김동인 문학에서 '여(余)'의 의미

Abstract

In the Kim Dongin's short novel, Death(l930), we can see the sense of death without any metaphysical meaning. This is the common tendency of the novels written by authors who had joined Shinmunwha Woondong(新文化運動, New Culture Movement) in early 1920s. Including Kim, most members of that movement were the intellectuals who had studied in Tokyo. After coming back to Korea, they asserted the value of creative individuality and at the same time criticized the Korean feudal value system. Especially in the novel Mansejeon(l924) written by another member, Yeum Sangsoep, we can see the absolute individualism and nominalism. That work shows us well that they failed in the realization of their individual desire in harmony with communal value system. Kim Dongin used 'Yeu(余, I)' in the series of short novels, Dongin Sketch(1930, including Death) for the first time. 'Yeu' is the first pronoun in chinese writing. It was used only when they write to younger or lower person. But this letter itself means ‘the rest'. therefore 'Yeu' implicates the ambivalent status of modem author. He is the transcendental totalizer of the world when he is making fiction, but he is only the surplus in the empirical world where capitalism rules over. And this series also shows the kind of ‘Romantic Irony' , the narrative attitude which reveals the self-consciousness of modem author. In this way he revealed his self-consciousness that he took the writing a novel as the creating a illusion in the modern society. Kim Dongin also used 'Yeu' in the essays recollecting how he and his companies had created 'Mundan(文增, the circle of authors)'. In the essays, The study on Chosun Modern Novel(1929), he wrote the developmental history of Korean modern novel as the forming of "the character of Korean literature" . He thought that the Korean modem literature should reflect the contemporary universality as well as the speciality of his nation. In fact, he looked for the Korean sentence corresponding to the ‘view(風景, the concept of Karatani Kojin, Japanese Critic)' which he had seen in Japanese or European modern literature. Although he had found it once in early writing, he could not identify it with himself. He also suffered with antinomy of two value systems, the modem and the premodern. The pronoun ‘Yeu' also implicates his selfconsciousness that he had failed to harmonize his role as a national author and his individual desire for the beauty. In Death, 'Yeu' means the self which does not have any concrete existence and remains only as reflexive form. He makes no conclusion just saying that death would be a puzzle forever. 'Yeu' performs just 'negative critique', saying that this is not the right thing. Because he could not accept any value system although he had already escaped from the old value system. Most of his novels focused on the destiny of people who lose the way or experience the fall in the sudden alteration of value systems and narrated their destiny with ironical attitude. Kim Dongin wrote about the relativeness of things in Don Quixote in another essay, Light and Darkness(1929). Although he didn't use the concept of Irony in that essay at all, I think he suggested Irony as the art of life in the modern world. To be ironist, we have to accept the relativeness of things truly and the reject the absolute. At least, it is clear that to be ironist is the best way for Kim Dongin' thought in 1930s colonial Korea.