탈향과 귀향의 형이상학 - 『화사집』(1941)에서 『동천』(1968)까지를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Seo Jeong-Ju's poem world from 『Hwasajip』(1941) to 『Dongcheon』(1968) is the process of existential returning home. Seo Jeong-Ju began his creative activities in the latter half of the Japanese colonial period after being affected by western modernity but began to affirm folksy home world while he was publishing his first collection of poems through ‘oriental revolution’. Unlike most literary men at that time who regarded ‘the West-modern times-cities’ as the pointing spot of Korean literature, Seo Jeong-Ju found oriental worlds and began to have a keen interest in time and space before modern times. Although this change in his line of sight originated in the effects of the discourse of the oriental that was popular in Joseon in the latter half of the Japanese colonial period, it was a huge shock in the cultural situation at that time where following the West was regarded natural. While undergoing this ‘oriental revolution’, negative elements such as the sense of deficiency and anxiety decreased remarkably. This paper regarded the pathos about existence found in early poems of Seo Jeong-Ju as a psychological phenomenon occurred in the state where residing in the ‘world’ was impossible because Western things were aimed. The fact is also identified that this phenomenon disappeared after he found ‘Sudae-dong(水帶洞)’, that is, his home. Seo Jeong-Ju's poems after the first collection of poems were the products of will to return home continuously trying to identify the grounds for his existence. The will to return home appeared in his first collection of poems as the finding of his biological home and was repeated thereafter being connected to the return to the symbolic world termed ‘the Orient’, the finding of the spirit of Shilla represented by eternalism and psychomancy, and Buddhist Rebirth Thought regarding death as a journey to another life. This process is consistent with the process of changes in Seo Jeong-Ju's poems from experiencing the world negatively to experiencing the world positively and the process through which he asserted and materialized ‘traditional aesthetics.’ Of course, the historical context in which ‘the Orient’ was raised in these processes, and the aesthetic appropriation of history occurring due to the emphasis of the spirit of Shilla, and resultant ideal evasion of contemporary reality are quite criticizable. This is not unrelated with the fact that most of planning to reach ‘home’ in the area of thought of aesthetics have conservative natures. Nevertheless, the assertion of traditional poetics through the medium of so-called oriental revolution raises a clear point of dispute to the aesthetic unconsciousness of Korean literature that has repeated western modern times.