박제의 조감도－이상의 「날개」에 대한 일 고찰

Abstract

The last scene of “Wings” has been misread frequently as an episode that occurred on the roof garden of the Mitsukoshi Department Store. It has even been misunderstood as a suicide. However, it actually happened on the street, not on the roof. Further, this misreading of the text is initiated by the narrator, who effectively blinds the reader by concentrating their attention on the height of the modern building. The height of building corresponds with an image of flying. Reading the text as a suicide implies a dangerousness to the city and a fear of it, making this misreading a very historical one. “The irony of devouring the most abominable of foods” is the epistemology of “Wings,” which goes beyond differentiating the subject and “the other” and visual sensation and tactile sensation. As a stuffed bird, the protagonist cannot see. He is a tactile being. He recovers his sight and gains a deepened insight into society upon finding a box of Adalin. This goes beyond an individual function of sight and synthesizes into a “seeing through.” “Seeing through” is a type of touching interaction with an object that penetrates it. Through the protagonists ‘projection’ of himself on society, the binary opposition between visual sensation and tactile sensation is sublated. This also relates to the principle of the bird’s-eye view. The Bird’s eye-view is not constructed by a visual sensation alone. A landscape becomes a picture through physical contact with paper. The movement of a shutter opening and closing turns a landscape into a picture. A photograph can be created through the blinking interaction of ‘bird’ (cho) and ‘crow’ (o). Every bird’s-eye view is created by (as) a ‘crow’s-eye view’(오감도). This connects to the meaning of the “stuffed genius.” The protagonist, who was the subject of sight as an architect, now becomes the object of observation as a lumpen. He is able to, as (by) himself, touch both “genius” and “taxidermy object” at the same time. Wings are the symbol of the location of being that mediates between ‘a responsible doctor’ and ‘an experiment animal.’ In this way, he declares the crow’s-eye view of a T.B. or syphilis patient inside of the bird’s-eye view of Lee Kwang-su, a man of letters who is likened to a doctor. Herein lies the reason for the illusion and misunderstanding of readers. Readers, most likely, cannot read “Wings” dispassionately. Readers probably touch the protagonist, just as the author intended.