1950년대 한국소설과 ‘세계성’에의 욕망- 김성한의 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

Kim Sung Han's novels were classified into two groups in this paper. One could be said as works of reflecting colonial experiences under Empire Japan, and the other could be said as works of borrowing allegory from the western mythology and history. The former represent Empire Japan and the colonized Korean using certain power by trusting Japan's power as the cruel and unethical. In situation of post-Korea war, this representation is resulted from crisis consciousness that unethical logic of the colonial and the colonized was only replaced by the power relation of ruler and subject in the 1950s society. Regarded as position of the strong in the world ruled by logic of power, being of Japan or pro-Japanese is entirely otherized from ethical view. Kim's western centralistic universality or worldness appears in novels of borrowing allegory from western mythology and history. Borrowing 'the western' in the level of contents and forms, Kim tried to appropriate synchronous 'worldness' to himself, and moreover pursued for identifying with it. But the concerete history that the western nations were also the imperialist founder become erased under the premise of ‘the western=universality’. He repeated to get to the only principle that the logic of power rules world is the universal truth transcending times, though Kim Sung-Han didn't abandon certain intention for enlightenment and adhered ethicality as superior value to anything. As a result, his novels' world exposed nihilism forcefully because he couldn't tolerate world lacking in ethicality. Kim Sung Han' s novels in the 1950s show strange coexistence of intention for enlightenment and nihilism.