Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

In his discussion of some desirable tuning points in comparative literary studies, Henry H. H. Remark has emphasized the importance of literary approach to other forms of art. Understanding the significance of such a method of comparative literature, the present study focusses on three contemporary ...

In his discussion of some desirable tuning points in comparative literary studies, Henry H. H. Remark has emphasized the importance of literary approach to other forms of art. Understanding the significance of such a method of comparative literature, the present study focusses on three contemporary Korean poets who have transferred Mark Chagall′s paintings into their poetry: Youngtae Kim, Chunsoo Kim, and Sunghun Lee. They are usually evaluated as surrealist/modernist in our literary circles. In transforming Chagall′s paintings into his poems, Youngtae Kim has incorporated a variety of surrealist mosaic techniques such as montage and collage. The resultant peculiarity of his poetry makes it hard to lay bare the correspondence or similarities between his poetic world and the world of Chagall′s artistry. It is nonetheless possible to see how Kim, as a poet and painter, had interpreted Chagall′s world with a bird′s-eye view of it. Chunsoo Kim′s "Snow Falling on the Village of Chagall" relates specially to one of Chagall′s paintings, "I and My Village." The present study has taken notice of this correlation in sorting out some basic elements of poetic transfiguration. One of the techniques employed in the poem under discussion is that of juxtaposing the Russian village of Chagall and the Korean village the poet visualizes, with the effect of putting two national traditions in contrast. A reading of the poem reveals that it is not so much the result of a detailed analysis of the painting as a revival of its lingering impression as a whole. In Sunghun Lee′s poetry, surrealist techniques are again a hallmark. But his method of transferring the images of the paintings into his poems falls somewhere between those of Youngtae Kim′s and Chunsoo Kim′s: it is akin to the ′bird′s-eye method′ of the former and shares the impressionistic touch with the latter, but at the same time Lee is analytical by disposition and opts for concrete descriptions. ′Love,′ ′farm,′ and ′time′ are the keywords that are brought under discussion in the present study. There is a growing demand in the current international comparative literary studies for broadening the area of comparative literature. This study hopes to be a small contribution to endorsing the importance of comparative approach to fine arts.