초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Hu Mingshu (1949~1977), born in Guiping, Guangxi, was representative of the men of letters in Guangxi. Hu’s literary works cover various genres, such as novel, poetry, prose, fairy tale and review. However, there has not been adequate research on him; the reason is that his works embody salient features of the age and consciousness of resistance. In the1930s and 1940s, Hu Mingshu found two literary magazines, Poetry Monthly and Poetry ; but there are huge gaps in the study of his poetics and poems, especially his poems whose subject matter is Korea. Based on the poems concerning Korea Hu Mingshu created and poetics he proposed before 1949, this paper explores his understanding of Korea reflected in his literary works, and has drawn the conclusions as follow. First, Hu Mingshu’s poem, “Now is the Time: Calls for Korean and Taiwanese”, showed the friendship between Korea and China and the two countries’ community consciousness. The affection expressed in his poem was identical with what Chinese scholars perceived as the friendship of Korean and Chinese revolutionaries. However, it was the assistance offered by Korea to China that Hu Mingshu focused on, and he argued that the Korean Army of Volunteers organized Anti-Japanese campaign in Northeast China during the War against Japanese and “they helped China in the war against Japanese aggression”. From the word “helped”, it can be noted that Hu Mingshu put more emphasis on the “revolutionary friendship Korea showed to China” than on the friendship of Korean and Chinese revolutionaries. Second, Hu Mingshu’s understanding of Korean literature was also different from others. Chinese scholars then were still preoccupied with the China-centric thoughts which prevailed before modern times, so they believed that modern Korean literature failed to go deep into Chinese civilization, thus unable to mount to the world literary standards. Hu Mingshu, nevertheless, held that Koran literature embodied Korea’s national characters and vitality, and therefore reached the world literary standards. His understanding was derived from his principles of writing — “the creation of narrative poems is based on the acquired refinement, knowledge, life experience, observation and intellectuality, etc.” Such writing principle was integrated into and epitomized by his poem, A Korean Woman, which not only mirrored his historical consciousness and intellectual refinement, but also revealed the literary and artistic values of poetry. In this poem, Hu Mingshu depicted the reality of Korea in a temperate and imaginative way, expressing his wishes and hopes for the future of Korea. Overall, Hu Mingshu’s poems concerning Korea demonstrated his understanding of the modern history of East Asia and his affection for Korea. In addition, Hu Mingshu was opposed to the poetics proposed by Guo Moruo and Huang Yaomian. The argument between Hu Mingshu and Ji Zong over the relationship between emotions and poetry is comparable to the controversy over techniques in modern Korean poetry, so a comparative study can be conducted to enrich the comparative studies and literary exchange between Korean and Chinese literature.
