정지용·주체문예·정전(正典)

Abstract

This article examines the exclusion and lottery of Jeong Ji-yong’s poems, and the process of popularization in academic research and newspaper media in North Korea. Jeong, Ji-yong was shunned and banned as he was considered an advocate of “modernist” art, which was denounced as counter-revolutionary and anti-people. However, his reputation recovered greatly in the 1980’s with the emergence of a new literary theory under Jucheism, led by Kim, Jung-il. From the perspective of “Juche Literature,” Jeong, Ji-yong’s poetry was assessed as a legacy of progressive “national culture and art” that contributed to Kim, II Sung’s “anti-Japanese revolutionary literary art.” He was praised as a poet who sang the emotions and “breath” of the people based on beautiful national sentiments and folk-like rhythms. In other words, Jeong, Ji-yong’s poetry has come to serve as North Korean “canon” that contributes to national unity and the stabilization of the hereditary succession of Kim, Il-sung and Kim, Jung-il by elevating “revolutionary spirits” and “national things”. The positive reception of Jeong’s poetry and the publication of anthologies, which began in earnest in the 1990’s, is reflected in the newly edited History of Joseon Literature and Collection of Modern Literature of Korea. Both works were centered on the newspapers and magazines in which his poems first appeared, the Collected Poems of Jeong, Ji-yong (1935) and Baekrokdam (1941). In the process, 43 of his poems from the 1920’s and 1930‘s were published in Collection of Modern Literature of Korea, including his representative works — “Cafe France,” “Hometown,” “Nostalgia,” “Baekrokdam,” and “Birobong.” These works were highly praised for their excellent sense of the national language, excellent command of the language, traditionalization and futureization of ‘national things’ through it, and lyrical expression of the people’s sorrow and health. However, Poems with the tendency of ‘Imagism’, that is, “Sea” and “Strait”, which were suspected of being anti-popular decadent art, and children’s poems expressing the curiosity and sadness of colonial children were excluded. Since the mid-1990’s, North Korea has promoted “the Military-first revolutionary literature theory” to overcome the crisis of the “March of Suffering”. The emphasis was on the “power of the gun” and “power of love” and the “ethics of coexistence” among the people, modeled after Kim, Il Sung’s anti-Japanese armed struggle. Considering this fact, a focus might have been placed on the works of Jeong, Ji-yong that lived up to the “ethic of coexistence”, that is, works imbued with patriotism and local lyricism. Unexpectedly, North Korean writers and researchers paid attention to the following: 1) the poetry historical and national literary of the “vernacular,” “archaic language,” and “dialect” selected and utilized in his poems; and 2) the children’s poems that sang about the simple life and innocent play as well as the pain of national and family loss of Korean children. To sum up, Jeong, Ji-yong’s poetry gained both official recognition as “Juche literature” and mass appeal among readers, securing the status of a “classic” and “canon” at the same time.