This study is aimed at inquiring into the consciousness of ‘Sea’ of Manhae Han, Yong-un(1899~1944)’s collection of poetic works- 『The Silence of Lover』from the ontological position. As a result of surveying the expression frequency of the central poetic dictions in 『The Silence of Lover』, it was found that there are 22 poetic works depicting the ‘Sea’ image, accounting for about 30% of his works. Like this, the poetic word of ‘Sea’ had an inseparable relationship with his pen name-Manhae. This study looked into Manhae’s works with focus on Emmanuel Levinas (1906~1995, France)’ Philosophy of the other by limiting its research scope to the works which portray the ‘Sea’ image. Levinas said there exist spatio-temporality, materiality and femininity in otherness.
As a result of the evolution of an argument on the basis of the context about Manhae and Levinas’ Philosophy of the Other, this study could understand that the ‘Existence of Love’ is a source of boundless joy and life force to Manhae through Chapter 2-‘Images of Love, and Situation of ‘Being.’ Here, ‘Sea’ was not simply a poetic space but functioned as a place where it looked at the speaker self as a testimony and a judge. In Chapter 3-‘Images of Parting, and Pain of Non-Being’, the parting with ‘Lover’ was an unbearable pain as much as facing death to Manhae. Here, ‘Sea’, combined with death, caused the tragicalness of parting to go to extremity, or was embodied as a place for a rite of passage. In Chapter 4-‘Images of Death, and Being differently’, the thing which Manhae came up with while calling Lover in the midst of the pain of separation was the vey altruistic death. Not until through the altruistic death, did Manhae become the new subject who ‘exists differently’ toward Lover.
In this way, the ‘Sea’ image of Manhae’ poetic works functioned as a space of love, or space of the pain and death while being in conflict with each other and going crisscrossing or being regarded as the same, finally functioning as a dialectical space together with the existence of love residing in Manhae’s inner side. Thus, this study judged that the artistic expression and images about the ‘Sea’, which is embodied by Manhae’s values, reflect the universality of existential life. Accordingly, this study understood Manhae’s love as the philosophy of life which secures thorough otherness, and the philosophy of transcendence.