예이츠와 김소월의 비교연구: 영문학자의 입장에서

Abstract

This essay examines Yeats’s influence on the poetry of Sowol Kim from a perspective of an English literature scholar. The Korean literati of the 1920s and 1930s enormously admired Yeats, a poet of Ireland, the then British colony. Indeed, Yeats was the most widely translated Western poet in Korea at that time. It is observed that many of the comparative studies of Yeats and Sowol conducted by Korean literature scholars lack a close analysis of the English texts of Yeats’s poetry as well as a knowledge of critical studies on it in English-speaking countries. This study reveals that most of Yeats’s works enjoying popularity among Koreans are deeply indebted to British Romanticism, which actually marked an early phase of Yeats’s poetic career. The main focus of this essay is on comparing Yeats’s two poems “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which drummed up most lively interest among the Korean literati, to some of Sowol’s poems including “Azaleas,” Sowol’s best-known poem. The present study incorporates into its comparative analysis of Yeats and Sowol not only a careful consideration of the historical and cultural backgrounds against which Yeats wrote his poems but also an overview of Western critical approaches to Yeats.