이 논문의 목적은 예이츠의 「초등학생들 사이에서 Among School Children」, 특히 이 시의 마지막 행 “어떻게 우리가 춤과 춤꾼을 구별할 수 있겠는가”를 메를로-퐁티의 현상학적 지각의 개념을 통해 접근함으로써 또 다른 읽기의 가능성을 탐색하는 것이다. 메를로-퐁티가 내세우는 지각은 절대적 내재성이나 외재성으로 작동하기 보다 세계에 대한 ‘신체적 현존’으로 이해된다. 명징하고 통일된 주관과 지각 대상의 구분을 거부하는 신체적 현존을 통한 경험은 세계와 대상을 끊임없이 ‘태동하는 상태’에 있는 것으로 파악한다. 예이츠 시의 핵심을 지속적인 자기갱신과 변화로 정의하면서, 변화에 대한 개방성을 특징으로 하는 예이츠 시가 어떻게 메를로 퐁티의 현상학적 지각 개념을 통해 잘 포착될 수 있는지 살펴본다.

William Butler Yeats’s poem “Among School Children” is a meditation on love, essence, and change. This paper attempts to relate the Buddhist theories of essence and change to the core philosophical premises of the poem itself. Furthermore, through two specific Buddhist texts, Milindapanho by Nàgasena and Mūlamādhyamikakārikā by Nagarjuna, the paper illustrates similarities in terms of imagery and philosophical ideas in the specific stanzas of the poem, highlighting a philosophical foundation in musings on love and essence as they emerge in the poem.

본 논문은 예이츠 시 “어린 학생들 속에서”에 나타난 춤과 춤추는 자의 합일성을 시인의 마음의 변화성으로 해석한다. 그 시 의식을 인지론적으로 접근하며, 그 합일성의 정도를 가능세계로 재음미해본다. 예이츠의 시심은 인지적 마음과 감성적 마음, 실행적 마음 중에서 시적 지성과 감성의 조화성만을 드러낸다.

본고는 ｢학생들 사이에서｣에 나타나 있는 불교적인 개념을 살펴봄으로써 예이츠가 불교를 어떻게 이해하고 있으며, 그가 수용한 불교의 개념이 무엇인가? 그리고 그가 어느 정도까지 수용하고 있는가를 살펴보는 것을 목적으로 하고 있다. 서론부분에서 예이츠가 불교에 접하게 된 계기 및 과정을 고찰하여 예이츠의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하는 것이 무리가 아님을 논증한다. 시인이 불교에 대하여 알지 못하거나 불교를 접한 바가 없다 하더라도 시인의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하지 못하는 것은 아니다. 그렇지만 시인이 불교에 접하고 불교를 알고 있었다면 그의 작품에 그 영향이 남아 있을 수 있다. 그렇기 때문에 그의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하는 것이 보다 타당할 수 있다.

Since he edited William Blake’s poetry, Yeats had been deeply concerned with the questions of “contraries.” And Plato was also an important influence on his theory. Relying on Blake and Plato, Yeats had worked for a long time to make his own theory in his poetry and prose, and succeeded in the elaborate system as elucidated in his book, A Vision. “Among School Children” shows how Yeats has come to reach the ultimate reality, unity of being in the eighth and final stanza in it. Growing older, Yeats gets to contemplate life and death. Earlier in life, he has pursued the spiritual, but as he is older, approaching death, he is searching for something else, too. He realizes that we need both soul and body to overcome aging and death, and eventually, as evidenced in the dance and dancer metaphor of the poem, he is reaching the ultimate Reality through a unity of being－the harmonious union of body and soul. He realizes that “life is not a mere image.”

This is a paper that shows how poetic dialogue plays upon poems between three different authors, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Many of Yeats' poems broach a gentle issue of how they respond to their poetic precursors. "Among School Children" can be read as an updated version of a Romantic "conversation" poem. Coleridge applied the term "conversational poem" to "The Nightingale," one of twenty-tree poems in Lyrical Ballads of 1798. Earlier than this, a phrase Sermoni propriora ("suitable for conversation") appears in his "Reflections, On Having Left a Place of Retirement." These two poems demonstrate Coleridge's conscious efforts at experimenting with conversational speech as a legitimate poetic language. Coleridge's conversational mode is in full bloom in such remarkable poems as "The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" and "Frost at Midnight," the latter a masterful lyric that paves ways for Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" in its compositional mode and structure. The traffic between the two Romantic authors and "Among School Children" is obvious--a noticeable parallelism is developed in terms of diction, figures, thematic structure, and rhetorical devices. Yeats's "Among School Children" serves as a poetic testimony to the on-going lyrical dialogue that explores possible links between the workings of different poetic minds and that creates remarkable echoing effects.

