One of Yeats’s distinguished later poems, “Lapis Lazuli”, which was inspired by a Chinese lapis lazuli carving he received as a gift from a young man of letters, declares the values of artistic activities as a creator as well as preserver of civilizations. In the poem, the poet as a poetic persona constructs vivid vision beyond the real world, breathes in the invisible fragrance that doesn’t really exist and appreciates the unheard melodies from the still object of art. The old ascetics imagined out of the carved still-life meditate upon the tragic scenes beneath their feet from the mountain they ascend towards. Fictitious creatures in a created world of sculpture stare on the real world with old wisdom transfiguring dread. Yeats had not presented all the significant experiences as successfully as he illustrated in this poem. He made the real fictional and in turns, turned the fanciful ideas into real things. The old glittering eyes of those Chinamen in the last stanza are more authentic than the hysterical women who complain with wrong, shrill and cracking voices in the first stanza. The roles of the poet also become mythic as the Chinese do who are distant, old, wise and gay in the hard stone. The poet penetrates into the domain of art work silently and looks back on a poor play of life from the gaiety of his own art. The description of the last stanza in a form of sonnet is much like the controlled carving of a sculptor. And it eternalizes artistic performances by transforming a visual art into a linguistic imagination, and thus by re-creating the scene depicted in the stone in a pleasant manner. As the artist imagines scent and music and movements in the given poetic object, the sculpture attains values stimulating observers’ perception permanently. The Chinese art work with two ascetics and one pupil carrying a musical instrument will continue to mutate in the mind of readers as it receives multiple senses through the poem.
키워드
시각예술예술가의 비전청금석 부조수도자비극적 황홀문명의 순환visual artsartistic visionlapis lazuliasceticstragic joythe rise and fall of civilizations
예이츠 및 관련 분야에 대한 회원들의 학문 발전을 도모하고 연구 의욕을 고취시키기 위해 다음과 같은 일을 기획하고 수행함을 그 목적으로 한다.
1) 학술 발표회 및 세미나 개최
2) 학술 정보의 수집과 자료 교환
3) 연구논문집 『한국예이츠저널』(The Yeats Journal of Korea) 발간
4) 회원 상호간의 학문적 교류와 친목 도모