황순원의 『카인의 후예』에 나타난 중층적 상호텍스트성

Abstract

Hwang Soon Won's The Descendants of Cain was his first novel that was published after the Korean War, which critically showed the reality of Koreans who had experienced the disturbing time of the land reform and the war through the representation of Cain from Genesis in the Old Testament. Hwang Soon Won compared the Korean people who had the battle of brothers against brothers to the descendants of Cain. However, he left a room for the possibility of their salvation, which showed that the hurt of Korean people could be healed by the characters of anti-Cain, represented as the image of Abel and Seth. This novel was entitled "The descendants of Cain", but another underlying title is the descendants of Seth who were saved through Abel's sacrifice. Through this novel, he tried to present the apocalyptic subject of judgement and salvation. In Western literature, the typical tradition that was shown the representation of Cain as the character of the novel could be Demian appeared from Herman Hesse's Demian. But Hwang Soon Won who had studied Western literature in English department, borrowed the representation of Cain from the tradition of Japanese literature. He entitled this novel "The descendants of Cain" as the representation of Cain in Genesis, which was the same title of 『カイソの末裔』, a short story by Arishima Takeo. There are similarities between Hwang Soon-won's novel and Arishima Takeo's short story, which are the title, main characters, and basic narrative structure. Hwang Soon Won selected Arishima's short story and Genesis in the Old Testament as multi-layered intertext in this novel, and the multi-layered intertextuality has an effect that enhances the novel's subject and symbolism.