김종삼 시에 나타난 상징과 상징주의 계보에 관한 연구

Abstract

Post-war Korean literature went through a process of great change anddiscontinuity. Korean literature, at the face of the tragedy that befell theworld, aimed differentiating itself clearly from the old world. This could besaid to be an idea about new modernity that was different from themodernity of the 1930s. However, some criticize that the modernity asdisplayed by the “late” poets were, despite being experimental andmotivated, superficial contemplations; this was because modernism did notsecure enough internality and did not receive enough symbolist training. The reason why the post-war poetry of Kim, Jong-Sam is receivingattention is because it features an interesting internality and symbolism thatare otherwise never found in contemporary Korean poetry. With hiscommand of imagination, Kim symbolizes the essence of things throughphenomena by laying down the analogical corresponding relationshipbetween the virtual real world, the nirvana of transcendence, the materialworld and the spiritual world. In particular, he gave form to the sound inmusic, thus mixing reality and fantasy and symbolizing its own absolute concept. Also, he internalized the desolateness, loneliness, andmeaninglessness inside humans through his descriptions of scenery; hedoesn’t stop at simply describing the objects, but he changes and sublimatesthem using symbols. This is characteristic of symbolism that is hard to findin the history of modern Korean poetry, and could be described as amotivated pursuit of internality. Kim, Chun-Su is a poet that could be discussed together in regard toKim, Jong-Sam’s symbolism. Although both of them display symbolism intheir works, they differed in that while Kim, Jong-Sam attained hissymbolism through the aesthetics of description, Kim, Chun-Su did so withhis surrealist “meaningless poetry.”While it is meaningful that the tendency of post-war poets to internalizeexpanded the scope of Korean poetry, it is true that this caused otherproblems by making poetry abstract. However, Kim, Jong-Sam prevents hispoetry from falling into the errors of extreme abstractionism in that hisdescription and poetic objects not only symbolize general concepts, but alsosymbolize the scenic objects as the inner essence of humans. Kim,Jong-Sam’s poetry is called ‘pure poetry’ because it shows correspondencebetween phenomena and essence as ‘symbols’. The symbolism in Kim, Jong-Sam’s poetry and excavating the meaning ofits genealogy are important works that explore one certain tendency ofsymbolism, which has never shown distinctiveness in the history of Koreanpoetry. This is a process that explores his important poetic achievements,that is, the ways in which symbolism was portrayed.