근대 동아시아의 애국 담론과『애국정신담』

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to shed some light on the universality and particularity implied in the discourses of patriotism in Korea, China, and Japan, by inquiring into some aspects of the translation of A Tale of the Patriotic Spirit and the way it has been generally accepted into modern East Asia. The original work, Tu seras soldat, histoire d’un soldat francais : Récits et lecons patriotiques, was written by Emile Lavisse, a French cavalry officer, in 1888. Through the stories told by individual patriots, this book describes how France endured a period of humiliation and pain, after its disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, but rose to become a powerful nation once again. At the same time, the work can also be understood as a school textbook designed to prepare students to fulfill their duty of military service. In Japan, .dachime Gatsukan (大立目克寬) and Itabashi Jiro. (板橋次郞), army officers of the Meiji era, translated 'Tu seras soldat' as 'Aikokuseishin- tan' (愛國精神譚), reorganizing the original work around two main characters and deemphasizing those features which resembled a school textbook. This Japanese version was published in 1891 when the ideas of loyalty and patriotism were dominating the Meiji era education system, following the proclamation of the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890). The two heroes of the Japanese translation, who were clearly fictitious in the original work, are instead presented as real-life characters, which provides more dramatic realism to the success story of France. The Chinese version, 'Aiguo Jingshen Tan' (愛國精神談), was published in 1902 under the pen name of Aiguo Yiren (愛國逸人), by Guang zhi shu ju (廣智書局) in Shanghai. This organization was responsible for many cultural projects in support of the Hundred Days' Reform led by Liang Qichao (梁啓超), publishing lively works on modern knowledge and discourses about patriotism. Aiguo Yiren made a very free translation, with many additions and deletions, and much rewriting, though most of the individual anecdotes were included. The latter part of the original work has a passage describing how French soldiers established colonies in Algeria and Vietnam, and the Chinese translation retains an accurate account of the fighting between France and China, which then held sway in Vietnam, thus revealing the incompetence of the Qing government, and encouraging Chinese readers to open their eyes to the reality of the modern world order. in which the fittest survive and the weakest go to the wall. In Korea the book is known as 'Aeguk-jeongsin-dam', with four translations being produced over a period of eight years from 1906. This includes magazine serials in Joyangbo and Seo-u, both unfinished, and two versions translated by Lee Chae-u, one in the Korean-Chinese style and one entirely in Korean characters (Hangeul), both published in book form. All four versions actually took Aiguo Yiren's Chinese version as their source text. This paper is particularly focused on how Lee Chae-u’s translation into the Korean-Chinese style interprets the Chinese source material. His principal aim was to show the Joseon people, who were confronted with the loss of their national sovereignty, the model of the French people who overcame a similarly miserable situation to achieve national prosperity and military power. To this end, he stuck closely to Chinese text, mostly concentrating on the introduction of Western history and Western civilization, and emphasizing how social Darwinism was expected to supply a new world order. The Japanese, Chinese and Korean translations of Tu seras soldat all made a case for ‘patriotism,’ but this was understood very differently：the Japanese translators were living in a period when the Japanese emperor was synonymous with the state, the Chinese translator was aiming some sharp criticism at the Qing government, and the Korean translator was trying to offer hope at a critical moment of national ruin and despair. The ‘patriotism’ revealed by these translations was not spontaneous, but was rather a reinterpreted and planned product of the modern period. Thus, during the process of transition to becoming modern nation-states, the three East Asian countries each advocated ‘patriotism’ according to their own specific temporal and spatial contexts.