T. S. 엘리엇의 『네 사중주』에 반영된 성 어거스틴의 시간관

Abstract

Four Quartets is regarded to be one of the greatest philosophical poems of the twentieth century by many critics. Four Quartets shows the full, mature spiritual vision of Eliot. It explores the relationship between a life of bondage and suffering in temporal existence and a life of freedom and happiness in eternity. The desire to transcend time is a major impetus in the poem. Although several different conceptions of the nature of time are successively or repeatedly entertained throughout the poem, time in Four Quartets is Christian time. Eliot relies much of his conception of time on St. Augustine. He grounds time in the inner mind of humanity: time is not a phenomenon that happens outside but exists only in the inner experience of mind. Man is under the influence of past, present and future, and God is beyond time. From this perspective, in Christian time, the three divisions of time are meaningless. Past, present and future exist only as memory, intuition, and expectation in our inner mind. Eliot eventually reaches St. Augustine’s concept of Time. It is also called “Eternal Present.” In this time, past, present, future coexist eternally. Eliot describes it “the point of intersection of the timeless with time.” In many ways, we can conclude that much similarities exist between two. For them, time passes but eternity always stays at “present.” In “Eternal Present” of God, all time and all beings are in harmonized existence.