한국 현대시의 ‘전위의 맥락’ 검토

Abstract

There is general agreement about the avant-garde context in modern Korean poetry that its central avant-gardes are Yi Sang of the 1930s, Kim Su-yeong and Kim Chun-su of the 1950s and some poets later. But this is a rather extreme look at only artistic and expressional methods. When participative literature was severely suppressed by the past authoritative regimes of Korea, a majority of poets had to be hooked on unrealistic word play and an avant-garde theory on the aesthetic level appeared to justify itself desperately. Avant-garde artists are valuable beings living ahead of time and preparing new expressive types for a great majority of other artists to use. The positive function of avant-gardism is that it determines the depth of artistic openness and creativity. In this sense, the researcher suggests the issue of Korean avant-garde poems be discussed more actively and more fairly. Yi Sang was an avant-garde poet who was not only approved as such by his society but also regarded himself as one. He was every inch an avant-gardist thanks to his spirit and methods based on dadaism and surrealism. But his avant-gardism was rather exotic and escapist. Kim Chun-su's nonsense verses were very close to the ideas and methods of surrealism. His theory was logical and he was outstanding in word play, free preconscious association, and montage connection. In practice, however, his experiments did not surpass the levels already experimented by such figures as Yi Sang and Jo Hyang. Another representative avant-garde example is Kim Su-yeong. He introduced several non-poetic elements and activated some everyday words to candidly portray the reality of his age. That's why he is usually considered a political avant-garde. But his basic principle of montage techniques was just one of the elementary principles in experimental poetry. The poetic use of everyday life and living words to back up his political avant-gardism was, strictly speaking, not unique to his poems. At present, the avant-garde context in contemporary Korean poetry is not so much historically or realistically as artistically or exotically inclined. Therefore, our avant-garde consciousness needs to extend its territory to history and tradition, the enemy of avant-gardism, as well as our own lives, the food of avant-gardism. In other words, our poetic history needs its own suitable pole, I believe.