韓龍雲 시집 『님의 沈黙』의 창작원리와 그 의미

Abstract

Under the premise that there is a unique set of principles of writing poetry that prevails over Han Yong-Un's Silence of the Lover, this paper examines the four aspects of the principles. Despite the sheer volume of study that has been conducted of Han's Silence of the Lover, its fundamental characteristics have not yet been properly understood. I suggest that at the core of the problem lies the lack of proper understanding of Han's principles of writing poetry. Han's four principles of writing poetry that constitute Silence of the Lover are as follows: poetry writing as a way of saving people and lives, poetry writing as a form of infinite self-transformation, poetry writing through weaving of horizontal and vertical lines, and poetry writing by way of the rhetoric of duality. These four principles prevail in Silence of the Lover because the collection of poems exists less as a work of art than a product of the poet as a Buddhist monk. In other words, Han was not a poet appropriating Buddhism; rather, he was a Buddhist monk employing the secular genre of poetry as an instrument. Due to such peculiarity, Silence of the Lover is bound to puzzle the numerous researchers and readers who attempt to read the poems as they would read modern poetry. While Han's poems may appear to fall within the boundary of modern poetry, in fact, they are discourses on the search of truth, and the realization of the truth, which lie outside the limits of secular poetry. Truth transcends time and space. In other words, Han's poems seek to not only gratify the needs ot the times, but embody the truth that is valid beyond time. The characteristics and principles inherent in Han Yong-Un's Silence of the Lover make us wonder how poetry, life, times, and truth can be unified, and at the same time, they give us a clue for answering the question. Thus far, our lives have been preoccupied with creating divisions. Even poets, who are considered men of lofty intellect, could rarely overcome the limitation. Han's Silence of the Lover impels us to rethink the fundamental nature of writing poetry and artistic endeavor. Furthermore, it urges us to reflect on the meaning of life and poetry as they unfold in the cosmic truth.