이상 시에 드러난 ‘피’와 ‘얼굴’ 그리고 ‘두개골’ 이미지의 유기성 연구

Abstract

One of the most unique features of Yi-Sang’s poetry is the frequent descriptionof body images that are characterized by deprivation, disintegration or excess. Thisway of expression is closely related to the mental attitude he takes toward the world. His body, often grotesquely depicted, illustrates his weak physical health and canbe interpreted as his struggle towards health that is reanimated and dynamic. Bydepicting the disintegration of organs that remain as part of his body, causingcontinuous pains, he wanted to show how he faces the enduring fear of death. Being consumed by that fear, he attempts to restore and rejuvenate his physicalhealth by inserting the images of blood, face or skull. While these images may seemantithesis on the surface, they nonetheless are closely related in Yi-Sang’s poetryand serve as the pillars of the ultimate pursuit of his existence. In his work, theoriginal symbol of blood, which is the source of sustaining life, is expressed as anevil force. Yi-Sang also grotesquely shows his illness and pain he has to endureby illustrating twisted and decayed human face, which is the emblem of humanidentity. His desire for better and restored health is embodied in the image of skull. He tries to overcome despair through his active pursuit towards the intellectual world,the metonymy of skull. Assuming that thinking and recording are the way of lifefor enlightened intellectuals, Yi-Sang clearly shows his desire for reformed physicalhealth by summarizing the process of action and practice into a simple image ofskull. This study tries to identify desires for good physical shape in poetry that mentionblood and derive the intellectual world as new possibilities from the image of skull. The stages from sickened blood and despair, to desire for restoration, to failure,to removal of finite flesh, to discovery of bone that is fundamental to physical body,to mental sublimation, to imaging of skull as intellectuality and to identification ofmental and physical world is the unique technique of expression that his work employs. By looking into the stages, it is hopeful that this study will provide a new lensthrough which Yi-Sang’s poems are viewed and interpreted.