아쿠타가와(芥川) 소설에 나타난 모더니티와 멜랑콜리 ‒『갓파(河童)』와 『톱니바퀴』를 중심으로‒

Abstract

This study analyzes how to embody the modernity and melancholy in Akutagawa’s novels such as 『Kappa(河童)』 and 『A Gear Wheel』. He wrought the novels in the times when there was a serious mismatch between idea and phenomenon. The Western style capitalism provided Japan with the significant economic development. However, it also caused the social inequality, the snobbism and the retrogression of spirituality, which consequently led to an unbalance between spirit and phenomenon. The main features of the times were the separation between spirituality and everyday life, a spread of melancholic sentiment and the loss of authenticity. These features let Akutagqwa first take the allegory which continuously delay the meanings of the things within his world of literature. His strategy of melancholy was to embody things that he had never owned or lost in his novels through allegorical rhetoric as if he had lost in the past. His ultimate goal was to discover authentic Dasein or existential Self which had nothing to do with the inherent family difficulties and the suicide. The novelist believed that he could find his authentic Dasein by changing the realities of life into aesthetic view of life. Akutagqwa attempted to converge social modernity which required a high level of rationality into aesthetic modernity which led to the Dionysiac life.