나무의 언어와 ‘물아일체(物我一體)’의 상상력 --이청준 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

The topic of ‘trees’ is indispensible for cultivating ecological ideas and sensibility. Trees are not only subjects of life but also esthetical objects to human in themselves. They can be used as personifications of the respectable lives and symbols of existential mysteries and cosmic secrets. Especially, in the mythical context, the cosmic tree has been considered a secret device connecting heaven, earth, and human. Since the modern age, as the human centered development has advanced, the mythical characteristic of trees has been faded away considerably. Nevertheless, the literature has shown the tendency of restoring its ecological energy through the imagination of trees. and reflecting on the ordeal of the modern civilization through the secret of ecological mythology. Lee Chung-jun’s fictions such as “A Bird and a Tree”, “An Old Pine Tree”, “Conversation with a Great Old Tree” are the results of narrative efforts assessing the availability of myths through the speech of trees and the imagination of forests, which has lost since the modern age. The tree in “A Bird and a Tree” is a typical one of many cosmic trees appearing in Lee Chung-jun’s fictions, which circulate water, soil and air within heaven and earth vertically and let birds dance with its leaves and fruits horizontally. This is the tree’s life. These cosmic trees have composed the sacred forest where all beings can feel peaceful and happy experiencing ‘the union of self and things’. In “Sleeping on a Tree”, the longing for achieving the harmony between a tree and self and the anxiety for losing it are articulated as important themes. In “An Old Pine Tree” the dream of the harmony between a tree and self is still maintained but the anxiety shown in Lee Chung-jun’s former fictions has been reduced. Instead, this fiction pays attention to the contrast between the constancy of a great tree and the transience of human life. The idea of trees expressed in “An Old Pine Tree” is similar to the common-sense of average men’s. In “Conversation with a Great Old Tree” the author presents his regret at the former common-sense view. In “Conversation with a Great Old Tree”, the story that delivers a tree’s profound saying about life and redemption, the tree says that there is no difference between trees and humans in view of the providence of the great universe. While taking place the conversation between an old tree cosmic tree and a man, simultaneity and sympatry which the tree has emphasized are focused on. The tree emphasizes that “being in the same time and place with yours while existing in the different time and place in the different dimensions and in the different ways, in other words, being in the world with two spaces existing simultaneously” is the essence of the cosmos and the way of existence of all beings’. Lee Chung-jun placed emphasis on the principle of simultaneity and sympatry in reference to the philosophy of ‘the union of self and things’ regarded in the East as important since Lao-tzu and Chuang-Tzu. We can identify Lee Chung-jun’s characteristic in his fictions using ‘trees’ as main topics in which he tried to find the cosmic providence of ‘the union of self and things’ through the speech of trees.