‘제망매가’ 거듭 읽기

Abstract

“The Mournful song for the sister passed away” by the Buddhist monk, Wolmyong is the one of the most outstanding masterpiece among the Hyanga poems. The Hyangas, meaning the local song of the Silla dynasty are the collection of various kinds of genre including lyric, magic song and Buddhistic prayer and so on. The paper would like to re-appreciate and re-evaluate ‘The Mournful song’, and also to bring the work into the focus of quite new attentions of not only literary specialists but of the ordinary reader. The song was read by the poet himself on the occasion of the funeral for his own beloved younger sister who experienced the untimely death. At the beginning, the song is full of the mourning, but when it comes to close, the song turns into the conviction that the heartbreaking separation on this world is nothing but just the happy first step oriented into an entrance for the Buddha's world. And the mourning changes into the strong promise to meeting again with the sister passed away.