근대시 형성과 번역의 상관성―金億을 중심으로

Abstract

Literary translation played an essential role in forming Korean modern literature. Translation acquires its significance not from mere translating activity between two different languages but from helping to introspect and criticize the established self through meeting the other and, furthermore, to reconstruct the new self. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Kim Euk was the forerunner to translate foreign poems and spread them to the mass. This paper aims to study the interrelation between Kim Euk's translation activities and the formation of Korean modern poems. The study was mainly focused on the New Literary Bulletin Taeseo's relation with Kim Euk's translations, the mutual relation between Kim's translating consciousness and literary views, the receptive features of a collection of translated poems Dance of Agony, the establishment of translating styles and its effects. By the New Literary Bulletin Taeseo, Kim Euk settled some principles of translation such as first-hand translation of original works, precedence of Korean language, combination of enlightenment and tastes. In fact, he selected the objects of translation, based on artistic quality and currentness. In other words, his standards of translation came from the canons of Korean moden literature. Kim Euk's early translation activities were based on his belief and optimistic view on the modern civilization. His confidence on the modern civilization made it possible to negate the difference between the subject(Colonized Joseon) and the other(The Western World, Japan), and caused the subject to be possesed by the identifying desire with the other. Dance of Agony was published to realize the cultural needs of the times to know about the 'most excellent' poems of 'modern' 'France' and received a great responce from the readers. But Dance of Agony had its limitation to exclude the achievements of the prose poems which were the leading poetic form of Korean modern literature in the 1910s. In the result, the possible diversity of modern poems got to be reduced. Dance of Agony greatly contributed to helping the symbolic lyric poetry become the typical modern poetic form whose main poetic emotion was the romantic identification with the other. Kim Euk's style in translation put a great influence on the literary youth, not remaining as an individual translating style. His unique aspects of translating style were the division of the poet and the poetic narrator and narrative form, which became the basic representing method of the folk-song-styled poems in the 1920s.