단시형과 암시의 방법

Forms of Short Poems and the Way of Allusion - Haiku, Sijo, and French Poetry

This paper discusses the potentiality of short poems in the aspect of the soul of poetry that doesn’t just ‘talk’ but alludes the human mind with their relationship with objects and lets the readers interpret it. Comparing haiku, sijo, and French poetry, it obviously seems to be East Asian phenomena that short poems are well established as an excellently fixed form of poetry. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of the greatest works in English poetry that has 10,565 lines, long poems are general in the West. But haiku has only 17 words on 5-7-5 structure, the five word poem(五言絶句) has 20 syllables and the seven word poem(七言絶句) has 28 syllables, and sijo has upward of 45 syllables. The fascination of short poems is that it ‘wholly expresses’ the object ingeniously and that it ‘directly focuses’ on one subject such as a profound scenery or compassion which is familiar to everyone. And Basho and Mallarme wanted to go beyond this. The essence of poetry is to expose and express, to say conversely, to detour, to allude, and to let the readers slowly experience the hidden joy of it. And East Asian poetry can be said that it is most substantial to its essence. Sijo is eminently achieving the advancement of not only lyric poems but also satirical and allegorical poems. So the essence of allegory in Korean sijo is to suppress the extreme sorrow, vexation, or grudge, and to reveal the unbearable and unspeakable human anxiety by touching the core with short words and leaving a deep impression with wit and satire.