정지용의 후기시에서 「슬픈 偶像」의 재해석과 위상 연구

Abstract

“Sad Idol” included in the second volume of Jeong Ji-yong’s poetry, titled Baengnokdam takes a strange position between abstract religious poems during the middle period and his late landscape poems in the entire world of his poetry. This work was often interpreted as a piece that says goodbye to religious poems during the middle period in the preceding studies. However, it is difficult to find a clear ground for this interpretation in the text. It seems to be difficult to clearly confirm whether the poetic object in this text is the Virgin Mary or not and whether the object with whom the poetic speaker breaks up in the ending part of the poem is the object of transcendental faith or not. A method that can solve this problem is to examine Susueo (To Whom Shall I Talk My Worries?) Series, its original work. Especially, in Susueo Series Ⅲ-5, it could be assumed that there was an issue of “shrine worship” at the time when this work was published, and it can be inferred his situation in which he refused the Joseon Catholic Churches’ cooperation with Japan, which was hard for him to accept, who was very active in Myeongdong Cathedral at the time. Therefore, “Sad idol” meant by this work, primarily, can mean the Joseon Catholic Churches that cooperated with Japan, and as understood in the preceding studies, it does not mean the disconnection from the religious poems during the middle period or the Catholic faith. Thus, it is necessary to newly understand the world of landscape poems included in the second volume of Jeong Ji-yong’s poetry, titled Baengnokdam in the expandability of the religious poems during the middle period, rather than understanding that simply as a conversion to the Oriental landscape poems from the aspect of the disconnection from the religious poems during the middle period. Poems in Part I of Baengnokdam can be divided into three types. The poems coming into the first part are set deep in nature, rather than the concept of the traditional landscape poetry assimilated to nature; however, the inner conflicts of the poetic subject are the core inside them. In the second poems, nature itself is put in front, and the poetic subject’s sad emotion is hinted a little, but still, the subject has a strong will to assimilate to the peaceful world of nature. In contrast, the poems in the third part show the desire to transcend suppression in reality through a ‘fantasy’ instead of the scenery of the traditional landscape poems. What is extraordinary here is that it is hard to confirm that “Onjeong (Warm Well)” and “Sapsari (Shaggy Dog)” that start the third part are religious poems in the text, but they have the nuance of religious poems in the inter-textuality with “Sad Idol.” By this, Jeong Ji-yong’s religious poems during the middle period continuously affected even the world of late landscape poems, not simply stopping at “Sad Idol” and his later poems are a creative world that harmonized the Western Christian tradition with the Oriental tradition of landscape poetry.