서정주 『화사집』에 나타난 생명의 이미지 계열들 - 탈주, 에로스, 샤머니즘의 이미지를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The present study seeks to elucidate in detail the series of life images in Seo Jeong-ju’s (1915-2000) poetry collection Flower Snake Collection (Hwasajip; 1941). The series of life images inherent to Flower Snake Collection not only can be distinguished into three disparate layers of flight, sexuality, and shamanism but also seem to appear continuously in Seo’s subsequent poetry. It is possible to confirm the fact that analogy and irony, which are the two opposite impulses of romantic art, coexist in Seo’s Flower Snake Collection. Poems such as “The Owl” (Buheung’i), “Spring” (Bom), “On a Hill at Noon” (Jeong’o-eui Eondeog-eseo), and “Ode to the West Wind” (Seopungbu), whose subject matter consist of his sensibilities and experiences as a shaman, can be classified as works in the analogical series. In addition, poems such as “The Wall” (Byeok), “Self-portrait” (Jahwasang), “The Door” (Mun), “A Fragment” (Danpyeon), and “The Sea” (Bada), which dramatically depict the conflict between the poetic self and the quotidian self or the opposition between flight to a utopia and contentment in everyday life, can be classified as works in the ironic series. In addition, the world of animism, which is dominated by analogy, and the fear of Thanatos, which can be ascribed to irony, seem combined in “The Flower Snake” (Hwasa), “Midday” (Daenat), “The Kiss” (Immachum), and “Barley Summer” (Maekha), which are poems of eroticism. It can be clearly determined that, with the coexistence and intersection of analogy and irony, the buds of the philosophy of life unique to Seo concretized as eroticism, shamanism, and animism are inherent in Flower Snake Collection. In the end, this implies that the future development of Seo’s poetry lay dormant in its entirety in Flower Snake Collection, his first poetry collection. In addition, a taut confrontation between analogy and irony seems to arouse dramatic tension in this poetry collection. Its significance in terms of literary history would originate from none other than such an agonistic relationship and tension. Seo’s Flower Snake Collection encompasses without exception the rhythmic sense of opposite life phenomena, such as Eros and Thanatos, this world and the otherworld, heaven and earth, flight and constraint, and liberation and oppression, as well as the archetypes of oppositional images, which are hardly found in earlier Korean poetry. It is precisely at this point that the reasons and grounds for recording Flower Snake Collection as an event in the history of contemporary (South) Korean literature lie.