권환과 임화

Abstract

Kwon Hwan and Im Hwa are two representative poets and critics who led the proletarian literature movement together during the Japanese colonial period and right after liberation. It is true that Kwon Hwan’s reputation, popularity, and the density of recollection are far less than that of Im Hwa, but he also played an important role in the development of proletarian literature at the time. Kwon Hwan wrote poems and asserted a theory of writing with a focus on ideology. His criticism actively insisting on literary popularization according to the bolshevization debate had a huge influence on setting the direction of writing in KAPF. To change the method of writing, Kwon Hwan attempted to write a peculiar satiric poem and explored short epic poems similar to those of Im Hwa. Both Im Hwa’s short epic poems and Kwon Hwan’s “Bone Poem” had opposite features of the outright presentation of emotion and the outright elimination of emotion; however, they became objects of criticism within KAPF. At this time, Kwon Hwan criticized the popularization debate by Kim Gijin, showing that he accepted the “December Thesis” (1928) of separating the labor movement from the petit bourgeois. By criticizing Kim Gijin’s argument of constructing solidarity with the bourgeois, Kwon Hwan and Im Hwa shared the same direction. They criticized each other’s poems in content and form, but had infinity in line within KAPF in general.