오장환 시 연구 = (A) study of Jang-Whan O's poetry

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

1. Research Questions and Method
This study is anattempt to provide a new interpretation of Jang Whan O's literature through an investigation of the relation between his life and his works.
Existing studies of O's literature investigate various areas ranging from comparison with other poets of the 1930s and his consciousness of the hometown through the changing landscapes of his poetic world and the form and structure of his poetry to the dominant images, psychology, and modernity of his poetry. Most influential among the existing studies, however, has been the investigation into the changing shapes of his poetic world. The present study seeks to continue the same investigation from a different perspective.
Existing studies of O's life and works have basically concentrated on the analyses of the changing shapes of his poetic world as evident in four collections, Sungbyuk [fortress], Hunsah [dedication], Nasanungot [the place where I live], and Byungdun Seoul[sick Seoul]. The conclusion of prevailing studies has been stated in terms of the four standard themes: his rejection of the tradition, his Bohemian consciousness, his discovery of the hometown as a prodigal son, and his pursuit of leftist ideologies. Convinced that the prevailing interpretations are one-sided interpretations based on select collections and poems, this study seeks to provide a new interpretation of O's literature through a comprehensive analysis of the works of his entire career, not only the four collections but also other recently discovered works ranging fromhis boyhood compositions to the works composed in North Korea.
For this reinterpretation the present study focuses on the changing shapes of O's poetic world and the ideologies and thoughts underlying his works. Included for analysis in this study are three poems and forty-four poems for children, works of his boyhood usually ignored in existing studies, and his long poem, "Junjang" [war], "Sooboo"[capital city], the Yesenin collection, a collection of foreign poems he translated after the liberation of 1945, Bulgunki[red flag], a collection of his poems composed in North Korea, and Namjosonay Moonhag Yaysool[literary arts of South Korea], a collection of critical essays. I have also visited and interviewed relevant persons at Hayin Elementary School, Ahnsung Elementary School, Hwimoon High School, and the Bo-un Cultural Institute, places associated with the poet.
2. Findings
On the basis of an analysis of Jang-Hwan O's works as a whole I have reached the following conclusion:
The standard existing interpretation emphasizing his rejection of the tradition, his Bohemian consciousness, his discovery of the hometown as a prodigal son, and his pursuit of leftist ideologies is a result of a one-sided interpretation based on select works andfar from a comprehensive understanding of his works as a whole. His starting point is not only the rejection of tradition. Nor are reasons for his wanderings from harbor to harbor just his personal psychological complex or wanderlust. Nor is his return to the hometown and his mother after the period of wandering characteristic only of this period. Nor, finally, are most of the poems collected in Byungdun Seoul poems of socialist realism but those of critical realism. The conventional interpretation, therefore, proves to be false to the facts as well as biased in perspective when reviewed in light of his works as a whole.
The truth is not so much that Jang-Whan O had gone through the stages of development postulated in the conventional interpretation as that he had progressively concretized his original and consistent anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist convictions. The overriding motive for his literary activities are likewise not so much resistance to his personal status as an illegitimate son as resistance to imperialism and feudalism. I have tried to support these four claims as follows:
(1) The claim that O's poetry starts from a rejection of the tradition is based on his first collection, Sungbyuk, but there are two errors in this view. The first is that Sungbyuk is not his first work. Before he composed Sungbyuk, he had already written poems for children, aphorisms with modern sensibility, and a long poem opposing the war. The conventional understanding is that he began his literary career by publishing "Mogyoggan" [bath house] in the November 1933 issue of Josun Moonhag [Chosun Literature]. My investigation revealed, however, that he had already published poems "Ahchim" [morning] and "Hwayum" [flame] in the February 22, 1933 issue of Hwimoon. If "Mogyoggan" is a realist and prose work, "Ahcheem" and "Hwayum"are short poems with visual beauty. Up to this time O had also written forty-four poems for children expressing their perspective on nature and things. Many of them deal with children's play, while others beautifully express affection and concern for nature, human beings, and small, weak, and powerless creatures. All these go to show that claims based on exclusive dependence on his first collection of poems lose their persuasiveness upon the discovery of his prior works.
Likewise, his long poem, "Junjang", published three years prior to his first collection (1937), Sungbyuk, is a poem focused on the anti-war, anti-imperialist, and respect for humanity and life themes. His long poem, "Sooboo", published in November of 1936, embody sentiments critical of the modern colonial city. The first half of the poem is mostly devoted to a criticism of the suffering of the people, and the second half to the exposure of the hypocrisy and corruption of the upper class. He tried to unmask the capital city of the 1930's as a concentration of the social contradictions of colonial capitalism and the tragedies of modernity.
In short, an analysis of O's works as a whole reveals the sheer partiality of the conventional claim that his poetry started with the rejection of the tradition.
