松溪 權應仁의 生涯와 詩世界 및 그 特徵

Abstract

Mainly active during the reign of Seonjo, in the middle of the Joseon Dynasty, Songgae Kwon, Eung-In, could not seize the opportunity to fully achieve his aspirations and capabilities due to his inherent limitations in social standing, with his career finally ending in one of the lowest governmental positions as a Hanlihakkwan (Chinese Language Institute Official). The law of discrimination for the concubine’s children and the law of keeping the concubine’s children from entering government service, established in the early years of the Joseon Dynasty, resulted in blocking any attempt by many capable individuals to advance in society and exercise their abilities for the nation. This limited the Joseon Dynasty’s development significantly, despite the fact that it had many positive conditions to make it flourish. However, Songgae did not succumb to the frustration with the limits imposed upon him by his inherent status. Overcoming it to some extent while experiencing emotional turmoil at the height of the absurdity, he sublimated and transformed it into literature. Some of the aspects that can be glimpsed from the content of Songgae’s poetry include, primarily, conflict and eccentricity caused by his positional limits. As his limitation in status was not his own choice but a given reality, he could not escape-no matter how hard he tried. He could not help experiencing serious internal turmoil. Even in his dreams, he shows a sort of eccentric behavior, trying to realize a world without such discrimination. Secondly, we can observe his critical attitude toward the reality and social conditions he faced. Songgae strongly pointed out and criticized the fall of the friendship of his time, the politics for the sake of politics that lacked the ability to consider public opinions, the absence of the governors and rampancy of petty officials, a society riddled with fakes, the pathetic political reality and the behavior of the politicians with a complacent awareness of reality, and so on. Lastly, we can get a glimpse of his attitudes of peaceful contentment with his place in society and philosophically view the life of idleness. Through such behavior toward life, Songgae overcame or transcendentalized his own life, which suffered from some internal conflicts. Meanwhile, we might be able to contend that serial poetry is the formal characteristic of Songgae’s world of poetry. Songgae used 30 letters of an even tone rhyme, a combination of Sangpyeongseong (high even tone) and Hapyeongseong (low even tone), among 106 Pyeongsoowoon, as rhyming words, to write a serial poetry of unique form, which includes as many as 30 poems. This type of poetry suggests a characteristic rarely used by other poets. Especially regarded as a significant characteristic of his poetry is the fact that he rhymed with an even-tone rhyming word in his final work. Moreover, the various types of his poems-free from traditional rhymes-are worth mentioning. Songgae shows a poem-composing characteristic of using relatively diverse miscellaneous poetry styles such as the Jade Butterfly style, Round Direction style, Ring-like Round Direction style, Jangdu-che and Moosanildanwoon-che. Finally, the Soochang poem is a style of composing poetry in which a senior or a certain person first suggests a rhyming word during a get-together or meeting held in places of outstanding natural beauty or banquets, followed by everyone else immediately composing poetry on the spot using rhymes. Songgae wrote a great amount of Soochang poems, which suggests that it is indeed a formal characteristic of his poetic world.