This paper is an attempt to practice Jungian ways into a great poem of Yeats’s, “Among School Children,” over which home and foreign academic societies concerned have been under much controversy till now. But it is very regrettable that I have no belief if the views issued from some noted scholars in the societies have been plausible or appropriate. In the sense, as suggested by the title, the encounter between Great psychologist C. G. Jung and Great poet W. B. Yeat is very significant in that they both had pursued the same ultimate subject as a supreme state of humanity respectively represented as archetype of ‘Self’ and ‘Unity of Being.’ For Jungian ways applied to the poem, first symbols, images and psychological situations lurking in it can be useful as the interpretative clues. These representations can function as faithful agents helping us to reach the gate of the poetic truth, urging us to mobilize Jungian esoteric terms corresponded to several kinds of psychological situations people must go through. ‘Great Mother,’ maternal archetype, who stands for earth and womb and takes two characteristics, construction and destruction, possessing opposite qualities of Witch Kali and Virgin Mary, exercises serious effect upon a male child as an earthly hero. Some ideal aim or mission that the hero strives to grasp is just equivalent to hurriedly return to the womb as his biological origin, namely secular realization of the principle of ‘entrophy’ meaning the second principle of thermodynamics; does mean the hero’s life whatever else? It can be associated with the biblical situation, Pieta, the holy picture describing Mary’s lamenting in bitter grief with embracing his dead son, Jesus Christ. In fact, the hero is determined to death resulting from energetic emission of burning libido, which can be embellished with either establishment of duty or sacrifice to community. Thus, ‘Great mother’ longing for the runaway baby from her womb, in turn, is expecting his death to suffice emptiness of womb and heal her chronic complex, hysteria. In conclusion, in the poem, we can find that the destiny that after “children” in the “school” go through a initial step of ‘individuation,’ the perfect state which further can be indivisible, they, absurd beings, are cast into the tough world with each secular mission is just to aid the scheme of ‘Great Mother.’ “school” is a temple teaching “dance” and “children” in it dancers learning “dance.” Accordingly, the enigmatic relation of “dancer” and “dance” in the eighth stanza would be unraveled: The former can come under an archetypal pattern and the latter can correspond to its practitioner. Thus, “dance,” playing a role of ‘complex’ as compelling force and driving us to imitate it, tires us, dancers, finally to death, as an erotic dancer Salome’s dance murdered a spiritual dancer John the Baptist. After all, we can never get to the core of “dance” only to hang around its brink, which Yeats should know. As usual, getting captivated by “dance,” we continually shout hoarse to others: Shall we dance?

