Wordsworth의 詩에 나타난 浪慢主義 神話

Abstract

낭만주의 시를 신화체계의 변화로 본 Frye의 이론에 입각하여 Wordsworth의 시를 분석하였다. 제2장에서 낭만주의 이전의 신화체계와 그의 낭만주의 신화를 비교했고, 제3장에서는 '불멸송'에 나타난 낙원상실과 낙원회복의 신화를, 제4장에서는 다른 시편들에 나타난 그의 신화형성력을 각각 다루었다. 그의 천국은 출생이전의 세계요, 그의 낙원은 자연과 하나였던 어린 시절이며, 도시는 이성이 지배하는 악의 세계이다. 그의 낙원상실은 어릴 적의 '원초적 공감'의 상실이며, 이를 회복하는 것이 낙원회복이다. 그의 시편들에 나타난 죽음을 모르는 어린이나 죽음을 넘어선 노인의 이미지는 숙명의식을 극복하려는 신화형성적 상상력의 표현으로 해석된다. 그의 신화는 이전의 신화보다 개방적이며, 더 한층 내면화된 인간 의식의 표현이다.

In this essay, I tried to understand Wordsworth's poetry in terms of the Romantic myth, which Northrop Frye discussed in detail in his excellent work A Study of English Romanticism. Wordsworth began his literary career by revolting against the Augustan convention; at first his revolt was against the inane poetic diction of his predecessors.

But his practice can be better understood as an attempt to create a new world of mythology radically different from those of the Greco-Roman and the Christian mythology. In the pre-Romantic myth there are four levels of existence: Heaven, the City of God; Eden, the City of Man or the earthly paradise where the prelapsarian man lived in beatitude; Nature, into which the fallen man was driven out on account of his original sin; Hell, the demonic world of the fallen angel Satan.

In the Romantic myth of Wordsworth, pre-existence is analogous to the pre-Romantic Heaven. In his great Ode, this Romantic equivalent of pre-Romantic Heaven is a world of eternal Silence and is compared to an 'immortal sea', upon whose shore the Child is sporting. This shore is Wordworthian prelapsarian paradise, which can be regained through recollection of his early childhood. The earthly paradise recollected in his memory is the physical nature, which was originally designed by God for the fallen Adam but in which now Wordsworthian unfallen Adam(the Child) lives in perfect harmony with the outward things. Wordsworth's fallen nature is the City of Man, equivalent to the earthly paradise of the pre-Romantic myth. The city is regarded as an example of degeneration caused by the human civilization; there the analytic human reason reigns, murdering to dissect. In Wordsworthian cosmology there is no such demonic world as Hell. The world outside human consciousness is all goodness, not dichotomized into good and evil.

Wordsworthian Man has fallen into the original sin of selfconsciousness, and not into the original sin in the Christian sense. His self-consciousness is the death-consciousness, which alienated him from the external world where the death of an individual can't cause any sense of alienation man has. Indeed an individual death brings no change in the grand order of the eternal nature. Wordsworthian fallen Adam feels that the world outside will always be the same even if he passes away; this is unbearable. This sense of alienation caused Wordsworthian loss of Eden.

Wordsworth's redemption myth begins with the recovery of the original identity he felt in his childhood which he lost in the course of growing up. He recovers the sense of identity with nature through recollection of his early childhood. He returns to the world of eternity by recollecting the 'primal sympathy'. His redemption myth is called 'Myth in Memory'.

'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' is a poem in which appears the full cycle of Wordsworthian myth-Pre-existence(Heaven), Childhood(Paradise), Growth(Fall) and Recollection(Redemption). In the analysis of his shorter poems, I could find images of the 'Marriage of Man and Nature', of children who are not conscious of death, and of old men and women in their extreme old age. All these human figures are so absorbed into nature that they seem to be part of the surrounding natural scene. They are travellers between life and death. Such images reveal his endeavor to extinguish the death-consciousness in him by means of his mythopoeic imagination and regain his lost paradise, that is, his sense of original identity with the world outside himself.

In this essay, I tried to understand Wordsworth's poetry in terms of the Romantic myth, which Northrop Frye discussed in detail in his excellent work A Study of English Romanticism. Wordsworth began his literary career by revolting against the Augustan convention; at first his revolt was against the inane poetic diction of his predecessors.

But his practice can be better understood as an attempt to create a new world of mythology radically different from those of the Greco-Roman and the Christian mythology. In the pre-Romantic myth there are four levels of existence: Heaven, the City of God; Eden, the City of Man or the earthly paradise where the prelapsarian man lived in beatitude; Nature, into which the fallen man was driven out on account of his original sin; Hell, the demonic world of the fallen angel Satan.

In the Romantic myth of Wordsworth, pre-existence is analogous to the pre-Romantic Heaven. In his great Ode, this Romantic equivalent of pre-Romantic Heaven is a world of eternal Silence and is compared to an 'immortal sea', upon whose shore the Child is sporting. This shore is Wordworthian prelapsarian paradise, which can be regained through recollection of his early childhood. The earthly paradise recollected in his memory is the physical nature, which was originally designed by God for the fallen Adam but in which now Wordsworthian unfallen Adam(the Child) lives in perfect harmony with the outward things. Wordsworth's fallen nature is the City of Man, equivalent to the earthly paradise of the pre-Romantic myth. The city is regarded as an example of degeneration caused by the human civilization; there the analytic human reason reigns, murdering to dissect. In Wordsworthian cosmology there is no such demonic world as Hell. The world outside human consciousness is all goodness, not dichotomized into good and evil.

Wordsworthian Man has fallen into the original sin of selfconsciousness, and not into the original sin in the Christian sense. His self-consciousness is the death-consciousness, which alienated him from the external world where the death of an individual can't cause any sense of alienation man has. Indeed an individual death brings no change in the grand order of the eternal nature. Wordsworthian fallen Adam feels that the world outside will always be the same even if he passes away; this is unbearable. This sense of alienation caused Wordsworthian loss of Eden.

Wordsworth's redemption myth begins with the recovery of the original identity he felt in his childhood which he lost in the course of growing up. He recovers the sense of identity with nature through recollection of his early childhood. He returns to the world of eternity by recollecting the 'primal sympathy'. His redemption myth is called 'Myth in Memory'.

'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' is a poem in which appears the full cycle of Wordsworthian myth-Pre-existence(Heaven), Childhood(Paradise), Growth(Fall) and Recollection(Redemption). In the analysis of his shorter poems, I could find images of the 'Marriage of Man and Nature', of children who are not conscious of death, and of old men and women in their extreme old age. All these human figures are so absorbed into nature that they seem to be part of the surrounding natural scene. They are travellers between life and death. Such images reveal his endeavor to extinguish the death-consciousness in him by means of his mythopoeic imagination and regain his lost paradise, that is, his sense of original identity with the world outside himself.