<무의도기행>의 예술적 의미

Abstract

This paper aims to find out the artistic implication within <Mooudo Gihang> and to open the possibility of being presented as a play. <Mooudo Gihang> is estimated as “the monument of lyric realism” along with <Dong Seung>. The feeble writer's consciousness in this work is considered as its drawback in the light of <Go-Mok> or <Gimeenyun March,1st> being the representative works of Hamseduk, the writer because they show the writer's strong consciousness and the keen insight into reality. Nevertheless, we consider this work also as his representative without hesitation because it is his early work which was free from the strict censorship and shows the writer's characteristics - lyricism, well-organized structure and harmony. The content layers of <Mooudo Gihang> cannot be arranged easily into the oppositive aspect of harmer and sufferer. The characters' ambivalence in the mental motivation, the complex personalities, their positions and situations are all connected with one another and then each character's motives for life is focused into one point, which leads to Chunmyung's death. The implication of the tragic conclusion, at which characters' closely connected behaviors and inner motives arrives complicatedly, is the sense of there being no exit in real life. The speaker in ending becomes the mediator between the space of the play and that of the audience and makes its inner meaning reproduce outer reality expansively. The space Mooudo itself means ‘No exit’ metaphorically and also means the fishermen's real situation and the reality the colony. At the same time, it carries artistic value in that it condenses the tragic existence of human being into the closed space, ‘island’. The performance of <Mooudo Gihang> at the National Theater of Korea neglected deep reflection and approaches to the artistic significance since it concentrated on the relationship between today's audience and Hamseduk. Adding prologue, changing Chunmyung's dream, and Hamseduk's appearance on stage in epilogue all degraded the artistic sifnificance of the play. Hence the performance couldn't convey the tragic implication of the work to the audience. The multi-leveled characters' psychological rear and hesitation, the change of sound and light, silence and hollowness are all hard to express at the stage as shown in the Chekhov's static comedy in whom the writer was interested. On the contrary, we can possibly find the new and various ways to produce it at the stage. As shown in this paper, If we enlarge the artistic significance in <Mooudo Gihang>, its tragic implication can be interpreted as allegory of the reality of ‘No Exit’, mournful existence in life, and the fishermen's struggle for existence in west coast. In this way, this work will be a cultural contents which are reborn as today's play, musical, and multimedia.