In modernization of Korea poetry, ‘folkways’ was excluded as a pre modern property in 1910, was welcomed as an ideology of nation in 1920, and was required as unique aesthetic form against Western modern in 1930. So I think there is a limit to see Baek Seok’s folkways as a discovery of tradition by foreign writers of the Orient discourse. This paper examines the correlationship to So wol’s poetry as internal genealogy of Baek Seok’s poetry.
In spite of remarkable difference between So wol’s rhythm of folk song and Baek Seok’s style of narrative story, these two have something in common in that they sing the world of home with dialect. In their poetry the home and the dialect have an importance in the light of social conditions, ‘loss of home’ by the modernization and the colonialization. This paper defines the poetic respondence to existential, historical problematic situation of ‘loss of home’ as ‘topo philia’, and traces its origin in the unconscious topo philia of folk song.
The experience of placelessness by loss of national sovereignty and dissolution of communal living is expressed in deliberate topo philia to giv existential value and historical meaning to ruined place. The making place to reconstruct style of life, customs and relation with people or things formed for all ages, is to give the folk to a contemporary meaning. It is accompanied by aesthetic formalization with choice and synthesization. This paper should call such a contemporary signification and aesthetic formalization as ‘aesthetic folkways’.
So wol examined folk song to overcome problem of placelessness and complete form of modern poetry. The folk song has been accumulated from living of people with rhythm of life for all ages. It is both means for forms and source of contents to respond to placelessness. The contemporary making place and new place identity is based on the unconscious topo philia of people in folk song. So finally the sadness of So wol and Baek Seok could come to synthesize private existential nihilism and contemporary public pessimism.
The folkways of Baek Seok’s poetry is not ‘excaveted’ of ‘discovered’ as only a formal means by the reversed modern eyes. It comes from So wol’s methodology to resolve an urgent problems, ‘exploration place after loss of place’ with folk song in tradition. The interest in the traditional is explored as internal respondence to contemporary condition, not excavated by an ideology of nation or reversed modern eyes. This is the reason why So wol and Baek Seok’s poetry have embodied a public national emotion of the communal pessimism.