일본의 초기상징주의의 형성과정

Abstract

Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, symbolism arose from France and became a motive for the avant-garde movement and modernism to continue the legacy of symbolism in terms of the contextualization of the artistic spirit beyond genres. In Japan, symbolism became a foothold in a new poetry movement that continued until after World War II. It is the dominant opinion in the history of Korean poetry that symbolism showed its explicit nature in the early importing period but then seemed to become merely an extension of romanticism or to become absorbed in it. Although Japanese symbolism looks similar to Korean symbolism because of its romantic tendencies, the difference between the two is that Japanese symbolism has contributed a great deal more to the expansion of Japanese literature. In preparing this study, the author has considered the need to widen the symbolism found in the history of Korean poetry into the wider perspective of the universality of the art movements. In this author’s opinion, it is important to put forth the possibility of extending the time period of symbolism in the history of Korean literature by putting Kim Youngrang (1903-1950), whose poems are describe as belong to the genre of pure poetry, in most poetry histories. How symbolism was transformed and imported from the West to Japan around 1900 is examined in this paper. The traditional Japanese aesthetic sense, which Japanese poets found in the symbolic poems of the West, heavily influenced the reasons why symbolism from the West could be transformed and incorporated into the poetry of the “Japanese symbolists.” Moreover, this seems to have been mainly caused the relativeness of the mutual acceptance of the cultures(literatures) of Europe and Japan through personal interchange. In more detail, the former viewpoint focuses on Ueda Bin(上田 敏), who tried to define symbolism as 'Yūgen(幽玄)',i.e, the Japanese medieval aesthetic idea, and Kambara Ariake(蒲原有明) who tried to overcome Mallaremé's poems with Buddhistic ideas. In addition, the later viewpoint focuses on Nokuchi Yonejiro(野口米次郎) who was active in Europe and America as a symbolic poet around 1900 and spread Japanese traditional poetry actively in those two areas. Also, his acquaintance, Arthur Simons, author of The Symbolist movement in Literature, made a deep impact on Japanese poets at the time.