상상된 자연, 무갈등의 평온과 소외의식의 거리 -박목월의 초기시를 중심으로-

Abstract

Park Mok-wol is one of the poets representing the 20th century, and his early poems included in the anthology 'Choeng-rok' have especially received much love from its readers and interest from scholars. The two characteristics repeatedly mentioned about Park's early poetry are its nature-friendliness and its rich local color. 'Nature' here signifies the home of eternal life as opposed to civilisation, and represents the oriental tradition of peace and harmony. This article demonstrates that nature represented in Park's early poetry is virtual nature, that is, the product of his imagination rather than nature based on locality in its literal sense. This is why, although these poems reflect and speak of nature, they involve the sadness and sense of isolation resulting from the gap between reality and ideal. Park's early poems show the grief and sense of isolation of a being confined in nature, not the fullness and peacefulness of nature without conflict. Park intentionally avoided foreign civilizations and modern culture, and wrote of sceneries and emotions of nature far from the real world. His early poems shall be better understood when approached as an aesthetic embodiment of an 'imaginary nature' rather than a realistic reflection of the 'actual nature'. This article seeks to help a solid understanding of Park's early poetry by discovering the want, anxiety, estrangement and solitude hidden behind the superficial mask of peacefulness and non-conflict in his poems.