나를 도와주는 타자로서의 나 - 페터 한트케의 긴 이별에 대한 짧은 편지에 나타난 도플갱어와 자기반영의 문제 -

Abstract

This study intends to analyze Peter Handke’s early novel Short Letter, Long Farewell (1972) as ‘an attempt at self-reflection and self-understanding through a continuously divided self’. Underlying this analysis is the view that Handke’s work is composed of a parallel universe where opposing themes intersect. Thus, this reading serves only as an interpretation among many possibilities. The work Short Letter, Long Farewell, which is mainly dealt with here, continues to show the theme of the impossibility of communication, which Handke has been focusing on during this period, as in his previous works. However, this work as a very ambivalent parallel universe on the other hand suggests the possibility of self-awareness through multiple ‘others’ that can be read as a divided self. A useful framework for this analysis is the ‘uncanny’ theory, which started with the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and has defined our unconscious as ‘other’. In the modern society where we have to meet countless others, the possibility of affirmation of another self, which is defined as the first other, can be seen to acquire a very present meaning. In particular, in this work, Handke presented several characters as doppelgangers that can communicate directly or indirectly with the main character. At the same time, it is very interesting that the formal structure of the work itself is presented as a doppelganger structure that folds like a decalcomanie. However, the question still remains as to whether the possibility of communication with the divided self can lead to the possibility of understanding or reconciliation of the external world.