A critical collection, 『Allegory and the Sublime』 (Munji Publishing, 2021), of literary critic Oh Hyung-yup(professor, Korean Literature Dep., Korea University) is newly released. He who started his career as a critic winning Modern Poetry Recommended New Poet Prize 1994 and Seoul Daily Spring Literary Prize 1996, has recorded his traces of the critical methodology, steadily releasing critical collections and literary research books. Beginning with 『The Body and the Style』, trying to reach the ‘body’ of poem by reviewing precisely and analyzing the ‘style’ of the text, going by with 『Wrinkles and Memories』, summoning the ‘memories’ through the ‘wrinkles’, the traces of time and leading us to 『Illusion and Existence』 in which he strived to let the ‘existence’ come out by interpreting the layered meanings in ‘illusion’ as a sign newly appearing in Korean poetry in the mid-2000, Oh Hyung-yup continues grafting and variation flexibly and profoundly, keeping up with the changing age and poetic trends. In this collection newly presented after 9 years the author reconstructs the genealogy of history of Korean modern poetry and diagnoses and evaluates both microscopically and macroscopically poetic tendency by the two axis of ‘allegory’ and ‘sublime’.
Since last 10 years we have been newly inclined to have one issue up on the other and not on its own, getting through a series of scandals in and out of the Korean literary world. Oh Hyung-yup says that we need to return to the starting point, start again and revive the deteriorated aspect of criticism through reflecting ourselves that ‘the crisis of literature’ resulted from ‘the crisis of criticism’. Oh Hyung-yup’s critical theme is related to ‘ethics’, ‘politics’ and ‘gender’ which have been the main issues in Korean literature since the mid- 2000, and at the same time is trying to approach to the poetry linking four concepts such as ‘allegory’, ‘sublime’, ‘melancholy’ and ‘jouissance’ manifoldly and deeply as if infiltrated with each other. He lights up both inside and outside of the works three-dimensionally and grasps the recent poetic tendency of Korean poetry by the way like the figure of ‘Borromean knot’, a mutuallyconnected ring of which components cannot exist independently, and going back to the 1960-1990s, attempts restructuring the genealogy of modern poetry analyzing and interpreting the poetry of that time.
This book is a theoretical criticism of poetry written with an intention of diagnosing and evaluating both microscopically and macroscopically the recent poetic tendency by analyzing and interpreting modern Korean poetry as formal-mental, affective, aesthetic, impulsive problematic since 2000’s to the recent days, with the concepts of ‘allegory’, ‘melancholy’, ‘sublime’, ‘juissance’ as central figures. If ‘allegory’ goes to ‘formal-mental’ category in literature, ‘sublime’ goes to ‘aesthetic’ category in literature. And related with it, if ‘melancholy’, a concept of a problematic goes to the subject’s ‘affective’ category in literature, ‘juissance’ goes to the subject’s ‘impulsive’ category. Accordingly, this collection is made up out of an intention of diagnosing and evaluating both microscopically and macroscopically the recent poetic tendency by analyzing and interpreting the modern Korean poetry as formal-mental, affective, aesthetic, impulsive problematic since 2000’s to the recent days with the concepts of ‘allegory’, ‘melancholy’, ‘sublime’, ‘juissance’ as central figures. And the intention, going much further, is connected to an attempt to make use of this problematic in analyzing and interpreting the modern Korean poetry from 1960’s to 1990’s and to reconstruct the genealogy of modern Korean poetry history.
The first part <A Way to Read the Modern Korean Poetry> begins with a theoretical poetics explaining the whole outline of the book. Oh Hyung-up gives a guideline of how to read the modern Korean poetry from 2000’s to the recent days. Having in common affluent definitions of the concepts of ‘allegory’, ‘melancholy’, ‘sublime’, ‘juissance’ which can be the main axes of this collection, he explains clearly that he will point to problematics of such as literary-historicalstandpoint, subject-content standpoint, formaltechnical standpoint, the established way of searching the modern Korean poetry, and a distinctive method of fusion and consilience. In 『Poetic Accomplishment of the avant-guarde and Sublime』, he looks into the poetry of Yoo ha, Ham Sung-ho, Ham Min-bok/Sung Ki-wan, Suh Junghak, and Lee Won in the genealogical view and discriminates them from the Korean avant-garde pop poetry and even its continuity. In 『A Poetic Genealogy of Horror and Illusion』, we may inquire into the phase of uneasiness, horror and illusion appearing in the poetry of Lee Sang of 1930’s, of Park Sang-soon and Lee Soo-Myung of 1990’s, and of Kim Min-jung and Lee Min-ha of 2000’s.
The allegory in the second part <Allegory and Melancholy> does not have only the traditional meaning sending instructive messages to reality but also the mental concept that is more of a rhetorical way of expression and expresses implicatively the realistic level of history and includes the world view and historical view; that is to say, it means Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory. The author observes how Lee Changgi, in his poetry, combined various skills (such as allegory, montage, simile or parody etc) ironically embodying the real life of hardships and mysteriously made poetic spaces; while classifying Huh Soo-kyung’s works into four poetic periods and reexamining with what continuity and how those change and develop, he researches aesthetic peculiarity and formational principle for each period. And he approaches into the structure of meaning deeply, illuminating the layers of allegory both on surface and into the depth threedimensionally in Lee Yun-joo’s poetry showing the poetic resistance through linguistic breakaway and aesthetic ripple. And he catches the peculiarity, a kernel in Shim Bo-sun’s poetry, traces the network and thinks over the timely status, and in Shin Yong-mok’s poetry, finds out the poetic memorizing skill to understand the actual existence through the metropolitan’s surface. Also, he chases how Kim E-deum keeps and changes his poetic characteristics gushing out the hurts and suffering through his compulsive, hysterical confessing voice. In Hwang Sung-hee’s poetry, he also can read out prominently the tension that allegories, small or grand, produced, mutually working with each other.
In the third part <Sublime and Juissance> the author confirms the close relations between the sublime of Kant and Lyotard through Juissance and Benjamin’s concept of allegory, examining several poets’ works both in forms and contents. He presents poetics of sublime as an aesthetic key of Kim Myung-in’s poetry and studies ‘ontology of death’ in 『Autobiography of Death』 in which Kim Hye-soon’s poetic journey is condensed. And he classifies Choi Seung-ja’s works into two periods, the former and the latter, and sheds new light on her poetry’s continuity, distinction, poetic characteristics per period and per poem. As for Kim Min-jung’s works, studying it by structure and by historically changing aspects he figures out that she has developed her works in the direction of increasing strength and density poetically. He pays close attention to Kim An’s poetry that has achieved fusing aesthetics and ethics successfully and Jung Han-ah’s poetry in which ironical aesthetics shines brightly testifying the world-wide imperfection and misery in a strong negative view.
The fourth part <Symbol and Beauty> consists of the collections of Lee Kun-chung, Sung Yoonsuk, and Yi Hye-mi, theoretical reviews on Kim Kwang-kyu’s works and poetic theories on Choi Dong-ho, Won Koo-shik and Choi Jung-rye. We may conclude that whatever is just about one book or about the entire poetic theories, in Oh Hyungyup’s critical techniques do stand out his sincerity and steadiness to strive to reach the aesthetic origin, grasping the entire world of poets, and to go further into the genealogical position.
In this ‘forced’ indoor life time when we may read more and deeply thanks to ‘social distancing’, it will be a benefit to have time to be newly acquainted with the contemporary poets, or to read them again.
Son Hee Editor / Translated by Park Eun-su
* 《Cultura》 2021 May (Vol. 83) *
