A Study on the Fantasy in the Poems by Kim Jong-Sam

김종삼 시에 나타난 환상성 연구

The purpose of this study was to investigate the fantasy, which was one of the aesthetic characteristics of Kim Jong-sam's poetry, in his poems. Fantasy connotes a variety of meanings in literature and is often called by different names such as fancy, reverie, and daydream. In this study, fantasy was used as the term with which to analyze the poet's works based on the theory by Freud since literary works were not fantastic epic art of various kinds describing unrealistic materials or events but the unconscious expressions of the desires that didn't exist in reality and were suppressed psychologically where they emerged visibly. Taking those perspectives, discussions were made as follows; first, there are the poet's original experiences and fantasy world where reality meets with fantasy. The poet escapes to the inner world by using a range of psychological mechanisms with a distance derived from the gap between reality and his fantasy. Even in such a case, his original experiences serve as the storage room for his works. Going through a series of events including the country's taking back its independence, splitting into two Koreas, and fighting in war, he loses his place to find peace, and his experiences settle down as his imagination. Second, he embodies a distant world from reality as a medium to bring an ideal fantasy world in his projections of real space and Utopia. They are mostly his works written in omission and control, which are his signature writing styles. The objects who led a similar life to his are replaced or identified by him via defense mechanism. Especially, music exercises the power of imagination to lead the works and plays a role of striking harmony between the two heterogeneous worlds. And third, the biggest portion of his poetry is taken up by his works in the late period, when he suffers from his drinking habit, poverty, and disease and has death right around the corner. He wrote poems in which he embodied the disappearance of beings in beautiful images. But inside the poems are the overlapping images of his original experiences, punishment ceremony, and disappearing time, which work together to offer fantasy themes. So far, the aesthetic characteristics of his poems were examined from the perspective of fantasy. In the study, it's suggested that his original experiences and imagination hidden in his consciousness played a huge mediating role, which, however, seems only the tip of the iceberg. In future, there should be ongoing researches on the status and aesthetic values of his poetry and on the parts that didn't get solved in the study.