이상 문학과 신화

Abstract

Lee Sang's Works and Myth Sang Wook Shim (Jeonju Univ.) Lee Sang(1910-1937) practiced paintings, novels, poems and essays, when Korea was a colonial country. Especially he participated Guinhoi(Nine Members Circle) discussing literary topics, which introduced to the Western modernism to Korea. As Bulfinch said that mythology is the handmaid of literature, the traditional myths form the backbone of the world literature. Creating his works I think Lee Sang used Sam Jog O(三足烏), a kind of mythic birds as the messenger living in the sun in the Oriental and Korean myth. It is similar to Phoenix in the Western myth, and when the young Phoenix has grown up and gained sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree which is its own cradle and its parent's sepulchre and deposits it in the temple of the sun. As Joyce' novels are the immediate example of the reinvestment of mythology in modernistic art at the colonial period of Ireland, through Guinhoi in the colonial period of Korea, Lee Sang interested in Joyce's mythic narrative and in the process of writing he recognized a Korean traditional myth, Sam Jog O, the crow with three legs living in the sun. This myth was disappeared in the colonial period, however, it is refreshing now. At the colonial period Choi Nam-Sun researched the old Korean myth with Northern Asian and he asserted its importance. Like him Lee Sang also probably knew it. Kim Ki Rim, a Korean modernist, called him "Jupiter" of Greek-Roman myth in a poem of reconsidering Lee Sang. Through the above we know that Lee Sang composed his works by bird images in myths.