For this thesis, I have surveyed the poetic achievement by Yi Jeong-gu who, as one of superb men of letters during King Seonjo’s Reign, was active at the center of the contemporary literary circle, and investigated the value and status of Yi Jeong-gu’s poetry.
In Chapter Ⅱ The Background of Yi Jeong-gu’s Creative Work, I have focused on his literary activity and life as a government official to examine his thoughts and acquaintances, the tendency of the contemporary literature, and his literary view. Yi led his literary activity and life as a government official while experiencing wars and political tumults from King Seonjo’s reign to Gwanghaegun and King Injo. Ye’s writing skills made major contribution to overcoming pending issues in politics and foreign affairs as well as other major issues facing the country in the face of continued factional strife and national turmoils. Especially through his four private travels and eight stints on official accompaniment, we can clearly see his life’s trajectory, who worked a literary bureaucrat. The poems that were written on those occasions were collected by period in Weolsajib.
Judging from Yi Jeong-gu’s ideas as seen in his thoughts and attitude on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, he was a scholar and statesman with Confucian thinking who believed in and asserted the legitimacy of Confucianism. As revealed in his Daehakgangeo, his philosophy staunchly followed the doctrines of Chu-tzu. Yet, in his daily life and writings, he showed conciliatory and receptive toward Taoism and Buddhism.
Yi was the cynosure among so many figures that led the literary community during King Seonjo’s Renaissance. Leading them and receiving their fresh influence, Yi’s literature grew. Always keeping a low profile and associating with a lot of men of letters through his unique generosity, he was able to expand his literary network through his sincerity. And it worked as the motive that provided diversity and plentiful subject matters for his poetic creation.
Under the influence of traditional Confucianism and based on the Establishment view of literature, Yi Jeong-gu thought that the rise and fall of letters were related to the purity and turbidness of energy and that the beauty and ugliness of poetry were grounded on the uprightness and viciousness of mentality. Yi was opposed the formalism that laid much store on poetic technique and decoration, pursued by those poets who worshipped the poetry of Song Dynasty, and poetry that was recondite and mysterious therewith. Such a position naturally connected to his preference of the poetic style of Tang Dynasty, which was followed by his practice in such poetic tenets.
In Chapter Ⅲ, I review the characteristics of Yi’s poetry in the four categories as follows.
First, in poetic purification of agonies, I conduct an analysis of his poems written during his government service, by classifying them into his soul searching related to his return to pastoral life, political worries, narratives, and comic sketches. While he looked like he was in pursuit of worldly success, Yi was having spiritual conflicts originating from the discrepancy between ideal and reality. Therefore, Yi tried to forget the torment with narrative and comic poems.
Second, by analyzing his poems written during his diplomat’s duties such as accompaniment to higher-ranked officials and private travels, I have verified Yi’s diverse inner topography which comprises his patriotic reflections, a traveler’s difficulties in foreign land, heartfelt friendship shared with men of letters and ordinary people of Ming Dynasty, his historical consciousness revealed in his passage through localities during his private travels, and his observations on the urgent situation towards the end of Ming Dynasty.
Third, I have discussed Yi’s inner consciousness projected in his intense adoration of natural landscape and the facettes of his consciousness that pursed poetic embodiment and share it.
Natural landscape was to Yi an object at once of eternal poetry and sharing in sentimental correspondence. Yi was excellent at esthetically capturing natural landscape. Water, as part of nature lying outside, meets with my heart inside to confirm their juncture, and embodying it in poetry, possesses it spiritually.
Fourth, as for the esthetics of grieving, I have recollected his special relationship with the dead mainly through his elegies. I have reviewed Yi Jeong-gu’s creative practice that conveys his commitment to acknowledging and remembering beyond death the deceased while granting meaning to death as what befalls all humans.
Chapter Ⅳ treats the expressional characteristics and tones of Yi’s poetry. His life was always busy, filled with gruelling routines, since he was a government official. Naturally, his life as such was dotted with impromptu poetry. Yi’s impromptu poetry arose from his on-spot feelings, and as Jo Ik put it, its expression was like floating clouds and streaming water. So, his impromptu poetry was touted far and wide, which can be said to be another feature of Yi’s poetry.
Not choosing to be controlled by the poetic form, Yi Jeong-gu diversified it to different cases. The minor difference found among his poems with five-word lines, a quatrain with seven-word lines, and poems with seven-word lines constitute proof that in versification, Yi wasn’t skilled in certain poetic forms only.
Yi’s poetry includes descriptive works, which expanded the role and function of poetry and strengthened literary sense with poems that carried various themes and contents, similar to morceaux. Yi was skillful in both verse and prose, and in poetry, with natural-born ability, he skillfully handled various poetic forms. So, he created narrative works, not in old writings that required formalities but in poetry with less restrictions on length or subject matter. When poetry wasn’t enough. he ensured depth of appreciation by employing lengthy titles or annotations and thereby creating long poems regardless of length. These expression techniques were very important features of his poetic creation.
Yi’s poetic style was described by Yang Chi-w?n of Ming Dynasty as broad-minded and carefree. Broad-mindedness and carefreeness wouldn’t describe everything about Yi’s poetry, but they are the traits of his poetry as attracted the attention of not only Koreans but also Chinese people.
Yi’s poetry, with its description of grand and vast nature and depiction of space in fast mobility, grants speed and liveliness to the poetic development, and expresses uplifting excitement and manly spirit through natural diction free from difficult classical allusions.
Through his protracted and boring bureaucrat’s life, he dreamed in vain of retiring to a pastoral life, so with every opportunity, he slaked his thirst through brief escapades. Untrammeled anywhere and full of free and lively spirit, Yi Jeong-gu’s poems excellently embody what carefreeness signifies.
Chapter Ⅴ has surveyed the significance of Yi’s sino-Korean poems in the literary history. As a person who led the literary circle during King Seonjo’s Renaissance, Yi Jeong-gu demonstrated excellent achievement not only in prose, but also in sino-Korean poetry. While aiming at the Flourishing Period of the Tang Dynasty, he treated various poetic subject matters to avoid imitation and create his own area in literary practice, and based on his nature-given talents, he achieved honest literature free from artificial qualifications, cutting a difference from Gwanin munhak (‘courtier literature’) of the earlier period. While some of his aims are shared with Gonganpai (公安派), its influence is not to be acknowledged. So, instead of regarding as the influences from Gonganpai all the tendencies of the late Joseon Period that seemed to be shared with Gonganpai, we should focus on their connection with the efforts by excellent poets like Yi Jeong-gu and the natural trend in the Joseon literary community.