This paper explores poetic characteristics of Avant-garde Anthology(1946) published in the Liberation period. We can find out various figures of Avant-garde poets in the Liberation period by this anthology. Most of them were the students soldiers in...
This paper explores poetic characteristics of Avant-garde Anthology(1946) published in the Liberation period. We can find out various figures of Avant-garde poets in the Liberation period by this anthology. Most of them were the students soldiers in the 1940’s. After independence, the student soldier was reborn as pure man and warrior for the people and became a symbolic framwork of nation/anti-nation in social and cultural context. The meaning of avant-garde was based on this student soldier’s image and fresh image of the promising young man. The young avant-garde was identified with a aggressive leader for building a new nation. Avant-garde poets, however, came to awaken into the imperialistic desire of the US through the political events such as Students soldiers’ Alliance, namely killed students soldiers by Korean police. Avant-garde poets felt strong sorrow and anger over the miserable deaths of their coworkers.
Their sorrow and anger were performative emotions. Their writing poetry as mourning work of students soldiers had been in process of balanced self-renewal. This performativity, namely expressing deep sorrow helped to unify the people feeling the same way. Their anger about Korean reality in the Liberation period was very political feeling. In general, Anger has been recognized to be a gesture to express a desire to realize justice and a moral will of humans. The expression of Avant-garde poets’ anger was the very active behavoir that showed political and moral existentiallity of the same generation according to their moral or practical reasons. So, it was performative to reciting their own poems revealing this emotional feature. By this performativity, a new community was formed in the recitation site. This community was the community of poor people who fought against a repressive authoritarian regime. ‘We, people’ was a imaginary community that Avant-garde poems had been dreaming during the Liberation period.