful to the death of his former wife, Vivien Haigh-Wood, because he met Emily Hale while his wife died in mental hospital. That’s why he tried to hide all his personal evidences. Critics who studied Eliot’s biographical influences on his works evinced Hale’s contributions to Eliot’s works. Eliot eventually destroyed her letters sent to him, but Hale bequeathed her collection of over a thousand of his letters to her to Princeton, under the restriction that they will not be opened to the public until January 1, 2020. No one but Hale, and maybe the processing archivist, has ever read them. If the day comes to open the letters, the relations and clues between Eliot’s mysterious works and his life will be clearly revealed. The facts and truths of hidden Eliot’s life in letters and recordings will be the evidences of a new horizon to interpret Eliot’s poetry and poetic drama as symbols and allegory.