종군 체험의 시적 형상화 양상 — 유치환의 『步兵과 더불어』의 경우

Abstract

Yu Chihwan(柳致環, pen name: 靑馬)’s fifth collection With the Infantry(步兵과 더불어) contains 23 poems about his experience as a war writer(從軍作家) during the Korean War and 11 other poems about the war. “With the Infantry” has been unduly marginalized in existing poetry studies, not only in terms of Yu’s weight in Korean literary history, but also in terms of the representation of experiences of on-the-scene war writers generally. This dissertation focuses its analysis on Yu’s 23 ‘war writer’ poems (“With the Infantry”) describing the actual war zone. The 23 poems are relatively direct improvisations about the experience of war, but they are quite out of step with the ‘nationalist gaze’ expected of on-the-scene war writing. They mostly appeal to ‘humanity’(인간애) beyond the horrors of war and the ideology that drove the war. This dissertation reveals Yu’s poetic praxis of objectifying the referent/object in order to highlight this appeal, a praxis (or attitude) that may be called Yu’s method and his spirit. Through poetic objectification, Yu reveals humanity(인간애) by understanding the victims of war at the originary level of the human(인간). Humanity in also closely related to a pro-natural worldview. Human values that go beyond the values / ideologies placed on humans, have their true meaning in the pro-natural world. The best poems in With the Infantry, in their descriptions of scenes depicting humans assimilating with nature, confirm the worthlessness of the war itself and the ideology that brought the war. Such stands as an example of a literary style responding effectively to a crisis in the community such the advent of war.