This study examined a series of poetics observed in the poets of ‘Sinsiron (New Poetics)’ and ‘Hubanki (The Latter Half),’ which were modernist poetic coteries during the liberation period. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the pattern in which the ideology of Korean modernist poetry was formed while the division system was being established.
‘Sinsiron,’ the coterie organized in the latter half of 1947, was characterized by the uneasy coexistence of multiple modernisms pursuing either ‘participation’ or ‘technique.’ Poets in the line of Kim Byeong－wook who took part in the leftist literary circle supported resistant modernism, emphasizing political involvement and practice, but those in the line of Kim Kyeong－rin, by contrast, put up technical modernism, emphasizing contemporary language, picturesque expressions and images, etc. With regard to Kim Ki－rim Kim’s poetic works as well, the former was favorable to Saenorae (New Songs) that praised progressive participation while the latter was not. The conflict between Kim Byeong－wook and Kim Kyeong－rin surrounding the poetic ideology of ‘new modernism’ was resolved through the withdrawal of poets in Kim Byeong－wook’s line.
As for Park In－hwan, since 1947 he had written poems expressing postcolonial ‘resistance’ such as Incheonhang (Incheon Port), Nampung (Southerly Wind), and A Poem Offered to the Indonesian People. As he organized Sinsiron, however, his poetic viewpoint was changed. He criticized leftist poets claiming “resistance to the realities,” and gave a favorable comment to the technique of Kim Ki－rim Kim’s Gisangdo (Weather Chart) rather than to the participation of his Saenorae. When introducing Sartre’s existentialism, he did not translate Sartre’s conversion to and practice of Marxism, and tried to recognize existentialism merely as a philosophy of despair. This study analyzed such a shift of Park In－hwan and its reasons in connection to changes in his personal situation.
As for Kim Kyeong－rin, he insisted on technical modernism strongly from the beginning of Sinsiron. He liked Kim Ki－rim, but his attention was paid only to the imagist theory in Kim Ki－rim’s poetics. In particular, he was critical to political poems in the liberation period. Furthermore, he was highly interested in the relation between musicality and picturesqueness in poetry. After Sinsiron was dissolved, he met poet Cho Hyang living in Busan. Cho Hyang had also been studying the issues of musicality and picturesqueness seriously. Because of their common interest, the two immediately found each other likeminded and formed new coterie ‘Hubanki.’ Influenced by Kim Kyeong－rin, Cho Hyang came to advocate the technicalism of poetry in a louder voice. A more fundamental reason for Cho Hyang’s emphasis on the newness of technique in poetry was his competition against the newness of political poems in terms of theme and content. Through Kim Kyeong－rin and Cho Hyang, as a result, Korean modernist poetry had to develop for a while with losing either of the two values participation and technique.