A study on the structure of ‘difference’ in Lee Seong-bok’s poetry

Abstract

This paper tried to examine the ‘thoughts of poetry’ about what the poem wants to say through the structure of ‘difference’ by examining 󰡔Wave pattern marks on the forehead of the moon󰡕, Lee Seong-bok’s meta poem. ‘Repetition of the same object’ does not aim for identity. The repetition of the same object or situation is ultimately a process in which the speaker repeatedly thinks about the meaning of the object of the poem through ‘difference’. In other words, the same object reveals its potential through desire or memory, and is accompanied by a difference every time it is repeated. This difference makes an object a sign as the driving force to be reborn as a different object every time the same object is repeated. Since an object without a fixed essence cannot be settled into meaning, it cannot be thought through language, but involuntary thinking is forced every time. The difference between heterogeneous objects is sublimated to transcending taboos or dismantling boundaries. In this sublimated world, the narrator does not lose his living power until the very end. This is ‘separated’ from the system of meaning and escapes towards one’s own world or is revealed through a new existence in the atypical world. Although this world of poetry is an extension of the existing world made of language, it forms a point where thinking with language is impossible because it is a world free from language.