폴드만의 “Among School Children” 읽기는, 언어의 근본적 비유성, 즉 말해진 것과 다른 것(들)을 의미하는 속성에 근거한 그의 해체론 전개에 중요한 예이다. 이 시에 관한 그의 논의의 초점은 마지막 시행 “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”가, 전통적 해석들에서와는 달리, 수사의문문이 아니라 문법적 의문문으로 읽힐 수 있으며, 이 때 이 시행은 예술적 형식과 내용 사이 그리고 더 나아가 기호와 지시체(또는 의미) 사이의 숨겨진 차이성을 드러낸다는 데 있다. 드만에게 있어서 이 차이성은 언어의 자의성과 언어 기호의 비고착성에 직결되며, 이들은 다시 의미의 불확정성을 넘어 읽기의 불가능성으로까지 이어진다. 의미의 불확정성은, 다시 말하면, 주어진 표현에 적용될 문맥을 결정할 수 없다는 말이 된다. 그러나 퍼스에 따르면, 의미작용(signification)이 무한한 기호과정에 속해있긴 하지만, 해석의 공동체(community)라는 의미작용 외부의 원리에 의해 의미작용에 제한을 가할 수 있다. 에코는 이 원리로부터 비록 어떤 해석을 배타적으로 또는 우선적으로 옳은 것이라고 판단하는 것은 불가능하지만, 적어도 그 해석이 부적절하다는(illegitimate) 것은 문맥을 통해 결정할 수 있다는 결론을 이끌어낸다. 이때 문맥이란, 한 텍스트내의 특정한 표현이 문제가 될 때, 그 표현을 들러 싼 텍스트 자체, 더 정확히 말해서, 그 텍스트의 요소들 사이에서 최소한으로 요구되는 일종의 일관성이라 할 수 있으며 이 텍스트의 일관성은 해석의 최소 조건이 된다. 드만의 “Among School Children” 읽기는 이 조건에 비추어 부적절함이 드러난다. 결국, 해석의 최소 조건에 의해 의미의 불확정성은 읽기의 불가능성이 아니라 텍스트가 허용하는 범위 내에서의 다양한 읽기 가능성으로 이어지는 것이다.

W. B. Yeats’ “Among School Children” was the result of the poet’s visit to an elementary school. Apparently, it seems to be the record of his visit and his imagining Maud Gonne’s life and his life. When it is closely examined, it is proved to contain his philosophical thoughts regarding the reality and actuality. As is well known, Yeats lost his interest in Christianity early in his childhood and studied the mysticism, the esotericism, the occultism, and the Orientalism including the old Indian philosophy and Buddhism from childhood to adulthood. Sometimes he studied the various pagan philosophy systematically and sometimes unsystematically. It is natural that his poetry shows the reflection of his philosophy as his poetic aim was to put himself into the poetry. This paper proves the influence of Buddhism on his poem, “Among School Children”. The first chapter deals with the background of this poem’s making and surveys the contents of this poem. The second chapter summarizes his study of Mysticism and the Indic philosophy focussing on Buddhism. This chapter also explicate the main ideas of Buddhism; the Great Wheel, the emptiness, non-self-being, metempsychosis, the Law of Karma, etc. The third chapter examines the poem “Among School Children” in the light of Buddhism. First the poem is proved to be based on the idea of the Great Wheel. The speaker and the persons who are imagined by the poet are chained to the Wheel and cannot escape from it. They have to be reincarnated according to the law of Karma, that is they are suffering the metempsychosis. The law of Karma emphasizes relativity/relatedness among objects. The people named and/or appeared in this poem are related to each other, and have no self-being. The fourth chapter discusses the poem’s development from dualism to monism. Western philosophy is basically based on dualism but Buddhism is monism. We can conclude that Yeats’ thoughts on the actuality and the reality are based on monism in this poem. But his acceptance of Buddhism was not literally, but he adopted and changed it to his purpose. His “Unity of Being” is originated from Buddhism but is not the same as that of Buddhism. He insists that the real life should be valued when the spirit and the body come to be united. In Buddhism, all the actuality is emptiness itself, but Yeats affirms the actuality. In Buddhism, reincarnation and/or re-living is taking different body from the former body, but Yeats thinks we are reincarnated or re-live by feeling and accepting other people’s selves. These are main points of difference between Buddhism and Yeats.

