Transformation and Idea Formation in the Poetry of Seo Jeong-ju

An interesting feature of “Midang” Seo Jeong-ju’s poetry is his poetic transformation.Midang said himself that his study of literary expression was a process of being influenced by the poets who went before him and then trying to overcome their influence. Accordingly his poetry draws a kind of “poetic contour map,” creating a position for Midang as a literary heir to Korean poetry. There is more than meets the eye in this confession of the process of composing poetry as combining passion for original creativity and studying the poets who came before. This statement served to make the absolute core of Midang Seo Jeong-ju’s sense of identity as a poet visible. It reflects the “traditionalism” and “original creativity” which made up the two pillars of modern Korean poetics, and the way in which they served as the most central “aesthetic norms” in the process through which his poetic world unfolded.

The linguistic expression in Midang’s first collection of poetry, Hwasajip, has at its base the “tradition” that he inherited through his study, but the life force contained within that expression is laid bare through a kind of Nietzschean physical, sensory revealing. The main characteristic of Midang’s poetic expression is its freewheeling nature, with image, musicality, direct language, and poetic context going back and forth between the lines. In terms of form, these characteristics are very clearly closely related to the formal character of the poets he cited as having influenced his work. However, rather than being based on his incredible technical ability, Midang’s originality lies in his sense of identity as a poet constantly tackling the question of “What is poetry?” Having opened his eyes to “loving one’s fate” through Nietzsche’s concept of the “human,” it is clear to see that the core of Midang’s poetry is taken up by his collection Hwasajip. In the transformation of his poetry then, rather than seeing a transformation in terms of form, we see a change in his fundamental outlook on life.

By accepting the physicality and instinct of “human becoming,” being faithful to one’s desires and a love of fate as one’s own volition, the poems in Hwasajip present a strong life force and bodily physicality. This was impossible to find in earlier works of poetry in Korean, and meant that Hwasajip was an epoch-making collection, bursting with unconditional human will. In an extremely unusual way for the time, Hwasajip shows a strong volition to go beyond the usual standards of beauty defined by what is “moral” or determined in relation to “good and evil.” In this regard, it created a landscape that had not been seen before in Korean poetry, and a poetic specificity that has been difficult to find since then.

The genius poet Yi Sang called Seo Jeong-ju a “terrifying character,” having read his poem “Leper.” In “Leper” Yi Sang saw a unique work of poetry, both desperate and sad, but also one that contained an unyielding will, a strong volition for life, more animal than human. “Leper” was a completely new kind of poem, unlike anything else in Korean poetry at the time. This short poem represents an unconditional “will for life” and “composure of one winning in spirit, transcending fate” that went far beyond the morality of the causes of the oppressed sentiments of the colonial subjects of the era. Therefore it could indeed be read as a “terrifying” work, a strong life force lay bare.

Examining Midang’s poems in Hwasajip, we can say that the way of expression, rather than representing proficiency or completeness, displays frank language, coming close to the spoken “voice” or raw “movement.” This voice plays out in the midst of circumstances wherein Midang’s “love of fate” and “reliance on life” are oppressed by objective external situations and hierarchies. To put it another way, in setting up all of the adverse conditions of the time, such as original sin, good and evil, the subjugated position of colonial subjects, and historical ordeals, as “fate,” Hwasajip was a collection of poetry that encapsulated being battered by such fate and coming out the other side, only to turn around and attempt to embrace it and hold it close.

 “Self-Portrait” is a poem that touches upon the impossibly deep subconscious abyss inherent in the feelings of inferiority due to the oppression suffered by colonial subjects. The pathological conditions of shame in the concepts of “blood,” refusal to “repent” and being either a “convict” or an “idiot” show that, for the narrator, there is already no chance that an escape will be granted. This sense of despair faced with obstruction on all sides is a feeling that appears frequently in the poems in Hwasajip, including “Wall,” and in works written later in the colonial period, such as “Ode to the West Wind.”

In this period, Midang strove to go beyond the despairing reality, which came close to complete degradation or terrible fate by means of human volition or superhuman life force. This is something he accomplished and successfully expressed in “Self- Portrait.” The images of blood and refusal to repent are at once an outright refusal of a cursed fate and at the same time a complete embrace of it. Inside the love of one’s fate which does not deny all that stems from divine punishment but rather draws it near, feelings like shame and sorrow are still present; but in this context such feelings are understood separately from their negative connotations. On the contrary, every single emotion becomes the object of aesthetic appreciation or spiritual inquiry. Far beyond the boundaries between good and evil, pleasure and displeasure, the posture of embracing destiny with spiritual will is a form of imagined triumph and comes close to being a kind of aesthetic experience. In fact, the accomplishment of both “Leper” and “Self-Portrait” draw near to a form of paradoxical aesthetics.

While Midang’s poems written during the colonial period, including those in Hwasajip, display a strong will to resist universality with the will of the individual striving to transcend historical violence, in the 1940s, quite unexpectedly, the traditional world of “Yi Dynasty porcelain” and sky-colored celadon became a strong theme in his poetry. We can begin to find an explanation for this change by considering his activities during this time. Seo Jeong-ju was married in 1938 and, following the publication of Hwasajip, he had a son in January 1940. Then, in October of the same year, he left for Manchuria alone, and stayed there until early February 1941. It seems as though his travels to Manchuria were made out of economic necessity, but from the fact that his travels were so short we might imagine that it was a period of unbearable wandering and drudgery. In this period, it appears as though traditional beauty, such as that of antiques and Yi dynasty porcelain, is what filled his inner emptiness and bolstered his sense if identity.

While resignation and tradition are very much in opposition to Nietzsche’s love of fate and volition, they also share a point of commonality. In the way that these two approaches do not accept within any value or external fate, they in fact resemble one another. If resignation or adaptation are fundamentally an abandonment of oneself, a voluntary defeat, then loving one’s fate is a kind of “triumph of spirit.” These two are both a kind of “pose” or “demeanor,” and ultimately boil down to the same form. In this way, Midang’s poetry shows a process of transformation from an aesthetic form that gushes forth with spiritual triumph, physical life, and volition, to an aesthetic form that conceals and suppresses life through defeat and adjustment.