This paper studied on the origin of Sorrow and Tears incessantly being expressed in Uk Kim’s and in Yohan Ju’s works, especially in their early poetry. Apart from traditional poetry, which are with the fixed forms of verses, these poets are considered as pioneers of the Korean modern poetry. Their poetry is related to a melancholy, sorrow and the tears from the beginning. What are the sources of these kinds of emotion? The study represents that their poetic melancholy is from the reception of Verlaine’s poetry filled with a modern sentiment such as a melancholy and sorrow, sometimes based on a languor, called fin de siecle symptom.
It’s a widely acknowledged fact that the Korean modern poetry such as free verses, was born in the course of an introduction of the occidental modern poetries into the country. Uk Kim played a leading role in both the birth of the Korean modern poetry and its development by introducing many occidental poets such as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and so on. Nevertheless, we do not have much difficulty in observing emotive descriptions and expressions in Uk Kim’s poetry, which are very similar to the Verlaine’s melancholy. From these viewpoints of descriptions and expressions, the former should have been influenced by the latter. In case of Yohan Ju, he was introduced to French decadent poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine by reading their poetry translated in Japanese languages. Due this fact, an impact of the intertextuality from Verlaine to the Korean poets was found to have been occurred. Therefore, it is believed that a non-eloquent sadness and tears expressed in Uk Kim’s and Yohan Ju’s early poetry should necessarily be noted, because this “non-eloquent melancholy is one of the most remarkable characters in the Verlaine’s poetry.
To be more specific, Verlaine’s melancholy is a new sentiment, which is a quite distinctive expression or description from that of an ‘eloquent melancholy’ expressed by many romantic poets. As a decadent poet, Verlaine did not emphasize the melancholy as a poetic theme, but as a poetic rhythm, nuance, and landscape. For this reason, we can easily follow the musicality in Verlaine’s poetry, but it is very rare to find out the origin of the melancholy in his poetry. On the other hand, groundless tears are the common themes not only in the Verlaine’s poetry, but also those in Uk Kim’s and Yohan Ju’s. Overall, we are able to find that many tears from the non eloquent sadness in the two poets’ early works laid over the sentiment that Verlaine, a modern individual character, expressed in his poets with a new poetic language.