삶의 수사학 - 김동리 문학에 나타난 발화 전략으로서 ‘구경(究竟)’의 개념

Abstract

Kim Tongni(1913-1995) is well-known as the main theoretician and proponent of “pure literature” in Korea. But oddly enough, the more purely literary aspects of his work, namely style, remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to offer a new reading of some of Kim’s major works through a stylistical analysis. It first looks at Kim’s critical view of the expressive capabilities of language, inspired by the modernist philosophies of Bergson and James. Convinced that ordinary words and everyday speech could not express the transcendent “absolute life” he held to be at the core of every great literary work, Kim sought a new, higher form of language. This paper shows how this view, and the tension between the effable and the ineffable it implied, influenced Kim’s stylistic evolution, from his choice of words to the rhythmic texture of his prose and the plot structure of his novels. However, instead of taking Kim’s search for the Absolute as face value, this paper also explores the rhetorical role played by this concept. Kim found legitimacy in the literary field by claiming that his works could express transcendent values which, circularly, they also defined. Rather than a unified and well-defined idea, Kim’s Absolute can thus be seen as an elusive, plastic notion constantly renegotiated to justify his stylistic and narrative choices in the face of literary quarrels and political turmoils.