The Ontological Vision of Nothing and Realization of the True Self in King Lear

초록

The Ontological Vision of Nothing and Realization of the True Self in King Lear Han, Kwang-Sok (Kangwon National University) The thematic use of “nothing” at the outset of King Lear places the central concern of the play on Lear’s being able by the end to resolve the Fool’s question, “Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?” “Nothing” in the play is used by Shakespeare for all-producing and yet all-embracing nothing just as by the end of the play everything has been made from Cordelia’s “nothing.” Her “nothing” signifies the undifferentiated, primordial reality of the universe. It is the state which is different from, or ontologically prior to, the state of being organized and perceived by our linguistic distinctions. This presentation of dynamic, existential nothing reflects Shakespeare’s ontological vision of nothing as the ground of all being, the root and source of both existence and non-existence, life and death. In his vision “nothing” lies coiled at the core of all beings, at the heart of the world itself. To look into nothing is to become aware of the self, and as one looks into this nothingness of the self, one realizes that it is one with the nothing that is the ground of the entire universe. In the play, Lear’s odyssey of nothing comes full circle: it starts with Cordelia’s voiced nothing and ends in her mute nothing. Cordelia’s “nothing” circumscribes emptiness at the center of Lear’s world. The essential quality of nothing is the target center of Lear’s true eyesight. Lear’s long and painful rite of passage to Cordelia’s nothing ends in realizing his true self and residing in her living world of nothing as the “unaccommodated man” in the ontological sense, where “ripeness is all.”

키워드