‘그늘에 피는 꽃’, 최서해 문학의 아포리아

Abstract

Choi, Seo-hae’s novels were definitely focused on in the 1920s’ literary circle because they embodied the people’s poverty by Choi’s firsthand experience. In his novel, the expression of extreme anger against the poverty doesn’t represent only his literary passion, but also shows his intense recognition about the reality. However, as KAPF put the ideology above everything, effectively Choi’s role in litery circle came to the end. In this regard, the 1920s’ literary attention for the anger in Choi’s novels was like the modern state’s governmental strategy surrounding the poverty. As, in the modern state system, the poverty have been controlled for the national wealth, the anger in the socialism literature was given significance to only as the literary figuration of ideology. So, Choi, who dealt with petit bourgeois’s sentiment mostly in his mid-to-late novels, was evaluated as that he com-promised with reality, losing faith. For the just evaluation about Choi’s literature, we should rethink from what was the point of that. The experience about poverty in Kando(間島) and the violence from the anger, which were situated mainly at the starting point of Choi’s literature, seem to be the individual resistance against the outside. Therefore, they can be compared with the romantistic passion for love. However, Choi considerde the violence as struggle for overcoming individual limit. This is the proof for that he thought the literature as social behavior from the early stage. Embodying the petit bourgeoi’s sentiment, he placed the petit bourgeoi’s lives and the lives of margin in juxtaposition, and paid attention to their homogeneity. By this, Choi stressed the fact that the marginal lives, that is to say the poor, maintained the society repeating exclusion and inclusion and ultimately were equal to the petit bourgeoi’s. Choi realized that the poverty as object was the non-sovereign phenomenon disturbing the community life and it couldn’t be settled only by the violence. Eventually, Choi couldn’t find out the specific behavior like violence, but he sought for the possibility for solidarity above capital as last instance, stressing the homogeneity between the poor.