한용운의 <님의 침묵>의 사유의 특성과 동양과 서양 사상의 회통

초록

Han Yong-woon (1879-1944)’s Silence of the Beloved(1926), is one of the most beloved poetry books in Korea. Han, as a Buddhist monk, a proponent of the Independence Movement, writer, etc., played many roles, and he saw it that his age was an age in which ‘one’s beloved (‘nim’) remained silent.’ This idea is related to the turbulent historical times he lived in. The unifying theme in his poetry book is the love of a female speaker towards her ‘beloved’. This design of a female speaker is an important characteristic. Here, ‘beloved’ (‘nim’) primarily signifies the lover with whom the speaker has parte, yet it includes other meanings that go beyond that level. "The loved one (‘nim’) is not only the beloved ; it is also everything yearned for." This quotation is taken from Han’s "Introduction" to Silence of the Beloved. In this Introduction where he explains the mixed meanings attached to ‘nim’, it is noteworthy that he mentions several foreign names. For instance, he mentions German philosopher Kant, and Giuseppe Mazzini, who played a central role in the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. There are, also, Jeanne d’Arc of France,Moses from the Bible, Indian poet R. Tagore, Sakyamuni of Buddhism. That so many foreign figures are mentioned in Han Yong-woon’s poetry book tells us about his intellectual wealth. The names that appear in Han’s works from East and West derive from his broad spectrum of reading and intellectual breadth, as well as his interest in their imaginations or achievements. Han became a Buddhist monk by a chance of fate. He also participated as one of 33leaders that led the March First Movement of 1919, and became imprisoned. After the imprisonment, he completed his manuscripts for Silence of the Beloved at the Baekdam Temple located in the Sulak Mountains of Kangwon Province. At that time, he had already completed his writings on Zen Buddhism, later published as Annotations on Ten Poems on Wisdom (十玄談 주해). And about 10 years prior to this, he had had published On Reformation of Korean Buddhism(1913, a book that strongly argues for reformation of Buddhist system). His central concerns before 1919 were directed towards, beyond Buddhism,the enlightenment of Korean society. His Buddhist philosophy was the result of his studies of many years on Korean and Chinese Buddhism, and of continuous practice of Zen meditations. One of his major concerns was the problem of how to reconcile and combine modern rationalism and Buddhism, within the context of Buddhist thinking. However, Silence of the Beloved is the result of his creative imagination that was created at a point when he had just turned poet, from being a monk as well as an Independence Movement proponent. In order to understand his poetry world, it is thus necessary to understand this poetry book as a whole, in addition to understanding his connection with the foreign names. The serial poems of the text are organized in the order of:"Introduction" – "Silence of the Beloved" – "I cannot know" – "I saw you" – "End of Love" – "To Readers (Epilogue)", in a dialectical manner. The basic hidden design of the text is as follows: from the sorrow of losing the beloved, to the hope of finding him again; from the sadness of parting, to finding the happiness of love. The basic motive of Han’s serial poems in Silence of the Beloved is the ‘dialectics of the female speaker’s mind,’involving the gap between her sacrificial love toward her beloved and the silence of her beloved. Here the ‘dialectics of the female speaker’s mind’results in the discovery of her great love and her conviction about the power of love. What is noteworthy here is that the ‘dialectics of the female speaker’s mind’ tells us about Han’s poetic imagination. This imagination embraces the images of figures such as those mentioned earlier, Kant, Mazzini, Jeanne d’Arc, Moses, Buddha, etc., within Han’s own historical reality, in which ‘the beloved’ remains silent, as well as in his life. Han searches for a new creative perspective and vision for his poetry writing with dynamic and combinational imagination. Han’s ‘dialectics of the mind’ in his poetic thinking, essentially,signifies the possibility for a new combination of rationalism and the Buddhist concept of ‘Void’. Han’s poems sing of a great love. At the same time, they are philosophical poems that seek for answers to questions about the conflicts between the life of a Buddhist monk and the life of an Independent Movement proponent, and between modern rationalism and Buddhist philosophy. Han’s poems were composed through a longtime process of encountering literature through the writings of the great thinkers of both East and West. Thus, works included Silence of the Beloved are works that reveal Han’s encounter with them.

키워드