최승자 시의 여성 말년 양식

Abstract

Choi Seung-ja's late poetry distinguishes itself by fulfilling the conditions of social lateness, biological lateness, stylistic lateness, and feminist forms of lateness. The poems of Choi's final years are remarkable not merely because they are the last works of an artist passing through aging, illness, or impending death, but because they construct a form of exile through a spirit of resistance against the Korean military dictatorship and the capitalist, androcentric system of the 20th century; a form of devastation embodied in her life of celibacy, poverty, and illness; and a form of individual creation distinct from her previous style. Above all, her late style is significant for its linguistic style peculiar to a female poet based on gender performativity, which is rare in the history of contemporary Korean poetry. This paper focuses on Choi's (so far) last published volume, Empty Like an Empty Boat (2016), in terms of the concepts of "lateness" or "late style" and her own remarks of "Nŏkturi (a round of spiritual release)" in its preface. Choi's late works can be characterized by the mode of the melancholic-depressed female subject's "denial of indeterminacy," namely, the mode of silence symbolized by "Hyŏndong (the sense of unity of object and self)" and "Shiwŏnbyŏng (the pathological craving for the origin)." Specifically, they feature a shaministic rhythm marked by monotonous repetition, a parabasic irony that evokes dramatic nodules or deconstruction, and the Blanchotian "thought from outside" that reaches beyond reality. Choi's late style is ironic, anachronistic, deconstructive, and exilic in the sense that her lateness, fully realized only in the 21st century, reflects the sense of losing wholeness that prevailed in the 70s and 80s Korean modern poetry. Choi achieves her late style by embracing and performing lateness in order to maintain her self-existence as a poet.