김현승 초기시의 식물과 은유 양상

Abstract

Until recently, studies on Kim Hyeon-seung's poems have concentrated on unveiling semantics through interpretations on mainly symbols and images in his work. Thus, there have been relatively little effort to deal with metaphor, which plays an important role in creating an aesthetic sense in his poems. This study was initiated from the realization of this fact. In particular, it focuses on the poet's early poems which have received less attention than his middle or late period poems to analyze his discourse metaphor by using Hrushovski's theory. This study puts emphasis on exploring metaphoric aspects of "plant" because both limitation and transcendence of double meanings inherent in human are clearly reflected in plant metaphor, as consciousness exhibited throughout Kim's early poems. Plants in Kim's early poems are metaphorically expressed by rise and descent, or openness and dissolution. This study focuses on the former based on horizontal imagination. Although rise and descent metaphors have conflicting elements, their metaphoric meanings are eventually concluded as a "return to the origin of a human entity." This study is differentiated from existing studies by attempting to figure out the multi-layered metaphoric meanings of plants in Kim's early poems. Moreover, it has significance given it unveils metaphoric thoughts portrayed in his early poems based on consistence as well as Christian transcendence centered on “God”