This study analyzing the passions as pride and humility in living-poems of Park Mok-Wol focuses mainly his middle years" poems and introduces David Hume"s theory of passions of pride and humility as a theoretical framework to illuminate accurately Park"s attitude and valuation on pains of life and to elucidate his process of making them lyric. Hume"s theory of passions basing on empirical ‘perceptions’ is of a framework to analyze Park"s poems by reason, firstly, that possibilities of passions springing in daily life are more from experiences than from abstract ideas, and, secondly, that passions being said by Hume are not from mere senses but from reflections on impressions, that is, that the ‘reflected impressions’ are bases of passions of Park as a poet experiencing life with his own body and simultaneously reifying his inner sufferings from it into poems.
The passion of humility in Park"s poems springs in difficult and weary conditions of life, but its essential cause has a complexity not to be simplified only into poverty. His poetic self cowers more by his loss of humanity than by his poverty, and falls into a situation of non-existence when the passion of humility erasing dynamics and vitality from existence reaches its extreme. In addition, when this passion is dominant, his inside is captured by an anxious consciousness without firm orientation of life. Just as this passion dose, the passion of pride also springs in diverse conditions of life. The pride and mental reward appraising the self-sacrifice as a valuable act make the passion of pride possible despite poverty. The self full of this pride recovers its peace and neatness of daily life and affirms its orientation of life. Park as a poet with this pride balances his life with a wisdom of moderation and fixes his pride into his spiritual poise.
Synthesizing passions of pride and humility in his poems shows that his poor condition of life operates commonly in them but itself is not a direct cause producing these passions. That cause is, concretely, the mental reward(pride) of the dehumanization(humility) or valuable sacrifice gearing into poverty. Consequently, His agony in daily life is not a really poor situation but a problem of his dignity or pride. This attitude reveals evidently his plain and noble spiritualist orientation, and therefore is to be seen as an individual opposition against fetishism or philistinism.