After conversion, T. S. Eliot’s religious phrase generates a new kind of experimental form like an unfinished two-part poem Coriolan. The first fragment, “Triumphal March” shows the distance and juxtaposition of the two worlds: the worthless secular world of common people and transcendental reality of war hero Coriolan symbolized as “the still point of the turning world.” In the second fragment “Difficulties of a Statesman,” Eliot describes an anguish soldier-statesman Coriolan facing difficulties of leading public after the war. In this respect political leader Coriolan craves spiritual redemption for his desperate emotional emptiness as a result of rootless human relationship with his people and losing his real identity of “the still point of the turning world.” Coriolan study in terms of Christian symbol of “the still point of the turning world” contains important echoes of poems such as Ash Wednesday and Ariel Poems. It also foreshadows Eliot’s later recurrent images used in Choruses from The Rock and Four Quartets as well as his poetic dramas.

• 허정자(한국외국어대학교)