This study briefly examines the trajectory of the Chinese modernity in Yi Yooksa"s literary works in its adoption and transformation during the Japanese Colonial Occupation of Korea. In the first place, I look into the literary consciousness of Yooksa occupying a deity in the Korean literary circle like Lu Xun(魯迅) in China in the respect of modern ego. He was consciously trying to establish a brand new oriental cultural atmosphere in needs for the continuous relationships between the East and the West. He imagined and embodied the
ways to breaking down the western modern crisis, authorizing more reliable humanistic modernity, and constructing a new nation-state through Chinese oriental tradition.
Secondly, this study compares Yi Yooksa with Chinese writers such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo(郭沫若), Gu Ding(古丁) and Xu Zhimo(徐志摩) with the methods of text-centered critique. Lu Xun was interested in the practical aspects of literature to induce people"s enlightenment by negating Chinese tradition in order to accomplish modernity. On the contrary, Yi Yooksa was interested in construing a futuristic project for constructing a new modernity by overcoming colonial situations and the modern valorization of the tradition by
partly preserving its value. He attempted not just to accept the Western modernity but to construct a new modernity by re-configurating the tradition.
Yooksa trained dreams and passions towards future with a collection of poems, A Goddess (女神), by Guo Moruo in the early stage of the Chinese modern literature arguing changes of the way Chinese understand things in the world. Yooksa borrowed the poetic images as the ‘flowing tide in the sea,’ the ‘fire dog swallowing the sun (celestial dog)’ from Guo Moruo. Yooksa was practicing the solidarity and friendship with Guo Moruo, emphasizing the equipment of the developed modern ego.
I also analyze the modernity in Yooksa"s works by illuminating his literary activities translating and introducing Alleys(小港), a novel written by Gu Ding, a typical pro-Japanese writer. Yooksa differs from Gu Ding in the sense that he imagined the modern East through
a balanced perspective without privileging the West. For Yooksa paid attention to Gu Ding not because of the latter"s pro-Japanese orientation but because of the humanitarian sympathy and compassion in his critical description of Manchuria. It is roughly estimated that from the comparison of Yi Yooksa to Xu Zhimo, the former seems to be influenced significantly by the latter considering Yi translated many pieces of Xu"s works among other modern poems. Yi could attract the humanitarian sympathy and compassion in Xu"s poems. After all, Yi"s literary orientation resembles Xu"s in that he constructed an idiosyncratic world of poetry without subscribing for any literary factions while participating in resistant struggles to liberate his nation from Japan at the risk of his own life. However, Yi differs from Xu in that he applied his own world view to the Xu"s poetry style.
In conclusion, Yi Yooksa did not follow the trajectory of the reckless acceptance of
modernity through Japan as many Korean intellectuals did, but groped for his own way to receive it through China.