서정주 시의 화자 연구 - [화사집] 을 중심으로

Abstract

In Seo Jeong-ju’s early poems “Hwasajip”, there are many poetic characteristics which imply the beginning of Midang’s literature. Saying with persona’s characteristics, the poems show aestheticism and transcendentalism. First, aestheticism is deeply related to voluptuous beauty. As Seo Jeong-ju’s poems began with the corporeality and voluptuous beauty of Baudelaire, it has a lot of implications. Seo Jeong-ju’s poetry keeps saying through the aesthetic persona all the time. (Midang's aestheticism should be used as distinguished from the Western art for art's sake. Different from the self-sufficiency of the Western art's sake, Midang's aestheticism tries to analyze reality and overcome the reality through aesthetic practices. Aestheticism is also distinguished from realism which disclosures and reproduces reality.) In the early Midang’s works, aesthetical critical mind is strongly shown to deliver persona’s inner mind in such depressed situation, instead of exposing or reproducing the reality. From the aesthetical perspectives, agony is a core way to overlook the human existence and will to live and forms artistic enchantment. In “Jahwasang (Self-Portrait)”, for example, even though the poetic speaker mentions the status system by calling his father as a slave, the poem does not report the matter of social status or any sufferings from the discrimination, instead it shows general existential condition of a man who overcomes the torture and corporeality. Therefore this depressed persona is described their energy of life with images of nails or hairs rather than of the impoverished death. Another characteristic of Seo’s early works is transcendentalism. His aestheticism is related to the voluptuous beauty, while his transcendentalism is related to psychological issue called death. Persona’s longing manifests a very different world. It is a moment of poetic epiphany. From Midang’s poetry, a gateway to a state of enlightenment is expressed with the images of “sky” and “flowers.” “Sky” is a manifestation of perpetuity, at the same time a psychological symbol that opens to the world of death. “Flower” has an image of “resurrection” from the world of death. Through these images, persona in Seo’s poems overcome the hard facts of death in reality. In other words, all the manifestations from the death show the persona’s transcendental attitude in Midang’s poetry. As stated above, Seo’s early poems indicate the wills to be beyond the despair of reality. They show vitality of life through the corporeal voluptuous image, and also show the will to transcend the boundaries of life and death with a longing beyond the world of death. These two characteristics of poetic persona in Seo Jeong-ju’s early poetry are found in the form of more consistent and mature in his later works.