This paper aims to reveal that the 'silence' in Ki, Hyung-do's poetry acted as a driving force of the center of the poetic world composed by the poet, as a language implying strong resistance to the poet's time and world. It calls for a reconsideratio...
This paper aims to reveal that the 'silence' in Ki, Hyung-do's poetry acted as a driving force of the center of the poetic world composed by the poet, as a language implying strong resistance to the poet's time and world. It calls for a reconsideration of the entire poem of Ki, which has been read with the frame of death and negativity until recently, under the heading “Grotesque Realism.” This discussion is based on the awareness of the problem that the misreading of the poem was caused by the emotional perception of the poet's death and this has been limited the understanding of the poetic world created by the poet Ki, Hyung-do.
Silence does not mean a non-existence of language, but rather a world that exists even before language. Silence does not conflict with spoken words. Language is two-sided, and silence is just the other side of language that overturns spoken words. Thus, Ki, Hyung-do's 'silence' is not a state of losing or saying something, but is a voice of its own. His poetry with the motif of 'silent' is a result of building his own value system through the image of 'sound' and 'fire', while involving a clear sense of resistance to the time when the poet was living.
Based on this perspective, chapter 2 explores the "silence" approached in terms of the "realistic value system." First of all, chapter 2.1. tries to assemble the various essays of the poet and figure out the grounds he had during the 1980s. The poet's has shown a sense of rejection to the destiny of this time, and a historical mission imposed on the every individual during it. It becomes the basis for the poet's attempt to auditory image and material imagination in the next chapter.
In chapter 2.2, the linguistic status of “silence” is discussed through the literary discourse and auditory issues in the Korean poetry. The word 'silence' in his poem escapes from opposing the context of the time, by standing at the boundary between spoken and written language using the nature of the sound, or spoken words (silence itself) and the nature of the written words ('silence' written in the poem). It responds to, yet at the same time it does not correspond to the literal truth that is to be denied, because ‘silence’ exists as a language itself. This only becomes possible through the poem of ‘silence.’
Next, chapter 3 traces the process of the poet constructing the word 'silence' in poem through Gaston Bachelard's theory of imagination, which presents an interpretation of material imagination. The images of natural substances such as water, fire, and air often appear and play a variation in the poems of Ki, Hyung-do. The paper focuses on the imagination about fire. Prior to this exploration, chapter 3.1. looks at the image of vegetation in the poem. The poet often compare a person to a tree, and attempts to make it appear as an image of a plant in a poem. Yet, the plant usually appears in a sick figure. It is not irrelevant to the physical vitality of the poetic subject, and he sinks into deep inner solitude to escape himself from the sickening world.
In chapter 3.2., the paper focus on the 'sound' and the problem of 'body' as Nietzsche’s physical concept of 'great reason(rationality)'. The image of 'fire' becomes audible in the poem and appears as an image of 'sound'. The matter of lighting 'fire' is closely related to the 'sound' of the 'body'. In many of the poems in Ki, Hyung-do, the body appears as a kind of musical instrument, and the destruction of ‘sound’ is like an extinction of the ‘body’. The disappearance of the sound could also mean death. The destruction or disappearance of this ‘sound’ is related to the scenes in which the grown-up poet encounters in the city.
In chapter 4.1., the concept of potentiality and inaction reveals that "silence" can be the most powerful form of resistance to rejecting alternative choices given by external pressure. In this context, 'silence' achieves 'aesthetic politics'. This also is the inherent power of the creative act of a writing itself. The paper then point out that the power of play, created by inaction and creation, drives the silence. At the same time, it has a Dionysian affirmation that penetrates the tragedy of life. It is because ‘silence’ is not just a resistance to the times, but also an ignition of Dionysian affirmation in the tragic times. This spirit of affirmation plays a role of enabling the “mumble” of minority languages, which break out from the existing languages and speak into a new language.
Finally, chapter 4.2. checks out how overall discussions, can be found in the poet's representative work, <The Black Leaf in the Mouth>. In <The Black Leaf in the Mouth>, ‘the black leaf’ was the object that hardened the poetic speaker's tongue make it unable to say something. However, this study attempts to re-examine the existence of 'the black leaf' by tracking the meaning of 'black' in Ki, Hyung-do’s poetic world of darkness originating from the confined inner of the poetic subject. Through this process, the poet's world can acquire a new language and mutter it.
In short, this paper traces the birth and utterance of the launguage of ‘silence’ chosen by the poet Ki, Hyung-do via the matters of the times he passed through and which he had tried to overcome with the material imagination. The world of Ki Hyung-do's by the view of the motif of 'silence' can be seen to have a clear sense of resistance to the time the poet was living. This was the result that was able to be earned by constructing a triangle of 'silence' along with the image of 'sound' and 'fire'. It is the result of establishing his own aesthetic system. The triangle composition of 'silence'-'sound'-'fire' forms a virtuous cycle. The possibility of another action, the possibility of change, comes from the ‘sound’, which leads to the practice of ‘silence’ and ‘fire.’ Silence is also a poetic utterance that causes ‘fire’ again. Through this comprehensive process, the poet Ki, Hyung-do did not yield to the request of the era of the 1980s, but was able to explain his constant attempt to "approach both artistic aesthetics and the real value system" intended in his literature.