김수영의 「풀」에 나타난 음양적(陰陽的) 상상력

Abstract

This study pays attention to the imagination of Yin-Yang for several reasons. First, Kim, Soo-young’s poem, “Grass,” is important in that most discussions to explain his poetic characteristics have been conducted around that poem. Next, his works themselves are both the world and symbols which promote ‘an imagination of Yin-Yang’ in that the same nouns and verbs, which resemble the cycle of Yin-Yang characterized by circulation and repetition, are repeated continuously. Particularly, though the dynamics shown in the transformation of ‘lying -> crying -> laughing’ and the repetition or the comparison of ‘lying↔ standing up’ or ‘crying ↔ laughing’ has the form of one-Yin and one-Yang, and it is consistent with the Yin-Yang’s movement of repetition and comparison, it is hard to find explanations about his poetic world which are suggested in terms of Yin-YangThe core of the imagination of Yin-Yang described in “Grass” is the movement within stillness. Everything in the universe encompasses both ‘promotion,’ the shape of progress, and ‘repression,’ the disturbing factor, when they make developing changes; they do a movement within stillness which is characterized by the repetition of ‘contradiction → comparison → harmony.’ His poem “Grass” shows a movement within stillness in that both Yin and Yang consensually respond to each other, while, on the one hand, “wind” (Yang) intends to descend (repression) to meet “grass” (Yin), on the other hand, “grass” (Yin) intends to ascend (promotion) to meet “wind” (Yang). The result of the harmony (connection) between Yin and Yang is a new birth or growth and development. In this sense, it can be thought that, on the basis of the imagination of Yin-Yang, Kim, Soo-young suggested the possibility of existential beings’ growth and development through struggles in lives encompassed in images of ‘repression,’ ‘promotion (resistance),’ and ‘consensual response (responsive action).’ The imagination of Yin-Yang reflected in “Grass” enables us to see the essence of life that is expressed in his inner world. In this context, “Grass” shows his perception of reality or the response to the reality embedded in the image of grass field. The poetic speaker in “Grass” continuously gazes the movement of ‘grass.’ It implies that the reality which the poet tries to reveal is human struggles in real lives. Thus, the tranquility of existential beings is inevitable result. That is, what his inner world pursues is to rebirth into a new subject that can secure a sense of safety. Additionally, the perspective of Yin-Yang and Five Element Theory that is based on I Ching is meaningful in that it proves that Kim, Soo-young’s Confucian attitude of poetic creation, which was derived from Confucius’ hard living, was continued to his final work. It suggests that, though he is called a modernism poet, he created his works in terms of the succession of the tradition, not in terms of the denial of the tradition. These points are meaningful in Kim, Soo-young literature and the history Korean poem.