This study aims to explore satirical poems produced by two resistant poets who were active during the Japanese colonial rule, named Lee Sang Hwa with the different pen name of Sang-wha and Geumseok. The assessment of the poets has so far remained mere...
This study aims to explore satirical poems produced by two resistant poets who were active during the Japanese colonial rule, named Lee Sang Hwa with the different pen name of Sang-wha and Geumseok. The assessment of the poets has so far remained merely impressionist criticism or a brief criticism but the earnest analysis and research into them has been mostly untouched.
In an effort to lay the theoretical groundwork for analyzing satirical poetic works of Lee Sangwha, this study examines the purpose, function and its variations of the satire. Moreover, in order to analyze the aesthetic category, it also tries to study the mutual relations of humour, irony, wit and parody as the subcategories of farce. For the in-depth research of Lee Sangwha's satirical poems, this study looks into the political and social circumstances of the 1960s, the era functioning as a foundation of satire, as well as the issues of division in the historical period of the 1960s' literary works.
The inner consciousness shown in Lee Sangwha's satirical poetries has many variations; critical recognition stirred by skepticism over religion, sarcasm over the dominating ideology of the 1960s, false consciousness of intellectuals and satirical response to decadent sexually generation of the day, etc. His poetry, as many other poetic works of 1950s did, began with deep inquiries into the wounds of the wars and their causes. He found that the Providence of God and free will of human beings were inconsistent and went on to experience a cognitive turnaround; to reveal his true nature before God and himself rather than to pursue internal innocence by resorting to God.
He set to produce the satirical poems in earnest while severely criticizing the intellectual's false consciousness and dominating the ideology of the day. The critical recognition of the ideology of the government then, which held anti-communism and economy-first policies were delivered through bitter sarcasm over omnipotent ruling clique and intellectuals. In the 1960s, the quantitative growth led by the economy-first line brought about mental devastation and its negative derivative was revealed by utter sexual decadence in the city. In his poems, which are sexually enough to be referred to as "sexual custom poem", detailed descriptions of sexually-ruined urban areas are presented without any filtration. His poems were purposeful in a sense that they didn't lend themselves to mere criticism over sexual decadence but they were rather aimed at the recovery of ethical awareness.
The techniques Lee adopted in his satirical poems are diverse; abusive and vulgar language, caricature of the names of characters and their duties and using homonyms of certain Chinese characters. Such techniques are found in our classical literary works and a group of modern satirical poets' works as well. They provide critical criteria in order to diachronically analyze Lee'satirical poems in the perspective of 'tradition of satire'.
Undoubtedly, Lee Sangwha's satirical poems show their limitation in that they failed to present a specific solution, since he lacked an understanding on the structural contradiction lying beneath the 1960s' industrialization, and failed to create new poetic words by extending their meanings as he played with the words. They also didn't draw any particular attention as they had come to lose their sarcastic feature by the 70s and merely maintained a contemplative stance over time.
Despite these limitations, however, his satirical poems are meaningful in that they have internally inherited some techniques which appeared in classical poems. The 1960s were the era when the earnest quest of literary orientation, such as tradition vs modernism and innocence vs participation, was being pursued. His critical perception on the society of the day that he revealed through his poems shows that social participation of literature is quite useful in criticizing the ways of the world. Furthermore, an independent significance can be found in that he carried on exploring a new field with a firm determination to cultivate sexual literature in the 1960s when a direct reference to sex was strictly tabooed.