도가철학에서 본 겨울 이야기의 시간과 질서

Abstract

The Winter’s Tale is divided into two distinct halves separated by sixteen years. These two halves present us with two different kinds of time: linear time and cyclic time. The two kinds of time are portrayed through contrasting genres: linear time is seen as tragic time, which dominates the first three acts of the play; cyclic time is seen as comic or natural time which underlies the rest of the play. The play proceeds from this crucial design to its very comprehensive awareness of the meaning and nature of time. Time in the play is, as in the philosophy of Tao, comprehended as the ultimate reality, and moves in a cycle of return which is the principle of Tao, the totality of time. The passing of time is the dynamic and orderly progression of cosmic order (Tao). Within The Winter’s Tale as in Tao, cyclic time follows organic life-producing principles. Time is itself timeless and there exists no separate world of the timeless. Transcendence or immortality is to be found within the change of time. Shakespeare, like the Taoists, grasps time as the ultimate reality of all things in the world of change. In the play, he seizes upon man’s deepest desire for permanence and works through to an exploration of the universal and ontological problem of how man can fruitfully accept his own mortality and secure his infinitude of immortality. He explores how man can give passing time meaning, and experience his life as significant in itself. In his total vision of time and order, the best images and parables of the play speak of time and becoming; and they are an eulogy and a justification of all transitoriness.