증상으로 읽는 이청준 소설

Abstract

Reading Lee's fiction is like experiencing the analytic discourse in which the reader interprets fiction as symptom. Many of Chung-jun Lee's fictions deal with the analysis performed by a doctor who interprets the psyche of a patient. The patient is unable to adjust to society like Jun Park, a neurotic in "The Wall of Rumor." Not only does Lee's fiction posits a doctor-patient relationship between its main characters, but his story itself is a symptom ready to be analyzed by a reader's diagnosis. Along with this story, the other two stories are explored in this paper to examine the sickness of a character whose symptom is endured or compromised in the reality as Freud terms it as "the reality principle." Freud defines symptom as the fantasy that human beings maintain in order to cope with the reality since they are destined to bear with trauma, that is, the primal anxiety formed at the moment of being separated from mother's body. Whether the symptom is a sickness to be cured, or a fantasy object to be endured as the condition of living, it is a mother-surrogate to be posited in the locus of an empty hole. Since the origin of anxiety is an empty hole, the restlessness is inevitable as the price we have to pay for being alive. Lee's fiction shows us how to deal with those symptoms, instead of trying to eliminate them. The more do we try to get rid of the symptom, the faster do we precipitate death, or nothing. Usually Lee's fiction achieves the ethic through the failure of a character/doctor who has the blind faith in cure, while it also reflects the illness of our society through the patient. To avoid the hasty determination or overt faith, Lee opens up the ending of his story in the form of a symptom whose interpretation would be endlessly repeated. After all, a symptom is not to be pursued but to be enjoyed.