한흑구 시에 나타난 ‘자유’의 의미 연구 - 미국 체험을 통한 근대 전환기 담론의 전유를 중심으로

Abstract

Han Hek-gu is well known as a prose writer, but before his involvement in the Suyangdongwoo incident, he was more active as a poet. Unlike the majority of the literary figures of the time who studied English literature in Japan and dominated the media of colonial Korea in the 1930s, Han had a unique background of studying English literature in the United States for about 6 years. Therefore, the liberalism he experienced through the United States became a major pathway to understanding the literary achievements of his early poetry. In his critiques “The American Character in Literature,” “Humanism in Literature Theory,” and “The Integrity of American Literature,” the issues of English literature and liberalism that he dealt with are closely related to contemporary discourses such as neo-humanism, humanisme de l`action progressivism, and advocate of intelligence that were vibrant in colonial Korea at the time. Through these critiques, Han analyzed the way American society cheaply accepted capitalism and freedom, and sought to explore the true meaning of ‘freedom’. For example, the “freedom” in his early poems such as “On the Deck,” “Inside the Night Train,” “Nature and Life,” and “Freedom” are characterized by being linked to class conflicts. These poems can be seen as depicting the lives of the people who are becoming increasingly degraded due to the distorted acceptance of capitalistic imperialism. Han did not try to differentiate freedom and equality as separate values, but rather recognized them both as concepts that lead to true democracy in modern Western thought. Similarly, as neo-humanism and progressivism were recognized as new ideological breakthroughs in American society during the transition to modernity, he sought to explore similar ideological contexts in his poetry in colonial Korea, and further hoped for resistance against the Japanese occupation and the establishment of Korea as a modern nation.