정지용 시 '유선애상'의 소재와 해석

Abstract

This paper aims to make it clear what the subject matter is of the poem Yuseonaesang(流線哀傷) by Jeong Ji-yong(鄭芝溶) and how we can get the proper interpretation of the contexts created by the poet with respect to the subjectmatter of the poem. Various hypothesis have been put forth as to the subject-matter of this poem. Someone says that the subject-matter of the poem is a string musical instrument, and others say that the entity is a duck, a car, a bicycle, or a tobacco pipe, etc. It is obvious that the poem Yuseonaesang is notoriously difficult to understand. Through thorough analysis of the images and contexts of the poem, this paper arrives at the conclusion that the subject-matter of the Jeong Ji-yongs Yuseonaesang substantially is a set of the spectacles which is consisted of a spectacle-case and the glasses itself. It is figuratively represented as a gentleman in a swallow-tailed coat at first. The gentleman indicates the glasses and the swallowtailed coat refers to the spectacle-case. The black shining spectacle-case reminds the poet of the gentleman in a swallow-tailed coat seen from the back. The poet in the poem says that when he opens the spectacle-case, he sees the chromatic semitone key left. The semitone key can be seen to point to the small longish device high above the bottom in the middle of the case for fixing the glasses like a nose. There appears a phrase like this: The poet takes part in a trist procession of some entities whose waist becomes narrow to the degree of losing its width entirely. The animal whose waist seems to be nearly not existent is an ant. The image of an ant calls up the image of mourning badge, due to such shape as both have two roundish cyclic parts and connecting narrow part in the middle. The Korean traditional mourning badge looks like a ribbon in shape. The mourning badge embodies the poets volition to depart from his past when he should have endured the inconvenience due to the bad eyes, like an ant groping the road assiduously. The poet in the poem delights with the joy of seeing well, like a turtle winning in a footrace with the rabbit. This posture implicates the turtles toppling down to the ground, and by this accident the glasses is broken into pieces. The poet says that he lures it out to the flower garden and when he pricks it with a needle, it dies like a butterfly. This means that the poet goes to an opticians with the broken glasses, and the man in the store decomposes the glasses into pieces by a driver like a needle. The glasses takes into leg parts, cyclic parts etc. This is similar to the death of a butterfly, its wing parts and leg parts being apart. The poet Ji-yong in the poem Yuseonaesang does not use the expression which directly suggests the existence of the glasses. Maybe, it might be that he embodies the magic moment at which on wearing the glasses, the existence of the glasses itself vanishes from sight.