In this paper, through appreciating one of W. B. Yeats’s later poems, I try to find how the poet’s creative self gets to have its creative power and in what mechanism it expands its poetic circumference. “Among School Children” is the very poem his poetic self and creative imagination are well wrought into. In the poem, the poet suggests that power and knowledge cannot exist together, speaking of the powerful theories of Plato and simultaneously of the philosopher’s powerless being before Nature. He praises Aristotle as a king of kings, and Pythagoras as world-famous golden-thighed, but he mocks them of being old clothes upon an old stick to scare a bird. In the same way, he asserts that “the body is not bruised to pleasure soul.” In the sense of deconstructionists, all the binary oppositions have their hierarchies; however, Yeats puts the two antithetical elements on the identical level, as they are not subordinated to each other, and tries to bridge the abyss or space between. Such an attempt to unite the opposite worlds is manifested in his A Vision. Concerning his “gyre” theory, the figure is frequently drawn as a double cone. The one is called primary gyre, representing space, intellect, mask and fortune; the other antithetical one to represent time, emotion, creativity and will. The narrow end of each cone is in the centre of the broad end of the other. Seen at the narrow end of each cone through the centre of each broad end, appears a circle having a dot at the center. This is the poet’s world of imagination whose centre is his “self” and whose circumference is the limit of the self’s perception. The poet’s life-long activities are related with his efforts to expand the circumference. “Among School Children” is a trace of such activities. The centre is the place where the self of the poet is located; the circumference is where the self “perceives its limitation,” or where arises the feeling of awe, terror, or ecstasy, which means a kind of tension geared between the binary opposite worlds: the finite and the infinite; the mortal and the immortal; life and death; the real and the ideal; youth and age; the body and soul; pleasure and despair. The perception network of the poet connects the centre and circumference. The power to widen the circle originates from the poet’s paradoxical sense of life, of deprivation, and of renunciation through an attainable love with Maud Gonne, tensions between religious struggles, civil revolutions, and so on. The sharp confrontation of these tensions takes place rise to in the circumference and stimulates the poet’s creative imagination. This power of self strengthened by these tensions starts its quest-journey to explore the mysteries beyond the limit of its circle: the mysteries of the opposite worlds separated here and there. The ultimate purpose of the journey, finally, is to reach the united condition of the two worlds, which means what Greg Johnson calls “the highest imaginative enhancement of human identity” or immortality. This united world is the place where “we cannot know the dancer from the dance” and where Yeats’s “unity of being” is synthesized.

예이츠의 학교 어린이들 사이에서 (1927)와 파운드의 빌라네레: 심리적인 시간 (1916) 은 모두 장소의 개념을 시의 주제와 연결시키고 있다는 점에서 공통점을 발견할 수 있다. 이는 두 시인이 모두 외부경치의 묘사로 서두를 장식하는 낭만주의 명상시의 영향 아래 있었다는 것을 보여주고 있다. 그러나 두 시인이 사용한 장소의 개념과 각 시의 주제를 연결시켜 보면 두 시인의 다른 성향을 알 수 있다. 먼저, 학교 어린이들 사이에서 에서 예이츠가 사용한 교실은 생로병사 같은 인간의 한계를 상징적으로 표현하며 그 새장 혹은 감옥의 좁은 방과 같은 한계성을 어떻게 극복하느냐가 이 시의 주된 관심사라고 할 수 있다. 이 시의 마지막 시구 (“춤과 춤추는 이를 어떻게 구별할 수 있을 것인가?”)는 비록 학자마다 그 해석을 달리하여 아직도 논란이 있는 게 사실이지만 나의 소견은 예이츠가 추구해온 합일의 신비적인 힘을 결정적으로 표현한 것이라고 해석하고 싶다. 즉, 처음에 설정된 인간의 한계를 극복하는 길은 합일의 힘 뿐이라는 것이다. 다시 말하면 인간의 주관적인 힘에 더욱 더 무게를 두는 낭만주의의 전통을 그대로 간직하고 있음을 알수 있다. 한편, 파운드의 빌라네레: 심리적인 시간 은 집의 묘사로 그 서두를 장식하고 있는데 우리는 그 집이 화자의 시각 (주관적인 관점)을 제한하는 역할을 하고 있음을 알 수 있다. 이러한 장소의 선택으로 인간이 필연적으로 경험하게 되는 주관의 한계(집의 내부에서 밖을 보는데는 분명한 한계가 있음으로)를 극복하게 하려는 파운드의 치밀한 계산이 깔려있는 것이다. 파운드의 방법은 객관적인 시각을 받아들이는 것이다. 그래서 보다 다양한 관점을 유지하여 주관의 한계를 극복하려는 것이 다. 그러나 이 시에서는 파운드가 기다리고 기다리던 객관적인 관점은 이루어지지 않고 주관적인 관점의 한계만 드러낸 채 끝을 맺는다. 이는 예이츠와는 달리 파운드는 주관적인 힘 그리고 인간의 상상력의 힘에 대한 한계를 인정하고 있다는 의미이다. 예이츠의 상상력에 대한 동경으로 시를 쓰고 그에게 인정받으려고 노력했던 파운드가 이제는 예이츠의 시적 노선에 대해 조금씩 거부반응을 보이기 시작했다고 할 수 있을 것이다. 예이츠가 그 자신을 마지막 낭만파 시인이라고 말하고 있는 것과는 대조적으로 파운드는 이 시를 기점으로 이후에 보다 주관이 배제된 형식으로 객관적이고 사회적, 그리고 정치적인 시들을 발표했음을 알 수 있다. 이는 시가 시인의 내적세계라는 좁은 울타리를 나와 보다 이 사회의 발전에 적극적으로 참여해야 한다는 파운드의 시학으로 해석할 수 있을 것이다.

