Twenty years have passed since poet Ki Hyng-do found dead in a shabby movie theater. But his poems are still getting a significant attention from both readers and critics. This means that some attractive and special features of his poems attract many ...
Twenty years have passed since poet Ki Hyng-do found dead in a shabby movie theater. But his poems are still getting a significant attention from both readers and critics. This means that some attractive and special features of his poems attract many people who love him.
The purpose of this study is to recognize the various aspects of time and the poet's responses against harsh reality. Though time has been a main subject for lots of literature, time in Ki Hyung-do‘s poetry stands out because of its variety of aspects. In his poems time is not only mixed but stops unlike physical time passes. In this paper, time is separated in two aspect: when time is mixed and when it stops.
When time is mixed, it has three aspects of time flow. First, Time is mixed not in a linear way but in many different ways, like being the present as a center time flows backwards and forwards. The poet keeps thinking back his deprived childhood, but his past is no longer the past. He keeps making his past into his present because the past has permeated and affected his present, which he cannot reconcile reality where he lives. Also deviated from the straight flow of time, time moves in circulating way. By using this circular time, Ki Hyung-do tries to advance into a fairyland and fantasy world, but only to fail.
When time refuses to flow, it can be stopped or has no concept of time. In Ki Hyung-do‘s poetry, time stays where it stops so one cannot feel the changes or flows of time. Images like fog, winter, and wind dominate the poems and time itself stops and gets stuck. Also there are moments when time stops flowing in his poetry. The poet recognizes his existence and eternal truth of things at that moment. However, they are neither a joyful epiphany nor delightful happiness. Rather, for the poet the very moments are when the poet gets disillusioned about ignorance of illogical, contradictory and suppressive reality.
An aspect of timelessness occurs in Ki Hyung-do‘s poetry. In these poems, time doesn’t seem to exist or flow but it becomes nothing, that is timelessness. Here time becomes a spatial dot, scene or picture. Ki Hyung-do uses this time for a gateway for hope and happiness, but he is disappointed with the world he is living in. So the view of the world is consolidated with this failure.
Ki Hyung-do‘s poems are unique in many ways like what many critics have already analyzed, but his various aspects of time attract many readers and lead them to read and appreciate his poems ever lastingly.