한국시 운율 이론의 반성적 고찰 － 한국적 운율 담론을 위한 시론 －

Abstract

Koreans experienced a unique rhythm at the World Cup, back in 2002. "Daehanminguk OOO OO," called the World Cup handclap, brought the hearts of the public together with a cheerful and vigorous sense of rhythm. This rhythmic pattern is different from the rooting clapping of the mechanical quadruple time. It is also different from the monotonous measure of the contemporary children's songs. Rather, it has variations, viz. mutated rhythms, in one time. The World Cup handclap re-forms the characteristics of the Jangdan in our traditional music, which leads to strong attraction. Rhythm is argued to root in the unconsciousness of a community; however, the rhythm that Koreans feel in their everyday life is more likely to be the shallow and simple measure which has been formed through the education of modern western music. This problem applies when it comes to establishing the rhythmics of the Korean poems. According to the general classification in rhythmics, a syllable is the basic property of a meter, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Linguistic properties like stress, tone, and duration will add up to produce a musical eurythmy. A language deficient in these properties, in and of itself, is weak in prosody. By the western standards, the metrics of the Korean verses, along with that of the Japanese verses, is simplex which depends on syllables, and is therefore classified as lacking in musical sense. The rhythmics of the Korean verses has endeavored to compensate for this dearth and enter into the universal category. In order to find the unit of isochronous repetition based on the western prosody, investigation has been made into the concepts of syllable, foot, and pause, via various examinations of theories. However, is the criterion itself reasonable, ‘whether a language has musical properties or not’ in defining prosody? Is rhythm produced only when precisely identical units must repeat? With all sorts of theoretical foundations that are devised to fill in the 'lack,' the metrics of the Korean verses is always defined as insufficient or anomalous. The notion of regular time and units which can be measured with exact numbers, by nature, does not match with the traditional verses of Korea. The Korean poems traditionally consist of feet, different from one another in quantity, in a line, whose unequal units get to be recognized as a single integrated verse. This is connected to the background that poems have been enjoyed along with music and the structure of the traditional music has a characteristic of incorporating partially unequal divisions in terms of the holistic construction. It is also related to the cultural discussion which emphasizes 'harmony' that was believed to be realized by civilizing people through music and songs. The rhythmics of the Korean verses has proceeded to assimilate with the western standards or to establish the similar criteria in our metrics. The World Cup handclap, however, appears to assert that we need to change the standards of rhythm, themselves.