판타지로서의 시:『황무지』의 정신분석학적 읽기

Abstract

One of the cogent reasons why we can read The Waste Land is provided by no other than Eliot himself Refuting many critics' claim that it is a "criticism of the contemporary world", Eliot said that the poem was simply written as "the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life." Even though we do not really know how the poem was written, we can not deny the claim that a psychoanalytical reading of the poem is a very valid approach to it. One very convincing piece of evidence that we are on the right track in reading this poem from a psychoanalytic point of view can be found in the many expressions evincing ambivalent attitude toward life and death. The fact that the poem begins with a very impressive image of the Sybil who shows an ambivalent attitude toward life undeniably constitutes a firm basis for this argument. In the poem we come across a semantically very bizarre phrase: The corpse you planted last year in your garden, /Has it begun to sprout? This expression shows the mixture of libido and thanatos lurking in the unconscious of T. S. Eliot himself. Tiresias himself can be seen as another very interesting representation of Eliot's unconscious ambivalence toward his sexual identity. Read from a psychoanalytical point of view, the poem clearly shows Eliot's private fantasy deep in his unconscious. As psychoanalysts say, this poem clearly shows how Eliot's repressed desire comes to the surface of consciousness in a bizarre and twisted manner.