Eliot and Stevens: The Emptiness and The Nothingness in “The Hollow Men” and “The Snow Man”

초록

This essay illustrates how the emptiness appears in T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Hollow Men,” and what the value of the nothingness in Wallace Stevens’s poem, “The Snow Man,” exploring two poets’ poetics in terms of modernism. In “The Hollow Men,” Eliot attempts to overcome the binary opposition by grasping the still point in juxtaposing “the hollow” and “the stuffed.” “The hollow men” and “the stuffed men” are leaning together to assist the other. On the other hand, Stevens describes the emptiness not as nothing itself, but as the nothing which gives us a potentiality. The potentiality brings out the ontological value of the reality. The former poet focuses on the whisper of “the hollow” with “the stuffed” because he adopts “the shadow” which serves as the hollow’s liaison with the stuffed while the latter differentiate the nothingness from the nothingness by highlighting the realm of unperceived in the world. Eliot makes use of a constant companionship between the binary oppositions, but Stevens ontologically approaches the nothingness against nothingness.

키워드