한국 근대 초기시에서 '외래성'과 '근대성'의 문제

Abstract

Hwang Suk-Woo and Hyun Chul had the first literary controversy related to modern poems on the magazine <Gae Byuk(開闢)> from Nov. 1920 to Feb. 1921. It was mainly focused on the New Poem. The big issues of the controversy can be summarized as free verse and new-styled poems, cosmopolitanism and nationalism, symbolism, poetic lyricism and the like. In the late 1910s, Hwang Suk-Woo(黃錫禹) who was a leading poet and literary theorist of the times insisted that free verse style and symbolism were two foundations of the Korean modern poem. Hwang thought that free verse style and symbolism were the current of the times representing the modern world and had the power of overturn the existing literary trend and social realities. Standing against Hwang, Hyun Chul(玄哲) insisted on creating a new poem based on literary tradition and nationalism. He criticized free verses and symbolism because of their importedness and the vagueness and complexity of their diction and form. Hyun Chul's poetic theory reflected the principle of <Gae Byuk> which put great emphasis on traditional values and national culture(Kultur) to consolidate the social and political unity of Korean people. Also Hyun designated expression of lyrical emotion as a distinctive feature of the poem as a genre. Stirred by the New Poem controversy, the argument about and groping for the new features of the modern poem provided an important cornerstone deciding on the literary characteristics and evolving direction of the 1920s' poems. The New Poem controversy caused a rapid shrinkage on the aspiration for the absolute value of the individual, cosmopolitanism and ideological tendency, and set a new basis for the modern poems consistng of tradition, national traits and lyricism. The rise of national consciousness and culture caused by the New Poem controversy, later. led to the theory of National Literature(國民文學論) in the mid 1920s.