해방이후 안회남 소설에 나타난 ‘농민’의 의의

Abstract

Ahn Hoi-nam born in South Korea, was engaged in the Left Wing(右翼) before he crossed over into North Korea. However, His consciousness right after the Liberation did not deviated much from that of the Right Wing(右翼) writers including the Centrist(中間派). This paper analyzes Ahn’s novels right after the Liberation to show that his consciousness was not different much from that before the Liberation. In particular, it pays attention to the ways in which he thought of farmers. Though he brought ‘farmers’ as the representation of the nation, the writer’s consciousness with which he thought of them did not show great difference from his earlier (before the Liberation) consciousness. Ahn’s thought about farmers were revealed in the following three ways. First, the ‘goodness and simplicity’ can be designated. Ahn identified the qualities and fates of farmers with those of ‘cows’ in his works. While farmers’ passive folk consciousness showed the characteristics of the ruled, who did not face or resist against the power, the goodness and simplicity stood for by ‘cows’ represented the nature of simple and naive farmers, who did not understand but emotionally coped with the natures of problems at hand. Second, the ‘succession of the history and lineage of the past’ can be indicated. In April, 1947, Ahn presented The History of the Strom, which emphasized the struggling spirit of farmers. In this work, he called ‘farmers’ ‘people,’ and understood the October Resistance in 1946 in line with the 3ㆍ1 Movement in 1919. However, in this work, which was roughly created without revealing the partisan spirit, the discourse of the lineage succession between father and son derived the nationalist ideology that emphasized the significance of people as successors of the identical lineage rather than of the past history. Third, the ‘passive folk consciousness’ can be pointed out. The farmers in Ahn’s novels had the complying disposition that folks in a dynasty could have. As cultivating settlers, they possessed the naive instinct to survive, with which they complied with nature and the ruling power. At the same time, as Ahn placed farmers in the position of the spokesmen for and successors to the tradition, their passiveness, hidden in the shade of the tradition they missed, made them lose the function of criticism. We can find out the following, from Ahn’s ways of thinking of farmers in his novels right after the Liberation. First, Ahn Hoi-nam crystallized the national tradition through the figuration of farmers as the national representation, and well showed the significance of farmers as successors of the tradition. Second, he was not able to read out the shift of history and to be certain about novel ideologies, but did only ruthlessly reveal antipathy against Japan as well as the Right Wing(右翼) pro-Japan bureaucrats. As a result, the code of farmers from his novels right after the Liberation suggests the nature of his crossing over into North Korea as well as his consciousness as a writher after the Liberation. After the Liberation, Ahn did not internalize his ideology but did try to explore an active life different from the one in the past as a writer.