1920년대 초기시의 미적 초월성과 상징주의

Abstract

In 1920s the intellectual class who acquired literature education from the Japan built up prototypes of Korean Modern poems. The literature magazines like Paekjo(swan), Changjo(creation) which were made by those intellectual, were major channel for publication of literary works and translation of western artist. And the symbolism was one of the most influential western literary theories in the articles of those magazines. Most poets of 1920s learnt form of free verse as well as pursued ideal of the beauty by making symbolism poem. That was separation from the fixed form and enlightenment.

To the writers of 1920s – young intellectual of colonial period, symbolism invoked aspiration for transcendence by making them dream of something beyond real world. And aesthetical transcendence took the shapes in three ways. The first was pursuit of instant mood rather than factual logic, regarding logic and reality as illusion or coincidence. The poems of this type tried to mimic the delicacy of music to express the agony without cause. The second is to maximize dreamlike mood by using ideational symbol. But the ideation that the agony resulted from coexistence of good and evil or flesh and soul could be applied to poem. The third is the unrealistic and mystic dream-likeness to be linked to fascination with death. The fascination with death was kind of escapism. But in world of symbolism death was expressed as paradise or origin of the truth. Death was considered as limit of the unreal as well as the place where love and truth can be fused. This love combined with death assumed sensuality. And the image of resurrection or revival sprang out from the heart of this sensuality.

In this regard the existing critics that symbolism poem is only decadent and morbid should be amended. The premature aspects of 1920s symbolism poem can be said that this phenomenon resulted from the desire toward aesthetical transcendence capturing the modern individual mentality.