(2) The claim that the motive underlying O's works is his personal psychological complex about his illegitimate sonship is likewise of questionable validity. First, there is no concrete evidence in his life or in his biography that he was actually discriminated against because of his illegitimacy. In fact, he was welcomed as a son because the family had been waiting for an heir. Second, there is no evidence anywhere in his poems or essays for an actual experience of discrimination and alienation. His poems are not so much oriented to the theme of alienation due to discrimination for illegitimacy as to the critique of the emptiness and inhumanity of the dominant feudalist ideology. Third, central to his literary concern during his youth is not the discrimination based on lack of legitimacy but human labor, class discrimination, and "literature for the sake of humanity."
It is true that the speaker in O's poems becomes a Bohemian and wanders from harbor to harbor, but it is not due, as conventional studies claim, to his personal psychological complex as an illegitimate son or wanderlust. The matter must be reexamined from the postcolonial perspective. O knew that he was no more than a postcolonial Other and that Japan was the real agent of colonial modernity. It is natural that the human self should suffer inner division when it refuses assimilation to the colonial regime while also lacking an effective power to resist. The self wanders when there is no viable exit from the vio
lent reality of the present while the future also remains dark. I claim that his Bohemianism was born of the despair he experienced because he opposed both the violence of bellicose imperialism and feudalism while he could not accept the hypocrisy and superficiality of colonial urban existence either.
(3) The nostalgia for the hometown and the mother is characteristic of his poetry as a whole, not just of the period after his wanderings. He leaves the modern city and wanders from sea to sea, from harbor to harbor, but returns home. To return home is to return to his mother, to the reality of poverty and misery of the people. His poetic journey through life at home, departure from home, and returning home, is similar to the journey of Yesenin (Sergei Aleksandrovich), especially in the themes of returning home as a prodigal son and lack of filial piety. The nostalgia for home and mother, however, is not characteristic of this period only but also of the periods of his children's poems and the five collections including Bulgunki. His longing for mother is especially evident in "Nampo Byungwon" [Nampo Hospital] and "Yongah" [Serial song] listed in Bulgunki composed during his North Korean period.
(4) It is not quite true to say that his poems composed after the liberation were all socialist poems.
The speakers in many of the poems collected in Byungdun Seoul are "neutral" subjects in the sense that they are neither positive nor negative in outlook but conflicted subjects who possess critical consciousness but without being able to practice it. In this sense it is possible to say that many of the poems in Byungdun Seoul are poems of critical realism. O's poems begin to turn gradually toward socialist realism around September and October of 1946.
3. Concluding Remarks
In this study I have undertaken a new interpretation of Jang Whan O's poetry from the postcolonialist perspective. O was a poet possessed of a definite view of the reality of the colonial society. His literary concern over the colonial reality was evident in five ways: his opposition to the imperialist wars of aggression and the unmasking of the evils of war, critique of the modern colonial city, critique of feudal conventions, compassion for rural realities, and the longing for the building of a modern state during the period of liberation. O's underlying ideology was anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism, anti-colonial modernism.
O' poetic world did change from collection to collection, but there was also a certain consistency through it all, the conviction that all literary works must be "art for the sake of humanity." All his ideologies-anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-feudalist, respect for humanity, and critique of the modern city-so evident in his poems ultimately derive from this conviction. This is also true of all the poems of longing for home and mother as well as of the realist poems after the liberation: these too were "literature for the sake of humanity."
It is my hope that the texts of O's early poems and poems for children that I have discovered will continue to inspire comprehensive and scientific studies of O's life and literature.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 목차
• Ⅰ. 서론 = 1
• 1. 연구의 목적 = 1
• 2. 연구사 검토 = 6
• Ⅱ. 전기적 고찰 = 16
• 1. 가계와 성장배경 = 16
• 2. 학업과 문단 활동 = 19
• 3. 해방과 분단 시기 = 28
• Ⅲ. 동시적 발상과 반전 반제국주의 = 39
• 1. 시각적 미의식의 구현과 동심의 세계 = 39
• 2. 장시 「전쟁」의 반전 반제국주의 = 60
• Ⅳ. 반봉전 의식과 근대도시 비판 = 87
• 1. 봉건적 사회질서와 비인간성 고발 = 87
• 2. 식민지 주변부 자본주의와 도시의 문제 = 101
• 3. 장시「수부」와 근대도시 비판 = 107
• Ⅴ. 식민지 근대와 보헤미안의 행로 = 122
• 1. 분열하는 자아와 탈식민주의 = 122
• 2. 위악적 포즈와 보헤미안 의식 = 132
• 3. 출향의 비극성과 귀향의식 = 145
• Ⅵ. 해방 이후 리얼리즘 시의 전개 = 172
• 1. 『병든 서울』의 사실적 현실 반영 = 172
• 2. 비판적 리얼리즘 시와 사회주의리얼리즘 시 = 189
• 3. 『붉은 기』와 유형화 문제 = 203
• Ⅶ. 시사적 의의 = 216
• Ⅷ 결론 = 230
• 참고문헌 = 236
• ABSTRACT = 250