김현승 시의 주술성 연구

Abstract

Incantation is performed in order to wish for good fortune. Beginning in ancient times daily life has been an incantation. Even today it remains in the form of devoted prayers and rituals in many areas. Poetry retains the incantation quality of religious faith. It has a healing power which heals the readers and is proportionate to the poet’s eagerness and the poem’s density. Kim Hyeon-seung was born to a devote Christian family and sought a unity of his self and his religious faith. And as a Christian poet his poems sang of his close relationship with God. Thus the incantation quality in his poems is in sync with his religious faith. His whole life was immersed in solitude to the degree where he was called the poet of solitude. But his solitude wasn’t a simple loneliness or depression resulting from exclusion. It was rather his choice to become a friend with solitude in order to manage and strengthen his inner self. In the end he made a dramatic declaration of a separation from God to reach “absolute solitude”. It was an anti-Christian action against the faith that relies upon others and was a secret meeting with East Asian thought that is based on autonomous pursuit of one’s higher self. With this move his poetry became profound and its incantation became fierce. And in the end his poetry reached absolute purity and thus has secured a universal presence that retains its healing power.