earticle

영어

Although no direct influence of Eastern works to Walt Whitman has been traced, records show that Emerson and Thoreau found some aspects of Oriental ideas in Whitman" The Leaves of Grass. From this fact, we can infer at least the following: Emerson and Thoreau, who in their own ways influenced Whitman, had interests in the Oriental religion/philosophy; Whitman came to have some influence from the Eastern ideas, if not from direct sources, through his acquaintance with them; and Whitman's work has some elements that makes the readers including Emerson and Thoreau relate it to the Oriental ideas. Starting from this inference, this paper aims to compare the ideas represented in The Leaves of Grass, especially in "Song of Myself," to those shown in Tao-te Ching, one of the representative works of Taoism. In comparing the two works, this paper intends to argue that, although no evidence of direct influence can be found, both works, through the related images of grass and water, and through the shared rhetorical device of paradox, hold in common the principle of equality of not only among the mankind but all beings in the universe. Further, through their concern with the relation between the self and the environment, both works diagnose the fundamental ecological problems caused by human beings and offer, in their own aesthetic/metaphysical ways, an alternative proposal.