In “Among School Children” Yeats meditated on lover’s passion, nun’s piety, and mother’s affection in the tradition of Plato’s dualistic philosophy. Plato’s philosophy is an idealistic system resting on a sharply defined dualism between mind and matter, God and the world, body and soul. Soul is always superior to body. Soul is the ideal world; body is the present world. Therefore, those who worship images like lover, nun and mother can not fulfill their dreams in the present world. There is a conflict in the dualistic world. But in the last stanza of the poem, the poet showed us the unified world of soul and body as in Hawom thought. The main features of the Hawom thought belong to Tushun and Chihyum, and Bobchang in China. Great Monk Euisang studied under Chihyum and later held the title of National Teacher in Shilla Era of Korea. His thought was given a pictorial form: a meander design made up of a poem consisting of 210 Chinese characters entitled the Hwaom Iisung Bubgyedo: the cosmology of dharma in the One-yana of Avatamsaka philosophy. In this paper I interpret the last stanza of the poem in the light of Euisang’s Hawom vision. The Hawom vision of the world can contribute to solving the problem of dualistic conflict. The Hawom vision of the world is based on the Mahayana ontology of Emptiness(sunyata) or nonsubstantiality. In Euisang’s Bobsungge, soul and body are not different from each other because both have nonsubstantiality. Yeats also said “Labour is blossoming or dancing where/ The body is not bruised to pleasure soul” in the first and second lines of the last stanza. He continued his song, “O Chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,/ Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?” Euisang sang “One is in all, all is in one: one is all, all is one.” A Chestnut-tree consists of the leaf, the blossom, and the bole. The relationship between a part and the whole is in “organic” unity: a part is in the whole, the whole is in a part: a part is the whole, the whole is a part. Yeats argued “How can we know the dancer from the dance,” Euisang suggested ie is not differ from sa. For example, in a golden statue of lion, gold is ie, the statue is sa. ie is represented by sa. The dance is represented by the dancer. Nothing is self-sufficient and all things are interdependent. The Hawom philosophy views the world as a harmonious whole without any dualistic conflict of its fundamental nature. Euisang and Yeats showed us a beautiful vision of the universal reconciliation and harmony of all beings in the world. Euisang called it Buddha’s world whereas Yeats called it “Unity of Being.”

예이츠의 “Among School Children”을 분석해 보면 이 시가 시적 구조와 예이츠의 “Among School Children” 에 내재한 성서의 세계, 이미저리, 그리고 이 시의 궁극적 메시지가 성서를 그 모델로 하여 지어졌음을 알 수 있다. 이 논문의 목적은 이 시의 삼단계 시적 구조가 기본적으로 성서의 삼단계 구조를 모방했음을 주장하는 것이다. 즉 이 시가 내포하고 있는 각 파트의 주요 이미지 즉 학교 교실, 노령화에 대한 시인의 무기력함, 그리고 댄서의 이미지가 결국 성서에 나오는 이미지 즉 성서 처음의 한 장소에서 다른 장소로 이동하는 모습, 그 이후 끊임없이 되풀이되는 인간의 나약함, 그리고 성서 마지막의 요한 계시록에 나오는 신비의 결혼을 변형한 것이다. 이 시의 주제 중의 하나인 Unity of Being의 실현이 인간의 한계를 해결할 수 있다는 것도 신과 인간의 결혼으로 천국을 이룩할 수 있다는 성서의 종교적 비전을 연상시킨다. “Among School Children”의 내면에는 바이블의 세계가 존재하고 있는 것이다.