딜런 토마스의 내심리적 신화 = Dylan Thomas’ Endopsychic Myths

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

When Dylan Thomas said that his poetry is the "movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision", he meant that his poetry is the reflection of his blind, obscure mind, that is, the unconscious. Deep psychologists such as Freud and Jung agree that myth is none other than the projection of psychical factors and relations in the unconscious, of what Freud calls 'endopsychic myth.' However, Jung calls it an 'archetype' instead, believing that it is the pattern, matrix and blueprint of all our behavior in our collective unconscious. In this article, however, I use 'endopsychic myth' because 'archetype' is liable to mislead us to believe that all primordial images and motifs can easily be classified, and have one fixed meaning or value.
I found that the motifs in “Before I Knocked” gather around the myth of Crucifixion, so that the narrator's birth is merged with the images of the Crucifixion and Genesis in a subtle way. As Christ's death means rebirth in Heaven, the narrator's birth implies his mortality or death (hence, 'womb-tomb'). The other poem “Once Below a Time”, in contrast, does not depend upon any previously known myth, but creates a new myth out of autobiographical experiences and mythic visions.
In conclusion, it seems that Thomas attempted throughout his lifetime to reveal his unconscious dramas. In other words, his poems are projections of his deep inner life. He wants to live and reveal a myth below or beyond his conscious mind, as Jung wants to live a myth.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" Norton & Company 1960

2 "The Poetry of Dylan Thomas" U of Chicago P 1954

3 "The Mythological Unconscious" New York and London: Karnac 2001

4 "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake" 33-45, 1982

5 "The Life of Dylan Thomas" 1965

6 "The Dream and the Underworld" Harper & Row 1979

7 "The Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C" Princeton Princeton UP 1974

8 "The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake" 276-85, 1982

9 "The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess Belknap P of Harvard UP" 1887-19041985

10 "Once Below a Time" Albany: State U of New York P 2000

11 "Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis" Norton & Company 1960

12 "Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History"

13 "A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas" Noonday Press 1962

14 "A Collection of Critical Essays" Prentice-Hall 117-29, 1957

15 "A Collection of Critical Essays" Prentice-Hall 169-80, 1957

16 ".Mythology:Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" Mentor Book 1940

17 ".Collected Poems:1934-1952" Everyman's Library 1984