이청준 소설의 존재론적 죽음 사유

Abstract

This essay is intended to find out the conscious of the death in Lee Cheong-Joon's novels and describe it as one of key questioning deeply laid in his works. He once said that he thought how to see the death determined the way to live, which expresses well his main idea concerning the theme of death. His interrogation about the matter has rarely got explicit expressions but undoubtedly seems to be critical in forming his literary world. It looks like a sort of prerequisite from which his thought about human being and its condition begin to be developed. Many critics agreed Lee's novels showed characteristics of ideological novels. And his interest of death is rather ontological, not realistic or historical, which is apparently shared with that of existentialist thinkers like Sartre. Some critics described Lee as an expert of Hegelian philosophy, but in effect in his works were more ideas which have tints of Sartre. The main idea about the death, unfolded in his works is that the death of the other is a fundamental condition for one to be alive as a subject, in Sartrian terms, being for itself as consciousness. But one can not exist without the other. Thus weather to kill or not to kill the other appears to be a sort of aporia. The latest works show us that Lee Cheong Joon's search for that answer unceasingly continues up to now.