It may be said that the spirit of Shilla is one of the descriptionsattached, during the 1950s, to the poetic world of Seo Jung-ju, one which he had sought to build, roughly from the 1940s to 1960s. This particular epithet does not belong to him personally, for its referent, the Shilla spirit of Seo, was the result of the combination between the discourses just before the Korean war, regarding the Orient and Shilla, with the poetic achievements of Seo in the 1950s. Moreover, the discourse surrounding Seo’s spirit of Shilla was closely related to the dynamics of the literary and academic fields of South Korea in 1950s. The study of "Seo’s spirit of Shilla" must, then, begin from a paradoxical presupposition that it does not belong to any specific individual.
To understand Seo’s spirit of Shilla, there are numeroussituational factors to consider. The discourses about the Orient or Shilla, far from remaining static, go through periodical changes from the 1940s to 1960s. Historical realities such as the establishment of the university system, the expansion of general education, and the experiences of the Korean War are also important. One must take into account the mobility of the literary field, facing all these events. These external factors were, in a very practical sense, closely linked with the forming process of the spirit of Shilla. The study of Seo’s spirit of Shilla, therefore, will be a study of the main element in the formation of the South Korean literary field.
Seo was a leading member of the so-called new generation, making its appearance in the mid-1930s. Compared to the literary youths of the 1920s, with experiences of studying abroad, the new generation of the 1930s had a sort of a middle-class habitus with its relatively scanty culturaland symbolic capital. The process through which they come to form the mainstream of the South Korean literary field after the Liberation was homologous with the formation of the field itself. Seo took an independent route even within this new generation, building up an original poetic world. When Choi Jae-seo called him the "Villon of Chosun" he was only clearly reflecting Seo’s status at the time, as well as implying the demands of the literary field. Seo, engrossed in testing out experimental poetry, to combat the "sensual poetry" of Jeong Ji-yong, was acknowledged by Lim Hwa as the ‘New Man of the New Generation’. Lim had been, in the debate over the new generation led by Kim Dong-lee, supported by the participators of the magazine Munjang(the literary field), a strong critic of the new generation, describing it as a bunch of imitators lacking in newness. Lim was seeing the future of the literary field in Seo, after this debate. The newness he witnessed was homologous with the indefinite nature of the new generation’s class habitus. In the literary field of the earlier half of the 1940s, Seo’s poetic world showed not only that of a member of the new generation, but also an exceptional avant-garde, an aesthetic property.
In face of the literary field’s demand for an aesthetics beyond that of Jeong Ji-yong’s sensual poetry, Seo tested out the experimental poetry of Japan, Britain and France, etc. His attempts with it in his poems Buhwal("The resurrection"), Bhom ("Spring"), etc. can be understood as the peculiarity of his acceptance of Rilke. In the maturing process of his work with experimental poetry, Seo grafts, rather belatedly in the early half of the 1940s, the Oriental Classical world onto his poetry. Seo’s world of poetry during that period, with its invention of an "Oriental Rilke," needs to be examined as an important example of a relative autonomy against a violence symbolique, namely the Oriental discourse during the period of the New Regime
The poetic world of Seoduring the latter half of the 1940s, after the Liberation, was heightened as an Oriental world. The medium of the Orient gives a false impression, that Seo’s poetic world is a single entity before and after the Liberation. However, the discourse of the Orient was one thing before the Liberation, and quite another afterwards. The Oriental discourse during the colonial period was a kind of dominant discourse, but after the Liberation it was no longer anything of the kind. The poetic world of Seo, in its intimacy with the Oriental discourse, was placed under quite different influences before and after the Liberation. In the confusing social movements of Seo in those times, his poetic world showed the socialistic eclecticism, characteristic of the Oriental discourse of the times.
On the other hand, Seo was actively conforming himself to the system of the university, the newly established source of power during the period of American military government. In his experiences as a "post-Liberation professor" he was succeeding in expanding the poetic world he had pursued, into an organized poetics. In this process Seo comes to reorganize a coherent poetic world, by projecting the self-awareness of the latter half of the 1940s onto the poems written in the colonial period.
