포스트모던 문학의 종교성 : 시론 알렌 긴즈버그와 로버트 로월의 경우 The Case of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell = Religious Character in Postmodern Literature: An Introduction

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Paul Tillich, who experienced "faith without God" at the front in World War I for four years, said that "Religion, in the largest and most basic sense of the world, is ultimate concern. . . . You cannot reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate seriousness, or the state of being ultimately concerned, is itself religion." Postmodernism, however, with its ultimate seriousness, expressed its ultimate concern paradoxically by denying its ultimate concern, as negative theology speaks 'what God is not' to prove 'God's presence as the presence of an absence.'
Postmodernism rejects Grand Narratives. Such Big Ideas as Truth, Morality, Reason, God, Tradition and History are rejected as artificial constructions that are totalitarian by their own nature. The objects of its denials, however, have been revealed more vividly under the reflective light of the negation. To negate something we have to draw it into the light to show it to others. In the course of scrupulous trials of Truth, Reason and God, postmodernism, in a sense, has thrown light on them continuously about forty years since 1960 when it began to attract the interests of the intellectuals of the late twentieth century.
Through the negative way postmodernism has created new arguments and discourses about Truth and Reason otherwise to be forgotten or to be disregarded under the attacks of rapidly developing materialism in this century. Paradoxically, postmodernism seems to have proved the importance of God and Truth by negating them for about half a century. This is why Derrida's deconstruction is thought to be related to negative theology, though Derrida repeatedly insists that deconstruction is not negative theology.
Along the same negative way literary works in the postmodern period seem to contribute to proving the importance of real truth, real reason and real religion. The works of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell are outstanding examples of this negative way. Ginsberg, through his widely known resistance against existing value, existing social system and existing culture, especially strongly demonstrated in his Howl and Other Poems, and Lowell, through his revolutionary poems revealing the relentless denials of the self, especially impressively manifested in his Life Studies, revived the nostalgia for the dead God and Truth in life. Lowell thought the human self is the root of all existing negative value system.
Through the examples of their poems we can perceive that the religious character of postmodern literature consists in the reactionary and dynamic advocation of negative qualities which, with its unconquerable ultimate concern about existential life, paradoxically revives the seemingly disappeared concern about Value, Truth, Religion and God in their real dimensions. The sincere aspiration and pursuit of the ultimate concern on the part of these poets by way of strong negation of traditional values and ideals might be said to resemble the paradoxical way as negative theology does for the revival of the concern on God.
What we must not fail to notice here is that postmodern literature is not completely and logically negative in communicating its ideas. Literature is basically the expression of powerful emotion. So, not through logic but through an artistic shaping of metaphor, symbol, a chain of events or situations, it makes us feel the reality of the human spirit and communicates it indirectly to the reader. We must bear this in mind when we read the works of postmodern literature.