김춘수의 시와 폭력의 문제

Abstract

Kim Chun-Soo’s skepticism is a powerful motivation in his dynamic process of writing poems. Such skepticism derived from his intellectual earnestness which he had instinctively perceived. However, this study aims to examine his skepticism in relation to his experience of violence done by the Japanese Imperialism. His first work, in which he narrated his experience as a victim of violence, was “A Girl’s Death in Budapest(부다페스트에서의 소녀의 죽음)”. The experience of violence that he went through in his youth was connected with the civilian massacre in Budapest by the army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It disclosed the brutality of such lasting violence and effectively represented the victims' solidarity with the resistance and suffering of the citizens in Budapest. However, afterwards, his experience of violence in his youth was absent from his poems. Such deletion and repression suggested the mental scars that were left over from his violent experiences. By falling prey to violence waged by the Japanese Imperialism, Kim Chun-Soo in his youth witnessed the concealed realities of himself and others and the veiled aspects of history and ideology as well. In other words, he realized the truth hidden in the dark side of mankind and the world. This became the moment for his meditative insight of human limitation, and falseness and violence of ideology. In the end, he came to be skeptical of all visible things. Kim Chun-Soo started writing lyrical poems, then examining languages and existences and finally reaching the deconstruction of languages. This process can be said to have been the right road that his skeptical spirit should take, as the skepticism of mankind and the world surely leads to the doubt of languages on which humanities and the world are based. Yet, languages are media and substances of poems, so linguistical skepticism of languages, and linguistical deconstruction of languages are surely to lead to confronting volatile and impossible experiments.