전기적 접근: 『3월 산토끼의 노래』

Abstract

This paper intends to reveal that Eliot’s life entered a profound influence upon his earlier poems, especially in the unpublished work, Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, which was edited by Christopher Ricks in 1996. Eliot said that there might be the experience of a child of ten, a small boy peering through sea-water in a rock-pool, and finding a sea-anemone for the first time: the simple experience (not so simple, for an exceptional child, as it looks) might lie dormant in his mind for twenty years, and re-appear transformed in some verse-context charged with great imaginative pressure. This paper deals with the personal experiences of his early years, from his boyhood to the time when he returned for the autumn term of 1911 and enrolled as a graduate student in philosophy; that is, the inhibiting circumstances from Unitarianism, the emotional conflicts between him and his parents from preparing for Harvard University, and from his mother’s opposition to studying abroad in Paris in 1910. In his poetry, Eliot reveals his passion for studying abroad in Paris that he kept in his mind even before graduation from Harvard University, and he also expresses his circumstances through his poems indirectly, something which he would not dare communicate directly to his strict family. For example, in the situation that he already had lost interest in Boston, the streets already seemed so boring and also it seemed the “Mandarins” says the oppressed feelings of his family that had been against the abroad study. He also expresses himself as a clownesque or a marionette, which even can’t make any decision about themselves.