애제류(哀祭類)와 묘도문자(墓道文字)를 통해 읽는 망자(亡子)의 슬픔

Abstract

This article analyzes the texts written by bereaved fathers of dead children about the grief of losing their children. There is the saying: "A dead child is buried in the heart of the parents." When the father-child relationship is broken by death, the parents cannot send their deceased children to the underworld, and they write heart-breaking songs for their children. This article examines the songs of grief-stricken fathers by genre. It first considers poems, focusing on poems of wailing. Then, it discusses condolatory addresses and funeral orations. Wailing poems, condolatory addresses, and funeral orations were all written on paper. Poems and condolatory addresses were solely written to express sorrow from the heart, not for practical purposes. Therefore, these texts are the most sincere and heart-rending. Although funeral orations gradually replaced condolatory addresses, as few of the latter were still written, funeral orations were originally designed to be read at commemorative rites. Therefore, they were written in a four-character style to express condolences as implicatively as possible. In this way, funeral orations allowed the emotion of sorrow to be spread to and shared by the audience gathered in the same place. However, the texts written by fathers who lost their own children were devoted to the expression of their sorrow instead of fulfilling the original function of funeral orations, describing themselves wandering between life and death. Epitaphs and commemoration texts are also analyzed. The latter were carved in stone and wood, respectively. Inscribing the grief of losing a child represented the father's resolution to cherish the memory eternally. Fathers may have wanted to give their children everlasting life by inscribing their death, their own guilty feelings, and their yearning in stone or wood. These epitaphs are relatively short in comparison with general ones, and are characterized by conversations with the deceased child. Commemoration texts, which could be seen by any passerby, were carved to share the children’s life stories with their contemporaries and descendants by recording the memories they had enjoyed with their children. In the traditional culture, fathers wanted to complete the duties they had failed to fulfill as fathers by leaving texts of various styles for the sons and daughters buried in their hearts. The texts were not only for the deceased, but also for the survivors.