Works such as Buhwal, Khot("The Flower"), Choonyangyumoon ("Choonyang’s Farewell Letter"), Gukhwayeopeseo ("Beside the Chrysanthemum") are reorganized into a line, hrough an imagination befitting the moving cloud leading to rain, appearing in the Book of Changes, as well as the medium of Rilke’s literary theory. Other works as Seokgulgwanseumeunorae("The Song of Avalokitesvara in the Stone Cave") and Choochunsa("Words on the Catalpa Swing") show the realization of a "Korean statue" as the result of a contemplation on Rilke’s idea of form. The two lines of works prove the considerable progress in the Oriental poetic world of Seo during the latter half of the 1940s.
The 1950s saw Seo evaluated as a poet of national standing. South Korea at this period can be seen as a suitable environment for having a national poet. Firstly, it was the first age in which all people could approach literature, through its high proportion of educated nationals. Secondly, there was the nationally shared experience of the Korean War. Seo went beyond the positionof an outstanding poet and through a common experience of fleeing from war, building a poetic world that overcame the pains resulting from the loss of land; he was able, on a national level, to gain valid readers who could read it. In 1956, with all these conditions sufficiently mature, Seo was recognized as the national poet of the 1950s, with the publication of Seojungjushiseon("The Collection of Seo’s Poetry").
On the other hand, during the same period the so-called literary-professors came into being, through the encounter of the South Korean literary field and the new symbolic power of the university system. These accepted New Criticism and reproduced the Oriental discourse. New Criticism surrounding the university, led by Baek Chul, was pursued with its counter-movement of the Oriental poetics project, with its center in the magazine Hyundaemoonhak("Contemporary Literature"). Seo’s spirit of Shilla may be looked upon as an independent pure poetics that the South Korean literary field of this period helped to create with Seo, under the influence of the academic field. Seo, seeking to surpass surrealism by a "pursuit of unconsciousness," combined with Freudian psychoanalysis, wants the juxtaposition of former life and reincarnation, and that of the everyday life and transcendence. This poetics of juxtapositions leads to the spiritual encounters, spiritual relationships, power of actual sensations, understanding or predestined affiliations found in the spirit of Shilla. Seo’s idea of the power of the poet was an ability to connect, mingle and feel objects with a real sense. This ability is not inherent, but is achieved through a lifetime of discipline.
In the 1950s, with the task bestowed by the age in front, namely that of pursuing an "Oriental Method", Chun Sang-byung evaluated Seo’s study of Shilla as a sacrifice equivalent to the martyrdom of Lee Chadhon. Seo’s spirit of Shilla was ignored during the1960s, in its process of the symbolic struggle of the literary field. After this period, Chun Sangbyung laments that all the poets who set out to discover the Oriental method had given up, with only himself loyal to the task. Poets following the steps of Seo with the hope of seeing a new world of Oriental poetics, based on Seo’s poetry, had lost strength. The loss of their competence is homologous to the positioning of the discourse criticizing and deconstructing the spirit of Shilla, dismissing it as an absurd project. The logic of Kim Jong-gil and Kim Woo-chang during the 1960s show the way in which the spirit of Shilla was deconstructed. But by throwing a light upon the process through which Kim Soo-young and Kim Choon-soo appropriated the wide influence of Seo’s spirit of Shilla, in their idiosyncratic way, it may be understood that the aesthetic core of the spirit of Shilla was actually passed down.
The 4-19 generation, monopolizing the symbolic capital of the South Korean literary field after the 1960s, carries out an excluding discourse alienating the spirit of Shilla as a successful-but-tensed "Oriental Lyrical School,"and appropriates Kim Choon-soo and Kim Soo-young to adopt them into their generation’s habitus, building the two poets up as the symbolic capital of them all. Rediscovering how Seo’s spirit of Shilla was formed and excluded is knowing how the South Korean literary field came to be in its present condition, and should become a foundational work, thinking how the now-here literary field should go on in the future.