Poetics of alienation and restoration -An Study on Kim Hyun-Seung's Poetry-

소외와 회복의 시학 -김현승 시 연구-

This paper is a study of "poetry therapy", a subject now in lively in literary discussion circles. Modern literary text attaches great importance to the readers' response. As such, there is growing interest in the effects of communication brought on by the interaction of participants in a discourse. Poetry, in essence, has therapeutic attributes of treating, through an aesthetic psychology, destruction resulting from the alienation from life and psychological pain of distortion. The rise of the concept of eco-poetry and the capacity for psychological cleansing and adjustment (which restores balance through communication and psychological circulation) is a reflection of new trend in research - approaching the alienation felt by modern people through restoration of sense of life. Although Kim Hyun-seung's life and the road his poetry took was not smooth, he nevertheless was firm in his sustained effort to unify socio-ethical conscience and conscience of faith through the process of spiritual inquiry. The most outstanding aspects of Kim Hyun-seung's aesthetic achievement lie in his contribution toward the therapeutic capacity of modern poetry. Kim Hyun-seung's poetryhas the following effects: 1)The therapeutic capacity of modern poetry, through catharsis at large, does not remain only at the level of cleansing and adjustment. 2)The therapeutic capacity of modern poetry has the function of emptying out the self through more fundamental spiritual awakening and insight. 3)Only then can one truly realize the transcendence of being a true self as well as the balanced inquiry of spirituality which can be described as "emptying out".