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영어

It has been said, great poet shapes the culture into which they are born. Poems cannot avoid mirroring their poet’s thoughts. Eliot was born and grew up in a Unitarian family but did not settle in Unitarianism. While Harvard University student, he studied philosophy, various Western and Eastern religions in search of ultimate salvation. Finally he converted to the Anglo-Catholicism in 1927. Eliot’s religious quest is reflected personal feelings into poetry. Eliot’s early poems, such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land, are examined to prove Eliot’s struggle for a pursuit for the possibility of Christian salvation. In this poem, Eliot’s Christian imagination was a strange and rather unpleasant survival from the waste land. In the poem of “Ash-Wednesday”, Eliot’s expresses the pleasure of accepting God and proceeding toward salvation. Eliot’s poems after “Ash-Wednesday” focus upon the Christian salvation. After he converted to the Anglo- Catholicism, his belief in Christianity and in Christian salvation becomes stronger and stronger. Christian belief was reflected in Eliot’s poetry. Four Quartets shows Eliot’s overcoming of spiritual sterility and achieving salvation by abandoning himself to God. Four Quartets explains the Paradise as the intersection of the Rose Garden, the Still Point, and the Incarnation. Eliot expressed in his poetry that he was pursuit the ultimate salvation. Eliot’s poetry reflected the process of his personal Christian belief. He believes that after all, human beings are created in the image of God.