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Analysis on Jeong Ji-yong's Poem, 「Sea 2」

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2010, (75), pp.535-557
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Sin Yong-Mok 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the Jeong Ji-yong’s poems, 「Sea 2」 is one of his representative works which show simultaneously both a sensational characteristic of his former-period poems called his “sea poem(or sea poetry)” and a spiritual characteristic of his latter-period poems called his “landscape poem(or poetry).” Exploring 「Sea 2」 in a careful and detailed way, this study aims to both examine how the poem has reflected the characteristics of his former-period and second-period poems and review the problematic factors of the 「Sea 2」 revealed in the transition from the former-period poems to the latter-period poems. The outer circumstance of the 「Sea 2」 is what the poetic narrator is to watch the waves the rolling back in the presence of the sea seen at low tide while its inner circumstance is what the narrator is to build a world of ideas through the traces left by the waves of the sea. A “swarm of blue lizards” that try to run away is the really existent sea and a “nautical chart” created by the traces of the waves is an ideal symbol. And “the earth” which takes a lotus leaves exercise is the product of imagination drawn from the ideal symbol. Jeong Ji-yong conversed the image of the sea that “starts to act or move as if alive” into that of a “fixed” nautical chart and further expanded to the image of the earth that takes a universe exercise. “The sea” takes a central place in his former-period poems while in his latter-period poems, “mountains” frequently appear. That said, the dividing of his poems into the former-period and latter-period ones is not a restraint but a difference of an aspect of perceiving it. “The sea that runs away asunder just like a swarm of blue lizards” holds a characteristic of his former-period sensory imagism featuring an individualized emotion for Mother Nature and a delicacy of its crude description. To the contrary, “the earth which retracts and then spreads just like lotus leaves” bears a characteristic of his latter-period's oriental spiritualism calling attention to the order and cause of Mother Nature concealed in the poem’s context in the restricted words and languages. These two characteristics are arranged in the tension and balance brought by the blank spaces between the lines. In the 「Sea 2」, the characteristics of his former-period and latter-period poems are mixed and appear, which is structured in a constant order. The poetic development which spreads from “the sea” to “a nautical chart” and further “the earth” is the process of transition from a sensory line of sight to an ideal line of sight and also the process of integrating and again opening the individualized Mother Nature.

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