오장환 시의 육체와 퇴폐, 그리고 모럴의 문제-해방 이전의 시 창작을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the ethical and aesthetic consciousness in Oh Jang-Hwan's poetry in the colonial period, especially focusing on the problem of morality and Sittlichkeit. Oh Jang-Hwan dealt with the subject of body and decadence in his early poems. It was related with the poet's spiritual resistance to the two negative situations. The one was the pre-modern Sittlichkeit forced by Feudal remainder. And the other was the colonial modernity as a conjuncture in which the corrupt, industrialized civilization and a fascist order at that time were main constituent parts. The poetic subject in Oh Jang-Hwan's poetry declares the separation from the sticky order of his birth-place which has been swayed by his father's influence, and goes to strange modern city. However, the colonial modern city in his poetry couldn't furnish the spiritual refuge or the hope to future for him. While witnessing the corrupt modern city ruled by material civilization and the crisis caused by Fascism, he tried to reach the apocalyptic vision of the end of this world. So he showed the negating action against the corrupt world by way of being absorbed in the decadence of body. Therefore, one can say the decadence in his poetry is connected with morality. One can also find the cynicism in Oh Jang-Hwan's poetic rhetoric. His poetic subject satirizes the corrupt reality through the cynical voice, or gazes himself absorbed in corrupt body through the self-ridiculous vision. In this way, the body of poetic subject becomes the field of ethical conflicts searching for the authentic morality. After this severe self-criticism, Oh Jang-Hwan found his own dwelling-place of morality. It was his birthplace which he had so seriously negated. However, his returning was not ruled by his father's order any more. His poetic subject as a prodigal son found his old and self-sacrificing mother there and the impoverished condition of rural community as well. So we can say his returning to birthplace is not a surrender to his father's order, but a reclamation of the birthplace which shows his ethical responsibility for the other's "face". Through this dialect of leaving and returning to birthplace, Oh Jang-Hwan proposes the nation and its people as a new ethical community. For him, it would certainly became the basis for establishing "new nation-state"(새나라) in the Liberating Period.