윤동주 시에 나타난 공기(空氣) 이미지 연구 -‘하늘’, ‘바람’, ‘별’ 이미지를 중심으로-

Abstract

This study investigated how the images of the ‘sky’, ‘wind’ and ‘stars’ acted in Yoon Dong-ju’s world of poems, which could be bound as the images of air. It is clear from the title of the collection of poems selected by himself that the ‘sky’, ‘wind’ and ‘stars’ are the key words in his poetry, but the existing studies of them flowed into the research trend on a closed symbol system that gives a decisive concept to a symbol. However, in his poetry, images have dynamics that arouse affective fluctuations from the inside of the text, are transformed and carried out, rather than being confirmed as one decisive concept. Thus, this study would investigate his whole world of poems and what ‘image-thought’ it shows, instead of confirming the system of meanings of the ‘sky’, ‘wind’ and ‘stars’ unlike in the existing studies. First, for the ‘sky,’ interpreted as the concept of ‘heaven (天)’ in Confucianism or the absolute in Christianity in the existing studies, this study investigated all works written between 1934 and 1937 and systematized it into (1) the image of the sky as the heaven itself; (2) the image related to the sea, water and rain; (3) the image related to a bird and wings; (4) the image related to the moon and night; and (5) the image related to the dawn and morning. In addition, this study traced how the world of these images was reflected and transformed in the poems between 1938 and 1942. Second, also, for the images of ‘wind,’ as a result of an examination of all images of wind in early works between 1934 and 1937, concerning the system of meanings interpreted by the existing researchers, limited to the researchers’ intuition and the scope of the selected works, they were organized into (1) the poetic subject’s perception of the world; (2) the poetic subject’s awakening of the inner world; (3) the trials and tribulations of reality; (4) the medium of the meeting between the poetic subject and others; and (5) the wind as a natural object. In addition, this study discussed how the images of the wind transformed in various ways like this change in later literary works to implement the dynamic world. Third, the image of ‘stars’ was used only two times in his early poems, unlike the two previous images. And yet, reaching “A Night of Counting Stars,” he explained that it represented the poetic subject’s way to go as a solitary man, showing a dynamic rise and fall between ‘stars in the sky’ and ‘stars on the earth.’ By this, it was noted that the images of air in Yoon Dong-ju’s poetry was not locked up in a single system of meanings but constituted the core of ‘image-event’ forming a collective and historical identity as a ‘second nature’ side by side with a human social life, creating affective fluctuations.