This study aims to do semantic examination of short poems among various types of poems of Lee Si-young. It will focus on the meanings contained in the beauty of temperance and implication of his short poems which are excellent among all types of poems...
This study aims to do semantic examination of short poems among various types of poems of Lee Si-young. It will focus on the meanings contained in the beauty of temperance and implication of his short poems which are excellent among all types of poems. One can taste the following three aspects from Lee's poems: the scenary called by the space; the eyesight of seeing life from death at the time of silence; poetic moment when a poet becomes a unity with the universe communication with nature.
The origin of poem is lyric, and lyric is characterized by its simplicity. Poems reflect the present, and, recently, poetic types are rapidly changing. Unintelligible prose poems and dismantlement poems, in many cases, are not communicative to readers. To readers who are accustomed to read short writings which are beautiful and funny, the original function of the poems seems to appeal to emotions in which the poem gives deep echo, and gives the essence without using long breath. In such a chaos of poetic world, short poems have caught my eyes, and, typical poems characterized by simplicity can be found in poems of Lee Si-young. In the overflow of language and meanings in complex modern lives, short poems show the beauty of temperance and implication where deepening of meaning is added in the beauty of visual form. And, those poems make readers appreciate poems with tension, and give depth and echo with sharpness with which the writer induces a certain recognition cutting through the reality and history from a small poetic object. This researcher focused on esthetic structure and meaning of short poems of Lee Si-young.
Lee Si-young is widely known as a poet belonging to the minjoong group. However, his poems do not reveal the tints of loud voice and unhindered behavior, characteristic of minjoong poems. Rather, with low voice and low crawling, he enters our daily lives kindly and minutely, and, in his poems, we can get warmness similar to what we get from a friend or a neighbor. In his short poems which became his style from the 1990s, we can find his unique characteristics in his works like 『Pattern』, 『Gap』, and 『Quiet and Blue Sky』, etc. In the sense that a poet can reveal condensed language and thought about senses through short poems, I want to put meanings in analyzing and examining his short poems. Lyric does not mean the 'minimum' called short form, but is 'maximum' concentration and condensation, and the direction of combining language economics and thought condensation. Short poem has a form, and image, search for the origin which exists as temporary fullness as its esthetics.
Lee recognizes nature and matters with new eyesights, and, while describing various objects by short poems, searches modernity in the way of containing structural contradictions and the world of desire.
In the first stage, this study examined his life history and works as his literary background and poetic unfolding.
This study counted the number of poems from his first collection of poems to the twelfth one, and examined the characteristics of each collection based on analyses of critics.
This study analyzed characteristic structures of poems, examined meanings of cited poem, story (narrative poem), short poem, differentiating everyday-ness, history, lyricism, and narration.
In the discussion of esthetic structure of short poems, this study, in the 'Scenary called by space' section, tried to grasp the meaning of strong power like compressed film concealed in the space, paintings concealed, and what is not said, but stronger than words.
In the 'Silence, from death to life again', I could feel deep reflection and warm eyesight of the poet seeing life from death. From the 'Unity with the universe, Communication with nature' section, I could understand the process in which moments accumulate into an eternity, and the meaning of human being as part of the cycling nature, and the life cycle.
Lee said that he does not want to compose a long-breath poems, and catches and writes short poems in the universe energy and silence of dawn. From Lee's poems, one can feel the beauty of temperance like an skeletal essence after eradicating all the flesh. In other words, "grains filled in the form of poor house" seems to be proper expression implying Lee's style expressing deep thought in the form of short poem.
Short poem sometimes takes us by surprise like a short proverb, or, other times, tells the truth with refined and suggestive words. Overcoming of self dismemberment and contradiction wandering incessantly in the oppressive structure of the real life, and the pursuance of harmony with the world are the attractiveness of the short poem. Refined words have power to penetrate the deep essence. Also, through the from of short poem, condensation of language overuse in the digital age, and the thought about senses through space are concretely revealed.
When we talk about modernity in modern poems, newness is often distorted as the West-orientation, foreign language use, and imagism. Lee's short poems, though, can be said to reflect modernity with the form which does not lean to any direction.
In this research, the researcher, escaping from the limits of methodological approaches of previous researches and criticism on poems of Lee Si-young, focused on esthetic structure forming short poems. Nowadays in the Korean poetic world, prose poems form a main stream, and lines become longer. And there is controversy over the future wave, and there are many poems which cannot be understood only with literary imagination. Lee's short poems are not short because he do not have something to say, but he says a lot with condensed language. Therefore, his poems are conspicuous among various styles of poems. If the poets belonging to the future wave and writing prose poems and unintelligent poems look deeply into their own poetic worlds, and think over their poems, they will return to the lyric, home of poems. If they do such a thing, it will be the effect of this research. And this research is meaningful in the sense that it examined the poetic world of the great poet belonging to minjoong poets in the 1970s, by analyzing esthetic structure of his short poems. However, it is the future challenge of the researcher to analyze Lee Si-young's poetic world by examining his poems with deeper and more various methods based on wider rhetorical theories.
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