해방기 시에 나타난 윤리의식과 국가의 문제 -오장환과 서정주의 해방기 시에 대한 비교를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to read poems by Oh Jang-whan and Seo Jung-joo in terms of poetic ethics. Two Poets who belonged to, what we call, Sanegmyeongpa (생명파, the School of Life)), criticized colonial modernity through their aesthetical consciousness of decadence. However, there lied a decisive difference in their ways of returning hometown and of taking action against Japanese colonialism. It is the difference that ended their friendship, and they began to pursue their own perspectives in writing poems in the Liberating period. Oh Jang-whan's poetic subject looked upon himself as an ethical adjudicator, and raised his firm voice of ethical judgement based upon rigid dichotomy of good and evil. Thus, his poetic subject represented the dominating class as an offender(or an enemy), and the dominated class as a victim. So, in Oh's poetic vision, the victim's resentment and revenge against the enemy are justified. Futhermore, his poetic subject tried to reveal the vision that the ethically complete subject turned into Sittichkeit, which would eventually be a socialist state. On the other hand, Seo Jung-joo could not be immune from his pro-Japanese past. However, he realized his desire for self-preservation by relying on men in power(nationalist camp), instead of being introspective towards internal morals. He showed interest in the discourse of Shilla(신라) as a nationalist ideology and summoned the aesthetics of ancient history to embroider the ideology. Especially, his ethics of devotion which was based upon nationalistic view of ethics, was ended in ethics of violence to justify one's sacrifice and devotion as the indispensible for a national community. Oh Jang-whan's and Seo Jung-joo's poetry in the Liberation period show the ideological and aesthetical oppositions between the Left and the Right. One can find that these two poets assume a very radical difference regarding the ethical judgment. At the very core of the difference, there lies the problem of pro-Japanese action and its atonement, and recognition of the fundamentals for the "new country," or Sittlichkeit as such.