풍자시론 : 김기림의 엘리엇ㆍ스펜더 읽기

Theory of Satiric Poetry: Ki-Rim Kim"s Reading of T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender

  This paper traces Ki-Rim Kim"s readings or T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender in his prose works focusing on the notion of "satire." While he was writing the satiric long poem - The Weather Chart - in 1935, Kim frequently criticized not only Eliot"s accurate but passive portrayal of the status quo but also his limited use of satire whose (self-)mocking style could help overcome the sentimental romanticism of "sorrow, grief, mourning, and despair" but could not reach the level of "rage" to overturn the established situation. Kim accepted Spender"s realistic portrayal of the socio-political events as an alternative to Eliot"s symbolic portrayal of spiritual waste land, and Spender"s hope for the future or new society as distinguished from Eliot"s indiscriminate or vague hope for the spiritual regeneration. In the mid-thirties when even the "camouflaged aestheticism" could not be available for Korean writers under the Japanese colonial rule, Kim tried to propose the theory or satiric long poem not only to set up the theory or his modernist long poem and but to reveal his desire to overturn the colonial order indirectly by having recourse to Eliot and Spender.