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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.18 pp.77-99
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.2002.18.77

Death as Lack and Repetition in Yeats’s Poetry

Ilhwan Yoon

Abstract

From time to time Yeats’s concept of death baffles us, since he asserts in A Visionthat in effect death is neither absence nor nothing but a recurrence of life in otherbody and other state. No doubt this elaborate myth of reincarnation is an importantelement of his system, but acceptance of it as his definitive view of death would leadus down several interpretive blind valley. If there is no annihilation of self, then howcan we explain the effort of lyric after lyric to summon up heroic energy in the faceof death? Moreover, death for him is something that elicits abundant imagination. Byanalyzing Yeats’s ‘death’ poems, I attempt to some answers to these questions.
I begin with the discussion of the ‘reincarnation’ reflected in “A Dialogue of Selfand Sou.” In contrast to the Soul who asserts that one must concentrate on the“darkness” of death, imitating as nearly as possible that future state, the Self, provokedby death, reaffirms the present state. The Self reviews life to deny neither imaginationnor the senses; rather it reasserts their ultimate worth. If “Dialogue of Self and Soul” iswilling to embrace life again in the face of death, “Under Ben Bulben” internalizesauthority to quell death. The speaker ruthlessly suppresses his own vulnerabilities withauthoritative commands and the voice of his dead father. The discourse in the poemseems abstracted from the poet’s own life, as if spoken by his now disembodied butempowered voice, a voice from a timeless nowhere beyond the grave. “The Apparition,”another poem dealing with death, however, uncovers the terror that undercuts theassertion of ‘joy’ in “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” and “Under Ben Bulben.” Nomatter how each poem responds to death, however, it is clear that death cannot beapproached directly. It is “Man and the Echo” that allows the good picture of thenecessary indirectness of one’s meditation on death. The rabbit’s cry of pain interruptsthe deathward meditation. This moment of rupture suggests that “Man” can only thinkdeath indirectly, through trope and turn. In “Death,” by turning to the logic of lack andrepetition, I attempt to provide some possible answers to why Yeats moves to-and-fro between the repression of death and the avowal of its finality. In “Lapis Lazuli” Thepoet replaces the marks of time with the self-begetting images. Associated with theregenerative power of water and seasons, the immaterial possibilities supplant the markson the stone’s surface symbolic of literal death. In its internal time the poet createspoetic possibilities that rise from the external time that decays.
In short, death for Yeats ‘causes’ life, and opens up the place that is retroactivelyfilled out by life. But above all death inspires, brings about, dignifies his poeticimagination. Yeats depends on the muse of death for the aesthetics of his poetry. In hispoetry he rehearses death every day.
Keywords :

예이츠 시에 나타난 부재와 반복으로서의 죽음

윤일환
건국대

초록

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