earticle

영어

In Chae-Hun Cho’s poems, images of‘day-moon’,‘azaleas’or ‘dandelions’sometimes involve ambiguous and opaque meanings which could not be easily related to before-and-after context of each poem. But we should take focus on the fact that the images meant his family figuration centering around mother. His family configuration which these images include, shows some meanings of lack and damage stemmed from various sufferings such as hunger, starvation and so forth. In his poems, for example, those images continue to be deeply related to the consciousness of lost-mother or lost-family. These images show the consciousness of lost-family, which seems to be originated from his strong attachment for family. The dream in his childhood wanting him to live and grow under the protection of affluent family, is embodied through images of‘day-moon’‘, azaleas’ or‘dandelions’. Nuclear family is a result of the modern age. Before the modern times, only the upper class covering confucian intellectuals could live upon the base of large family (or extended family) system. In the medieval age, lower classes such as villains or serfs did not have any rights to compose their own family. It, therefore, was possible only after the modern age that all members of the society composed their family. Of course, it would develop under the base of socio-economic foundation that helped them to gain economic independence necessary for the formation of family. But liberty and freedom as the foundation of family construction, even in the modern age, was never permanent. Patriarchical authorities as prime mover of family composition, rapidly be weakened with the development of women’s economic power and their self-consciousness. Nowadays family communities really show strong bonds between members no longer. The meanings of family figuration inherited in images of day-moon, azaleas and dandelion, seem to have been a result of the process of modernization in Korea. So, in the present times affected by postmodernism, it is natural that young poets of Korea are not interested in those issues such as family figuration and family-bonded consciousness. Because they, consciously or unconsciously, regard these issues as old or timeretarded.