서정주 시에 나타난 동양적 시간의식 연구

Abstract

Abstract

Seo Jung-ju resisted the violence of modern time which is linear and suppressive. As a means to resist, he showed physicality and sensuality but it was just a defensive resistance which couldn’t secure new meaning and message. Finally Seo Jung-ju transfers to oriental time which gives harmony and enlightenment from occidental time which is suppressive and aggressive. It is for obtaining in the oriental time the ego which he couldn’t find in occidental time. It is to pursue for identity of ego in eternity. As oriental time is circulative and unitary one and can repeat endlessly, it is ontological and has no limit. The identity of existence can be secured through it. The securing of identity of existence is the way to overcome onceness and futility of my existence in current life while it is to make ‘endless return’. Seo Jung-ju, that is, he tried to be not slave of time but owner of time by pursuing for oriental time and he longed for eternity in order achieve it. It is associated with recover of subject and is the core of his poetry. Assuming that human being is the existence which is born and finally ends with death, the way to control and conquest nihilism of time is to find eternity of ego through endless return. The sense of time in endless return is established by identifying the circulative change with the continuousness in nature, especially in running of celestial body and four seasons. Life and history of all existences including human being is just an activity of endless circulation and repeat returning to starting point. That is to say, death, recycling, and rise and fall is repeated endlessly. This corresponds with circulative sense of time which regards future as time of the same value. The interest and desire for eternity of existence by Seo Jung-ju appears distinctively in 『Kwichokdo』. However the interest in this eternity does not just his unique eternity which relies on thought in Buddhism. The eternity that Seo Jung-ju tried to find really is not the eternity which means religious nirvana or overcome of time but the eternity which we can feel and find in everyday life. It comes from the oriental circulative thought which identifies death with life and thinks everything is connected in a circle. However ‘the eternity’ of Seo Jung-ju has lots of weakness. His ‘eternity’ which lacks reality and concreteness and identifies the past with the present doesn’t contain the fierce scene of life and easily disregards indigenous not only diversity and complexity but also heterogenous nature and difference of existence of human being and historical reality. The identification the past and the present, or, the excessive conceptualization of pursuing the identification of existence through eternity has its limitedness that it can’t secure meaning more than it. The meaning of poetry from Seo Jung-ju’s mid-term is that they found the post-modern characteristics permeated in his works and mediated its meaning. The recognition of world in his midterm works is basically different from dichotomy thought which separates subject from object, nature from human, and center from surrounding distinctively. In other words, the poetry of his midterm can a great deal modify various contradictions and problems which have risen seriously about the rationality centrism of the west. The attitude that handles the previous life and next life beyond the current life corresponds with the appropriateness of ecology that current desire and profit should be reserved for future. In the poetry of his late term, Seo Jung-ju shows the transcendental time he in his old age realized by himself in addition to oriental thought he had learned. He expresses the transcendental time in which the nature and attribute is integrated. We can say it is the condition when he reaches the pure love of nature which wants to live naturally following the flow of nature. In the poetry of his late term, Seo Jung-ju shows the great recognition of nature, which breaks down all confrontations and boundaries through transcendental time which integrates nature and attribute and leave body and spirit to nature. He found the vision of life which lives endlessly in the common everyday life of village society. In the poetry of his late term became to embrace the world where heaven and earth breaks away their boundaries. What he dreamed ultimately through the transcendental time where nature and attribute is integrated is pursuit of identity and recovery of collapsed community life. In conclusion, the issue of time which shows up in Seo Jung-ju’s poetry is not only the basic question about temporality of human existence but also the outcome from discernment for new way of existence that the modern intellect should choose in rapidly changed period. By recovering the sense of belong together for value system lost in the materialism society where the past and the future is disconnected, Seo Jung-ju’s poetry pursues for the recovery of ego which get fragmented and dissolved under pressure of modern time. Accordingly Seo Jung-ju is interested in continuity that the past and the future is endlessly connected or they are regarded as the same thing, that is, circulation of time in the east. The pursuit of identification of ego with world or pursuit of identification of existence, which is a major characteristic of lyric, was his poetic philosophy he sought or from start to end.

Key Word: Modern time. Oriental time, The eternity, Endless return, Identity of existence, Identification of ego with world, Recovery of community life