「황제를 위하여」와 “Pour l’empereur!” 사이 - 이문열 다시읽기를 위한 시론(試論) -

Abstract

This paper considers the originally implicit conditions of (modern Korean) literature in the ‘capitalism-nation state’ and the relation of literature by studying how people have read and estimated the novel Hwangjerul Wihayo (황제를 위하여), written by Yi Munyol, since the 1980s. Yi Munyol expressed inside and outside the novel that Hwangjerul Wihayo pursued the value of the East that confronts the value of the West. The epilogue, being removed from books printed in 1996, played a decisive role in determining the meaning and characteristics of the text. Kim Hyun made the epilogue unseen when he tried to read the commentary elements of Hwangjerul Wihayo as a novel in his book Literary Meaning of Copying (1983). It goes without saying that the novel Kim Hyun deliberated was the western-style novel. Bakhtine’s discussion and “Don Quixote” are important references for the demonstration Discussions of Hwangjerul Wihayo have taken on opposite sides (the Orient and the West). However, the difference has been in the characteristics of the twin system of modern Korean literature. From here, we can read the context that both literary critics and readers could understand the novels of Yi Munyol in the 1980s. The responses of Korean literary critics and readers of the 1980s to the novels of Yi Munyol lie side by side with the responses of foreign literature in the 1990s. The decisive scene is the translation of Hwangjerul Wihayo in France in 1998. We can confirm the ultimate relation between ‘the value of the Orient in novels of Yi Munyol in 1980s and Don Quixote’s trick-Kim Hyun’s reading in 1983’ later. This paper aimed to describe two issues while studying the process of signifying Hwangjerul Wihayo both in and outside of Korea between 1980 and 1998. First, it explores the possibility of studying the writer Yi Munyol. This paper does not see ‘the writer’ as the sole vanishing point of the text. The writer is not simply the producer of the text nor mechanically the homonomous product of the time. Instead, this paper aims to see the body of the writer as a field, where many factors and conditions of the time and literature meet each other. From this perspective, it aims to refresh the way writers that have not improved are studied. Second, this paper intends to remind people of the rise and fall of a writer and a novel and of the original condition of Korean literature (floating literature in relation to the capitalism-nation state). It is believed that it will be an important reference when contemplating Korean literature from the perspective of today, in 2016. There are issues to discuss later that with which this paper does not deal.