절망에 저항하는 이육사의 시 - 시 「絶頂」 「曠野」 「꽃」을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This study aims to examine the aspects of despair and its overcoming in Lee Yuksa’s poetry with a focus on “Climax,” “Wilderness” and “Flower,” and to identify the meaning of resistance as a “poète résistant.” Chapter Two outlines the aspects of despair. The poem, “Climax,” is a song in which the persona realizes his weakness in front of tragic reality, feels despair and laments over it. In this poem, Lee Yuksa fears that winter will never end with the imagery of ‘a rainbow made of steel,’ which is a white rainbow and symbolizes despair that lasts forever. In Lee Yuksa’s poetry, the aspects of overcoming despair are represented in the forms of waiting and dreaming. Chapter Three deals with how despair turns into waiting. In the poem, “Wilderness,” the phrase that a superhuman will com in ‘one thousand years’ is just another expression of despair. The poet tries to endure the indefinite time of one thousand years by sowing ‘the seeds for poor songs.’ That is, Lee Yuksa as a resistant stands up against the colonial domination, but as a poet he resists his own despair by writing about waiting for a superhuman to come back. Chapter Four examines the aspects of dreaming. The poem, “Flower,” is about dreaming and overcoming despair in the extreme situation which never allows waiting. He dreams of a world in which a group of people is carried away by the scents of flowers like a butterfly, and he tries to overcome despair, wishing to be remembered as a person who sows seeds of flowers. The reason a poet is called “poète résistant” is not that he does resist, but that he writes ‘poems that resist.’ Lee Youksa experiences thorough despair and writes poems that resist the despair. That is, the object of his resistance is his own despair. We should not neglect the depth of despair in his poems, overwhelmed by the fact that Yo Youksa is an independence fighter with an iron despair.