오마르 하이얌의 『루바이야트』(Rubaiyat)에 나타난 ‘와인’ 메타포 연구

Abstract

Omar Khayyam is an important poet, philosopher, scientist in Sufism during the eleventh century in the circle of Persian literature. The quatrains of Omar, son of Abraham the Tentmaker, have been introduced into almost every language in the world. His name is especially well known in European literature mainly because of Edward Fitzgerald, who in Victorian times published a few of Omar Khayyam's quatrains. His Rubaiyat on enjoying life and wine are main reasons for his admiration by whoever reads them. However, Khayyam's praise of wine which really stands out in his Rubaiyat was mostly rhetoric or metaphoric and is not to be taken literally. The main purpose of this paper is to reinterpret the metaphor of wine in Khayyam's Rubaiyat in the context of his philosophical thought. There is a long standing tradition of interpreting Khayyam's poetry within Sufi context. Khayyam's concept of wine is undoubtedly both the most significant and the most misunderstood aspect of his thought. Intoxication and wine bring together various aspects of Khayyam's philosophy and offer a coherent and existential theory as to how one can encounter temporality, death, and suffering and still live a spiritually fulfilled life. Khayyam criticizes religious hypocrisy and the false ascetics. Using the metaphor wine and the term 'drunken-lover' are hallmarks of his Sufism. The notions of wine have been used by most Sufi poets including Khayyam in the Islamic esoteric tradition which symbolically represents wine as 'divine ecstasy.' Khayyam uses the imagery of wine as a 'mode of being,' 'impermanence of life,' 'eternity'; it is a way of being in the world which offers existential therapy for the perplexed. This paper emphasizes that Khayyam's use of wine is as the 'wine of wisdom.' This type of wisdom is neither achieved nor obtained through drinking wine. He rather claims that it is a type of wisdom that is acquired from years of contemplation and reflection upon the more significant questions of life. It is the wisdom of living well. This paper points out that Khayyam is trying to turn one's attention from what is unstable and perishable to what is important in life. He does not call for hedonism but rather advocates renunciation of the world in the process of moral progress while leaving some room for the cosmic and existential determinism whose nature and purpose remain a mystery.