정지용의 시세계에서 종교시의 위상

Abstract

Cheong Jiyong's religious poems written during his religious period did not attract as much attention as his later poems about nature. Generally, those poems were not regarded as his representative works. From his early education up to the college years in Japan, he went to protestant church. Yet his religious consciousness was not reflected on his poems written in his college years. It was not until he took charge of a religious journal, Catholic Young Men, published by the Young Men's Association in Myeongdong Cathedral after his conversion to the Catholic that he published a series of religious poems. But that did not last long. After quitting the position of the editor of Catholic Young Men, he no longer produced religious poems. This is why many critics see his religious period only as transitional one. Rather, because of his short participation in Gu-in-Hoe (Nine Poets' Meeting) in that period, the religious poems were usually evaluated as prolongation of the early modernist poems. In this paper, I would argue that although religious period did not last long, its influence was deeply inscribed in his later poems, positively contributing to forming the so-called Nature poems in his late period. In Cheong Jiyong's religious poems, the heaven is not simply a natural object but supernatural Being, through whose eyes we can see every moment of daily routine charged with new vital energy. This religious belief was reflected on his poetic attitude in his later Nature poems. In Nature poems, nature is not portrayed as a beautiful object, but as a wild and futile land that cannot but be associated with death. However, Cheong attempted to find a moment of beauty even in such a waste land. This attitude, I would argue, is the very influence of the religious poems. When he adopted religious point of view, he abandoned European perspectivism. Instead, he introduced multiple point of view of the East. However, what matters here is that his utilization of Eastern point of view is not the expression of Eastern perspective's superiority over that of the West. Rather, it is a symbolic expression of distancing from nature as revealed in modern painting. To put it in other words, it is a poetic transformation of the impulse for abstraction.