農巖계열 문인의 陸遊 관심에 대한 일고찰 - 申靖夏를 중심으로 -

Abstract

This study investigates the response of the Nongam school, and in particular, Shin Jeong-ha, to Lu You’s writing. The main points are summarized below. Lu You was a prolific writer who left about 10,000 poems; but until the mid- and late-17th century, Joseon period writers were familiar with fewer than 700 of these poems. This situation changed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as Nongam writers came into possession of several collections of poems and essays, newly published in China, such as A Representative Collection of Song Dynasty Poetry, Jian’nan shichao, and The Well-selected poetry of Lu Fang-weng. These works made available many more of Lu You’s poems than ever before. The Nongam school showed a relatively open attitude toward Song poetry. They preferred Lu You’s poetry because of its simple, natural elegance and a rugged and barren sense of beauty not typical of Song poems. All of the Nongam school writers composed poems either borrowing Lu You’s rhymes or imitating his style. The Nongam school pursued “genuine poetry” and this can be seen in their poems that mostly describe landscape scenery or everyday life. Among all of the Nongam writers, Shin Jeong-ha’s loved Lu You’s work the most. He valued Lu You as second only to Du Fu and said that he had taken Chinese poetry as high as it could go. Although he liked Lu You’s patriotic poetry, he preferred the more refined literary works depicting landscape and rural life. In particular, he was drawn to the poems that depicted Jinghu (Mirror Lake) where Lu You had once lived; the poems called to mind his own villa and the nearby lagoon. In terms of technique and aesthetics, Shin Jeong-ha's poetry is similar to Lu You's work. Writers in earlier periods focused exclusively on Lu You’s poetry, neglecting his prose. This upset Shin Jeong-ha whose appreciation of Lu You’s prose had been influenced by Kim Chang-Hyeop. He especially liked Lu You's prose writings in which Chinese literary tradition was well harmonized with Confucian philosophical tradition. He appraised them, saying that Lu You had the skills of a good writer, he was knowledgeable about both Neo-Confucianism and how to govern a nation; as a nobleman and a bureaucrat, he helped the country and loved it and its people. Accordingly, Shin Jeong-ha praised Lu You as the only master who could succeed the eight great masters of the Tang and Song dynasties.