김명인 시의 ‘길’ 이미지 전개 양상—1990년대의 경우

Abstract

Kim Myeongin’s poems in the 1990s can be evaluated as internalizing the problems of his era through the process of symbolic change of ‘road’. The perception of reality shown in the collection of poems Dongducheon(1979) has undergone a fundamental change process since the 1990s, which can be summarized as the revealing of ‘absence consciousness’ through the poetic method of ‘going on the road’. When the 1990s is viewed as a unit of recognition, it can be established from a sociological viewpoint of literature that embodies the mental emptiness of an era in which the central value has disappeared. Kim Myeongin poetizes this in three dimensions. 1) Internalization of ‘absence consciousness’ 2) ‘Loss of place’ and critical consciousness 3) Mental struggle process of ‘new discovery’. The sense of absence does not mean the loss of a specific object or relative poverty at the individual level, but reveals contemporaneity in that it symbolizes the loss and collapse of all values, and the consequent recognition of lack of place emerges as an ‘existential self-preservation need’. In this respect, it can be seen as one of critical understanding of reality. In such a situation, it is natural for the process of internal struggle to pursue a new direction to appear, but Kim Myeongin seeks for an inner ‘landscape’ and aims for mental freedom. Attempts to understand Kim Myungin’s poetry in light of the circumstances of the 1990s have the meaning of a research history of exploring the universal meaning of the consciousness of absence that his contemporaries had, and it is judged to provide a valid basis for examining the development process of Kim Myungin’s poetry.