시인 윤동주의 이동하는 신체와 언어적 실천, 그리고 ‘디아스포라’라는 방법론

Abstract

This paper examines the diasporic approach taken by recent noteworthy studies of the poet Yoon Dongju and considers the trends and achievements of such analyses. Such a methodology focuses on mobility and hybridity that transcend fixed geographies to succeed in expanding the scope of studies about not only a single poet but also Korean literature with its history of colonialism and division. However, in practice, the methodology ties the subject to a place and its collective identity. It inhibits a fuller understanding of a poet who traversed multiple countries, writing in a language that was banned during the colonial period. In this paper, ‘Compass on the Border and a Firefly’s Dance’ serves as a metaphor for Yoon Dongju’s activism/social engagement following his movement from Yongjeong, Manchuria to Pyeongyang to Gyeongseong to Tokyo to Kyoto during his school years (1917-1945). Diasporic mobility for Yoon took the form of intellectual, poetic, and spiritual nomadism since he was travelling as a student poet rather than for capitalistic or political purposes. As such, “light” and “homeland” in the poem represent directionality and orientation. Yoon demonstrated how to maintain one’s mental freedom, rise to aesthetic challenges, and stay the course as an individual-artist-young man under the constraints of social pressure as well as time and space. As one who left and did not settle down or compromise, the student poet Yoon remains an allegory for repatriation and salvation. Thus his diaspora life once again raises the question: Toward what kind of salvation did writing poetry in troubling times lead?