전봉건 전후시에 나타난 생명에 관한 상상력

Abstract

Korean postwar poems developed in 1950's cannot be imagined without any experiences in the Korean War (1950～1953). The Korean War was a sort of primordial experience and war experiences worked as a firsthand medium for Korean postwar poets. Jeon Bong-geon was a Korean postwar poet who was a displaced person from North Korean hometown to take the rostrum of South Korean literary world and participated as a South Korean soldier in actual battles of the Korean War. His war experiences turned into vivid reality of poems. This study examined Jeon's postwar poems primarily on the basis of imagination about life in terms of his poetic characteristics. Jeon's awareness of life based on war experiences runs through his poetry world in 1950's from his own original starting point. As for Jeon, the image of life is not any rhetoric presentation but suggests that it deconstructs a rational ego and really exists in the more fundamental sphere of thinking. A new way of existence is possible with thinking of life images, because such thinking contributes to establishment of ego. Jeon's thinking of images reveals a process of consciousness to project desires on any target under the oppressive situations and implement those desires with imagination. This process is differentiated from any blind expression of instinctive urge or any mechanical follow after socialized consciousness, and is ultimately associated with the symbol-oriented attitude of consciousness. As for Jeon, it means a process of thinking images with a view to seeking new vitality of ego even in one's inner world destroyed on battlefields. Jeon's poetic imagination has its implications in that it shows any reason and value of life to him and all other people. He opens a roadway of his life to poetry with a view to saving his being in the darkness of postwar period when life was abandoned in death and nihility and restoring current human values to save any life thrown meaninglessly on battlefields. Furthermore, Jeon's postwar poems have their own poetic implications in that they exerted the ability of imagination about life to redeem human being from helplessness in the cruel realities of war and restore the substance of instinct in life.