탈주의 신화와 공시성의 문학 ―박태원의 『소설가 구보씨의 일일』에나타난오디세우스주제

Abstract

Park Tae-Won's A Day of the Novelist Gubo is a case that the aspect of transfiguration of the myth of Odyssey in the West since Homeros to Dante,Joyce and Levi was resurrected in the space of modern Korean literature of the 1930's. Myth is characterized with coexistence of the two parts: the nature which is invariable regardless of the sociohistorical contexts on the one hand and the nature which is variable according to the sociohistorical contexts on the other. Such property of myth is well realized particularly in the myth of Odyssey insofar as we can interpret it from the aspect of wandering which consists of such motives as the reservation of return of Odyssey and the absence of origin. It is from this perspective that to define the Gubo's wandering as a myth has a special meaning. Gubo's myth of wandering is originated thematically from the myth of Odyssey, and simultaneously continues the variable nature of myth in the language-play-relation with the sociohistorical contexts in which the readers are situated; and in this process, it shows the aspects of proliferating the new meanings incessantly. This kind of interpretation is made possible by highlighting the textual devices of A Day of the Novelist Gubo such as the synchronic reconstruction of modern space and the communication of the absence of communication. In A Day of the Novelist Gubo, the Gubo's recognition of the modern space is intertwined passively and exclusively so that his wandering is only confined to observing the things, not to be linked to the active will to change the things. In the process in which the will to power is incessantly reserved and therewith the things are included in the inner-circulation of the wandering, the Gubo's description of the modern space invites the readers to the interpretive play, and in their successful relation, helps us examine the will to the new kind of communities. After all the passivity and inclusiveness of Gubo plays the role of operating the textual intention in its power of stirring the readers' interpretations. In this respect, I would say that A Day of the Novelist Gubo is the complex, multifomed, text. A Day of the Novelist Gubo shows the textual intention to communicate the absence of communication which takes place necessarily in the modern space. If we can accept that the absence of communication is our reality in the modern space, A Day of the Novelist Gubo can be interpreted as to communicate the reality itself. This kind of interpretive play helps define A Day of the Novelist Gubo as the unique text of communication which can exist possibly in the modern space. A Day of the Novelist Gubo can also be evaluated as the text of resistance to the modernity. Whereas modernity is based on the homogeneous and empty time in which the past, present, and future are interconnected toward a fixed point, A Day of the Novelist Gubo derives from the post-modern ontology in which the progressive and unilinear time is deconstructed and all kinds of events are included in the present time. Reacting to the modern space in such a way, and relating to the readers' new interpretations, A Day of the Novelist Gubo occurs as an event, and further, goes beyond the borderline of modern space and simultaneously includes it, and also includes the long and repeated resurrection of the myth of Odyssey and simultaneously goes beyond it.