최인훈의 문명론과 문학예술론을 통해 본 『소설가 구보씨의 일일』 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study Choi In-hoon’s “A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist” The main character, Kubo, has an identity as a refugee. The issue of division, which has brought about refugees, imposes a constraint on his occupational activities. Therefore, unification is an important topic in rectifying the reality of division which has brought about refugees. A newspaper is the material which informs about the movement of the world beyond his daily life to the main character, Kubo, who lives in a period of time before and after 1970. And ‘unification’ is allusively delivered beyond the newspaper in the environment of the times. And ‘unification’ is also what Kubo hopes, dreaming of the life before the division of mankind and universal utopia, which leads to the discussion of ‘art’ not divided into the east and the west. Signifying this novel focusing on three interwound keywords, ‘newspaper’, ‘unification’, and ‘art’, this study is based upon the thought of Choi In-hoon. Choi In-hoon’s thought was expressed through his essay but not systematized per se. He systematized his thought expressed through his essay, dividing largely into the theory of civilization and literary art, and used the context of systematized logics as major proposition. This novel is contextualized based upon Choi In-hoon’s thought when analyzed and signified in the light of his thought based upon his essay. While ‘newspaper’ in the novel illustrates the discontinuity and time difference of information delivery, this aspect is signified into his ethical failure. The realism, which shall shape the customs, represents an impossible situation. ‘Unification’ mentioned in this novel fails to reach the stage of full discussion. While ‘unification’ emerges fragmentarily as a solution to the lost paradise of mankind, it is impossible to trace the detailed meaning of ‘unification’ mentioned by Kubo in a plenty of theories of unification pursued by Choi In-hoon. ‘Unification’ herein reveals two kinds of contradictory desires which Choi In-hoon expresses for himself: One is a desire for continuous modernization based upon rationality, and another is the pursuit of ‘absolute idea’ which will replace religions in the era when they are not present and allow human individuals to experience the entire mankind in its entirely. Lastly, this study explored Choi In-hoon’s theory of art to discuss ‘art’. Choi In-hoon’s theory of art was once refracted: While he asserted the theory of art based upon rationality in the reality, he later asserted the theory of art which transcends the rationality, escapes from the suppression of modern trends of thought and freely stretch the imagination. This novel is in the very middle of ever-changing theory of art. This novel shows contradictorily that it would be impossible to realize the realism asserted by Choi In-hoon. While Choi In-hoon’s realism tends to be characterized by expressionism, it prevents the modern trends of thought stressed in the pre-theory of art from being inclined toward expressionism. However, the contradictory situation, which this novel illustrates in the midst of the limitation of genre blurred due to coexistence of real and literary language and historical limitation of constrained right to know, and Kubo’s taste in art presented in the novel suggest the breakaway from the modern trends of thought and inclination towards expressionism.