오장환 후기시와 고향의 동력 : 옛 고향의 가능성과 새 고향의 불가능성

Abstract

This study attempted to prove that the ‘hometown’ worked as a major poetic dynamic not only in ‘Where I Live’ during the late period under the rule of Japanese imperialism but also in Oh Jang‐hwan’s poems after the Liberation. Oh Jang‐hwan’s later poems show the process of his search for and pursuit of hometown in response to the new reality during the liberation period. His later poems consist of expectation and disillusion from the reality, practice and frustration, and inner reflection, and these represent the structural characteristic of complementary relationship between ‘new hometown’ and ‘old hometown.’ Just after the Liberation, Oh Jang‐hwan defined Seoul as ‘new hometown’ through his poem ‘Sick Seoul,’ but seeing the reality that the city turned into “toilet,” he fell in skepticism and disillusion. At the beginning of 1946, consequently, he wandered between staying in the ‘new hometown’ and returning to the ‘old town’ where his mother was. In methodological search of new hometown, he remained in Seoul and was involved in the Literature and Art Popularization Movement with progressive literature groups, but faced with the barrier of political reality, he appeared to search for the old hometown again. In the old hometown where the mother’s “great love” was, he discovered new possibility and sought peasant poetics or created on the theme of the structural problems of farm villages. Going further, he came to attain “courage and hope once again” through the vitality of the old hometown. With energy from the courage and hope, in 1947, he waged another pro‐social campaign for constructing ‘new hometown’ in Seoul. At the same time, however, his poems showed the tendency of being incorporated into a collective sense of purpose and a sense of struggle, losing the trait of subjective searching for the reality. As the situation grew unfavorable due to the mass arrest, Oh, reflecting calmly on Kim So‐wol’s later years, considered returning to the old hometown again. That is, it appeared repeatedly that he tried to find a breakthrough in the old hometown whenever it became difficult to pursue new hometown. In this sense, hometown was an important poetic source that directed Oh Jang‐hwan’s poems not only during the late period under the rule of Japanese imperialism but also after the Liberation.