도덕성의 기준으로서의 형이상시에 대한 추구: T. S. 엘리엇

Abstract

T. S. Eliot’s The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry(1993) shows that his interest in metaphysical poetry was not only focused on the seventeenth century, but it also extended mainly from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, so as to examine how a new metaphysical poetry could come into being in his own time. Eliot’s study of Dante Alighieri, John Donne, and Jules Laforgue had both theoretical and practical purposes. Theoretically, he wanted to give a more comprehensive and historical explanation of how sensibility was divided into thought and feeling, and practically, he needed to find a new voice for his own metaphysical poetry, although accepting that divided sensibility was not to be completely reconciled again. What Eliot meant by “metaphysicality” covers his own highest standard of poetry by which the poet should at least consider in his or her background “the problem of Good and Evil.” In his current generation, Eliot diagnoses, the problem is almost “forgotten,” which is far worse than it being in doubt or disbelief. He thought evil could even be “a backdoor to Christianity” as in Baudelaire. In his pursuit for contemporary metaphysical poetry, Eliot found some examples in French poetry such as Baudelaire, Laforgue, and Corbière. Especially in the poetry of Laforgue he discovered a new ironical voice, which came out of the chasm between his “innate craving for order” and his consciousness of an irrecoverably degenerated sensibility in the world.