earticle

영어

This paper tries to point out that cursory readings of E. A. Robinson’s poem “The Wandering Jew” that emphasize its ethical and philosophical meanings fail to acknowledge the narrator’s ever-increasing capacity to be affected by the Wandering Jew’s never-ending suffering, which enables a different reading seen through the perspective of Gilles Deleuze’s idea of nomadology. The basis for this can be associated with the possible similarities between the Wandering Jew’s nomadism and anathema as well as the Deleuzian subtraction (n-1). Even though the Wandering Jew is interpreted as a living corpse, the uncanny, or the marginal man by logocentric structures such as Jesus’ dictum of giving him eternal exile, his recurring experiences of suffering and wandering which always lead to differences by which any trial to catch their definitive meaning is deferred. With his detachment from the center by use of the strategy of rhizome, he can achieve an arrogance through the repetition of his suffering because the repetition itself leads to a form of eternal variation or expansion which can eventually result in his obtaining his place next to God. In this sense, his wandering is not so much a curse but a kind of bliss that is allowed to him by following the “lines of flight” through an “a-centered, non- hierarchical, non-signifying system without a General.” This new interpretation helps to break away from the traditional approaches towards the poem which see the Wandering Jew’s pride as purely a lack of repentance, and which becomes the source for his stigmatization. This understanding of the poem leaves both the Jew and the readers to wander on not only in the continuous nomadic life of his real suffering, but also to keep their wanderings in the realm of its interpretations.