이상(李箱)의 글쓰기와 정사(double suicide)

Abstract

Lee Sang's narrative text can be said as a type of Japanese 'I-Novel'(私小說) which are generally based on the crisis of writer's real life. Lee Sang wrote narrative texts based on his own love and sexuality. From this point of view, a motifs that man and woman try to commit a double suicide or man suggest to woman a double suicide can be a dramatic and critical moment of his life. However, contrary to Japanese writers who were the model in Lee Sang's writing, the motif of double suicide in Lee Sang's text was transformed in individual and social context. In the 1920's and 1930's, a double suicide was represented as a expression of love that cannot be realized. Therefore a double suicide was a symbol of romance and eternal love. This characteristic had strengthened in the 1930s just because speedy and incontinent love by modern boys and girls was the trend in the 1930's. In the Lee Sang's text, man who loves modern girl is tortured by the fact that he cannot own her love exclusively. He suggests to the girl a double suicide just in order to test her love. Even though he can only ascertain that they fail in committing double suicide, he always hide his desperate emotion and disappontment in order to hold a dominant in relation with a girl. As a conclusion, a double suicide in Lee Sang's text is ambiguous. It is what he wants desperately but he pretends that he doesn't want that. For this reason, the proposals of double suicide are expressed not by Lee Sang's own language but by other Japanese writer's(Osamu Dazai and Ryunosuke Akutagawa) language.