Kim Chun-su carried out various poetic experiments for the whole period of his creation of poetry. In the process of the experiment, he formed unique poetic theories and patterns. On this account, preceding studies on his poems have accumulated very m...
Kim Chun-su carried out various poetic experiments for the whole period of his creation of poetry. In the process of the experiment, he formed unique poetic theories and patterns. On this account, preceding studies on his poems have accumulated very meaningful findings so far. On the other hand, those studies presented such limitations as depending on Kim Chun-su’s poetic theories or other specific theories. In this vein, this study referred to preceding studies and examined the characteristics of Kim Chun-su’s poems, focusing on ‘rhythms’ and ‘images’, in order to overcome such limitations.
Kim Chun-su’s experiment of rhythm and image underwent the stages of separation, removal and convergence. In every stage, he clarified his intention of poetic creation via his poetic theories, but his intention was not necessarily consistent with his actual creation of poems. In other words, the ‘intentional meaning’ of Kim Chun-su’s poems was different from ‘real meaning.’ In this regard, it is necessary to study his poems by dividing between his poetic theories and actual creation of poems. In relation to the rhythms of free verse, Kim Chun-su used to emphasize the importance of ‘lines.’ However, the rhythms in his actual creation of poems combined syntactic views and structural characteristics of poems, and therefore presented complex interaction between the repetition of words, phrases, passages and sentences/sentence patterns, and the lines of poems. Kim Chun-su’s poetic rhythms were actually realized in two directions: Creation of a series of taryeong style poems which transformed domestic garaks in a modernistic manner; and shamanistic creation of poems, which polarized rhythms.
After that, Kim Chun-su’s poetic creation turned into his interest in images. His experiment of images was presented by the attempt of descriptive images, which nullified objects in order to remove ideas. A poem of descriptive images leaves shadows as a result, and the shadow is not a certain solid color, but subtle and complex. It is because in this poetic pattern, internal condition of psychology is revealed as it is, or an object is refracted already.
After carrying out a variety of poetic experiments on rhythms and images, Kim Chun-su arrived at the stage of complete change of his poetic world. It is the stage of his creation of prose poems. However, since his conception of prose poems had been originally formed on the basis of dichotomy, his actual creation of prose poems presented limitations. Therefore, his prose poems, which intended to return to idea, left behind such characteristics as outstandingly weakened rhythms and images, and strong folklore properties.
After creating prose poems, Kim Chun-su went into the stage of alleviating his poetic tension. In this stage, Kim Chun-su’s various poetic experiments came into harmony with poems naturally or returned to the pattern of his early lyric poems. In addition, via certain poems, he attempted new poetic patterns, such as letter style poems, dramatic poems, word play poems, or blank paper poems.
Kim Chun-su’s long-term poetic experiment began with his desire of being rescued via poems and relieved from history and reality, but it is impossible to definitely say that his experiment was successful at last. However, his various poetic patterns, resulted from his poetic experiments, seem to deserve the meaningful estimation in the history of domestic modern poetry.