김춘수의 시와 유년기 체험의 변주

Abstract

This study analyzed Kim Chun-Soo’s childhood experiences and their variation in his poems. The poet’s “experiences of Jesus Christ and the little girl” show constant variation in his poems, confirming the primal and powerful nature of childhood experiences. This also suggests that these experiences can be the key point of his consciousness. The poet’s sensuous ‘experience of Baby Jesus Christ’ overlaps the world of the Western children of an Australian missionary couple, entailing the experiences of the mystique and wonder about an alien world and being. His childhood experience of Jesus Christ, which is made sensuous with spreading light, is the archtype of the angel image frequently appearing in his later poems, whose variation is repeated in poems such as 「천사(The Angel)」 and 「실제(Titleless)」. The poet’s “experience of the little girl”, which is associated with the violence of his own doing in childhood, is that of incidental and casual vice, However, what is more important is that his experience of violence is that of the primal frustration resulting from failure to become an ethical subject. This brought about the sense of guilt in the poet’s childhood, which cannot be overcome but prompts him to firmly sustain the ethical sense. Such an ethical sense is mixed with the discomfort caused by his enjoying materialistic affluence, deepening into the sense of the original sin. This sense is sometimes accompanied by a victim mentality along with the pain of constantly feeling Jesus Christ gazing upon him. Some parts of the following poems like 「눈물(Tears)」, 「동지 푸루돈(Comrade Proudhon)」. 「유년시(Childhood)･2」, and 「계단을 위한 바리에떼(Variété for Stairs)」 reveal the trace and transition of the sense of the original sin, and its variation.