백석의 남행시초에 나타난 장소성

Abstract

Baek Seok has been wandering a strange place for a long time since he left his home in 1930. So wandering became a form of his life. His poetry can be defined as a wandering poem in that it was created from such a way of existence. Namhaengsicho(collection of south-travel poetry) is the starting point of his wandering poem. In this paper, the placeness of Namhaengsicho was examined in terms of the identity of the experience subject, the place experience, and the place representation. Baek Seok reveals his existential outsideness as a traveler in Changwondo, Tongyeong2, Tongyeong3 among Namhaengsicho. He expresses his familiarity with the mountain road to Changwon in Changwondo and Tongyeong in Tongyeong2, but shows the attitude of a stranger who is not assimilated into these places and has a certain psychological distance. This attitude is rapidly strengthened as the meeting with the lover, who was the purpose of the Tongyeong trip, fails. For him, she was not only an object of affection, but also a person who was like a home in his childhood, that is, a place of rest for the soul or a spiritual utopia. So her absence means the absence of home. At the end of Tongyeong2 and Tongyeong3, he exists inside Tongyeong, but he is alienated and drifts from here. As a result, Tongyeong turns from a special and friendly place to an ordinary and cold travel destination. Baek Seok is still a traveler in Goseonggado and Samcheonpo among Namhaengsicho, but he reveals his emphathetic insideness deeply. In Goseonggado, he is captivated by the scenery of drying Geonbanbap in a village in Goseong. Then he foretells and imagines the wedding, and he is amused by it. So he represents this village as a ‘pleasant village’. He feels close to this village based on the ritual commonality of this village and his home. This place experience is the discovery of home at the ritual level. Meanwhile, Baek Seok is captivated by the scenery of a village in Samcheonpo in Samcheonpo. What he captured and recreated is a peaceful and leisurely scenery. This ‘peaceful village’ is a representation of a community world where disparate beings coexist peacefully. The scenery of this village is essentially the same as the scenery of his home in his childhood. So he shows his affection for the beings in the scenery by relying on the sun. At this moment he assimilates into the scenery. The discovery of home at the scenery level made this possible. Namhaengsicho is a poetic narrative that reproduces Baek Seok’s trip to Gyeongnam on the surface. However it is essentially a narrative of adventure to find a spiritual home, and a narrative of exploration to discover a new home. This is the meaning of Namhaengsicho in his poetry and the history of modern Korean poetry.