‘영원’에 대한 소설적 사유 - 현길언의 「숲 이야기」를 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the narrative process of eternity revealed in 「Tale of Forest」, which is the fifth medium-length novel included in Gil-Un Hyun's novel collection 「As I Leave My House」(2009), as it is being considered as an outstanding work of writing that dealt with a religious issue on eternity by dealing with the history of one's family in an analogical aspect with the history of nature by expanding it into the nature community in addition to humans. 「Tale of Forest」communicates the history of humans and the history of forest by allowing the historical time in which the ancestors had lived to be seen from a spatial dimension of forest and house. Such communication can be seen as the writer's narrative strategy of expanding community into post human-centric community, as something that connected the humanistic time and natural time. Such narrative strategy is the writer's intentional device for allowing the readers to recognize that the constituents of human community are the constituents of life community and it helps to move forward to a religious understanding of eternity by expanding the denotation on the issue of life and death. The forest in 「Tale of Forest」possesses the symbolism for understanding salvation. In the forest, there is 'a zelkova tree' that symbolizes the history of tree and 'another house' that symbolizes the history of one's family. The write sets up a hypothesis that if the zelkova tree does not die but lives eternally by changing into a different timber, the ancestors that live in the 'another house' are not dead but live eternally. In addition, this hypothesis reaches its conclusion through an illusionary device that the deceased ancestors are playing in the yard of the house just as the zelkova tree is not dead but being used as a desk. Accordingly, the writer is dealing with the issue of human salvation in a religious way through literature by clearly expressing in 「Tale of Forest」that soul does not die but lives.