Make-up and Mask : Robert Browning의 "My Last Duchess"와 T.S. Eliot의 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"의 비교

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

According to Understanding Poetry by Robert Penn Warren and Rene Wellek, we can define that poetry is a kind of saying. And then there must be a speaker in any poem. The speaker, that is to say, "Who is speaking in a poem?" provides the key to the nature of the said, "What kind of saying is the poetry about?" T.S. Eliot divides the voices of poetry into three. Here the voices of poetry are classified by the speaker and listener of the poetry. The first voice means that of the poet talking to himself. The second is that of the poet addressing an audience, large or small. The third stands for that of the poet speaking to a dramatic character through another dramatic character. Ultimately, it goes without saying that the speaker is the poet, but it is not hard to find out the poet disguises himself as a character of the poetry. In addition, "Whom is the poetry speaking to? is another essence to the understanding of the poetry. T.S. Eliot's basis of argument is nothing else than the two keys, the problem of the speaker and the listener. He does not define what sort of poems are equivalent to the three voices respectively, but we can conjecture he keeps in mind to classify as follows: the first voice-the lyric poem and the poetry of the dramatic monologue; the second voice - the epic; the third voice - the dramatic poetry. Divisions can remain thus, but this admits of a lot of problems to apply practically to each poem.
For example, Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" are the poems of the dramatic monologue and naturally we are forced to classify these poems into the poetry of the first voice. But the poetry of the dramatic monologue is formally that of the first voice, and in its intention alloyed with the second voice, and as we have contemplated in the earlier pages and as the word 'dramatic' hints, it pretends to put on the third voice.
On the face of it the voice of "My Last Duchess" and that of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock seem to be very different from each other. But such fallacy is due to the extent of the disguise of the poet. I think the former is a kind of make-up, in which we can trace the poet's own voice and intention. The latter will be a sort of mask, in which the persona is thoroughly hidden.
T.S. Eliot has been complete in disguising his own persona which may result from his poetic theory, the objective correlative theory, and from his individual tendency.
In conclusion, we must not overlook the poet behind such a make-up or a mask. It is essential to pursue the underlying intention behind the speaker of the poetry. We will have to observe that 'Why does the speaker say such?' lies close behind 'Who is speaking?' The problem of 'why' plays the conclusive role in the understanding of the poetry. Mr. Eliot's theory of the three voices of poetry can come into being as a theory for a theory's sake, but we can say it is problematic to the practical application to the each poem.