김춘수의 시와 존재의 슬픔 - 초기시를 중심으로

Abstract

The early poems by Kim Chun-soo possess sorrow and sorrow's physical manifestation, sobbing. This means that the poet sees these two as the universal mood and mode of human beings and the world. This idea is embodied in symbolic imagery by poems such as 'reeds' in 「갈대」(Reeds) and ‘fountain' in 「분수」(Fountain). ‘Reeds' manifests the splitting and insecurity of beings, and ‘fountain' represents their transcendence and frustration. This imagery calls to mind the conditions which humans cannot overcome, and the pain from frustration that human beings cannot avoid. Especially, ‘Fountain' expresses constant transcendence, which is representative of the aspect of human existence, because “it is not what it is.” This shows that the sensuous grief in the first half of his early poems has deepened in its density and tension, and has transformed to existential sorrow. On one hand, in 「꽃」(Flower), the desire and power of human beings for transcendence exclude the experience of frustration, and become foregrounding. This emphasizes only the desire of human beings to transcend from isolated subjectivity to intersubjectivity through the naming of the subject and the other. Consequently, pain from frustration of desire is excluded. On the other hand, 「꽃을 위한 서시」(Prelude for Flower) upsets the possibility of transcending to intersubjectivity. This is because the subject is threatening and violent, robbing the other of his or her otherness. In other words, the subject is ‘a dangerous beast'. In this case, there is only confrontation and competition with each other instead of intersubjectivity. The sobbing of beings results from such confrontation and competition, but it promotes the subject's existential awareness. As seen above, in the first half of his early poems, there appear changes in the mode and characteristics of the sorrow which beings and the world reveal. These changes are caused by the fact that Kim Chun-soo deepens his sensuous and intuitional awareness of beings and the world, and extends it to the existential level.