Abstract

Unlike general perceptions for Lee Young-do putting priority on private things over literature and a peripheral evaluation method on being a "female writer," this study aimed at exploring into what how much her literature world was in pursuit of public things and putting them into practice. The start of Lee's literature was escape from a private sphere. Lee Young-do's desire for public things, which was deeply incorporated into her life made her acknowledge that she herself was "the Ryu Gwan-soon of the future," which was originated from the incident of her childhood that was accepted as her destiny. As a result, since publishing a collection of letters with Ryu Chi-hwan, Lee Young-do started to replace a private relation with a public one. And based on the fund generated from the collection, she set up the "Jeong-un Literature Award, named after her pseudonym and made her institutionalized and a power. The transfer of her name to a material condition for literal power was also resulted from her efforts for fulfilling her historical duty granted by her herself in an ethnic and nation unit sphere. Her public desires stands out in her political․historical awareness which has been revealed in a Sijo text. Sijo roughly translates to a traditional Korean lyric form consisting of three long lines. The image of the "Lamp"structured in the lowest bottom of a public desire reveals an enlightened will which lights a dark night and embraces a newly-dawned day while sacrificing oneself. The Lamp is transformed into "The Azaleas" which is symbolic of the young victimized souls who were fallen for 4·19revolutionary spirit and democracy, which also shows a public will of Lee Young-do who self-acknowledged as the "Ryu Gwan-soon of the future." Itcould be safely said that the geographical landscape of the national land is used to reveal the love for the national land and a criticism for reality, not as a landscape being objectively seen and her interest in Lee Sun-shin shows that she sought to find a rudder for reality in nationalism while defining the reality of her fatherland as a warlike age.