성 나르시스와 프루프록과 게론천: 분열된 자아와 욕망

Abstract

In T. S. Eliot’s early poetry, the main characters from Prufrock to Gerontion are drifting lonely and alienated without anchoring in the world. They desire reconciliation with the world, but the greater their desire is, the more hurt, divided and drifted they are. Narcissus retreats from the human world and is transformed into various figures of self until he becomes the dancer to God. Prufrock is trapped in constantly overturned and delayed time, as he is divided between the past and the future self. His desire exists only in the postponement of time that separates desire from fulfillment. Gerontion finds history deceptive, noticing it to dissolve into incomprehensibility. He obsessively repeats “think” against unreliable history but ends up with dry thoughts rattling his brain. His thought no longer shelters itself against the fragments of his reverie.