윤동주와 윤석중의 동시(童詩) 및 그 상관성 연구

Abstract

Yun Dong-ju’s poems are mostly bright and positive, which contrasts with the melancholic tone flowing through much of his adult poetry. Examining Yun Dong-ju’s poetry from a formal perspective, it shows a characteristic of forming rhythm by repeating words and sounds, which contributes to a cheerful and lively atmosphere. Moreover, in terms of content, his poems depict the pure lives of children like a fairy tale and are based on a peaceful sentiment, clearly distinct from the adult poetry he wrote. Thus, Yun Dong-ju’s poetry generally exhibits a childlike, bright, and positive image. The characteristics of Yun Dong-ju’s poems are noteworthy in the sense that they follow a method of expressing the inner child, starting from Bang Jung-hwan and continuing to Yun Seok-jung. The children’s movement initiated by Bang Jung-hwan at that time aimed to reveal the purity of children’s literature and advocated for creating various songs and poems based on inner-childhood. At that time, this children’s literary movement led by Bang Jung-hwan gave rise to many young literary figures, including Yun Dong-ju, who as a young literary figure, created numerous poems and songs. Yun Dong-ju also subscribed to and read children’s magazines such as “Children(어린이)” and “Youth(소년)”, where Yun Seok-jung was the editor-in-chief, and he read Yun Seok-jung’s “Lost Wings”. Therefore, it can be speculated that Yun Dong-ju preferred Yun Seok-jung’s nationalistic and romantic poems, and he was greatly influenced by Yun Seok-jung’s poems, inheriting various forms of songs from Yun Seok-jung to express his inner child. This speculation could be confirmed by comparing the poems of the two poets. A common characteristic of the works of both Yun Seok-jung and Yun Dong-ju is their attempt to express a bright and positive inner child through realistic poems depicting childre’s lives and displaying childlike creative ideas. They mainly used children’s language and created rhythm through onomatopoeia and mimetic words in their poems, preserving the charm of the Korean language. Furthermore, they primarily used ethnic rhythms like 3/4 time signatures, even when adopting a free verse format suitable for singing, they formed rhythm through repetition and antithesis. Additionally, the narrative style of ‘fairytale poetry’, which resembles reading a fairy tale, includes various attempts such as expressing dialogues between characters or between the poetic persona and the reader to enhance realism within the work. In terms of artistic merit, although Yun Dong-ju’s poems cannot match the stature of Yun Seok-jung, who was a master of children’s literature, it is still significant that as a young literary figure, Yun Dong-ju admired and projected various aspects of his senior writer’s works into his own. Therefore, comparing and analyzing their works would provide insights into the modern children’s literature scene and identify the points where Korean children’s literature was formed and expanded.