1960년대 도시문화와 폐허 이미지 - 이문구의 『장한몽』 연구 -

Abstract

It was 1965 that Lee Moon Goo directly experienced the change of the burial site in the public cemetery. He published a novel that realistically embodied living experience around Seoul Shinchon area in the 1960s. Janghanmong is his first full-length novel and can be counted as the representative urban novel that embodied the 1960s. The background of Janghanmongin the novel is San 5, Shincheon-dong, Seodaemungu, Soul. Enquiring into the records and literatures of Lee Moon Goo reveals that the actual spot is the neighborhood of Seoul Foreign School and foreign residences behind Yeonhee elementary school. Even today there are Hanseong Chinese Emigrants' middle and high school in the neighborhood of the foreign residences. In view of the fact that Brown who led the change of the burial site in the public cemetery belonged to the Hanseong Institute, this place must be the spot in Shincheon-dong where the change of burial site took place. Janghanmong shows the form in the early stage of 'Jeon (傳) form' which is mentioned as a style of Lee Moon Goo's novel. In this novel, the major character Kim Sang Bae and the other diverse characters such as Goo Bon Chil, Lee Sang Pil, Ma Gil Sik, Park Won Dal, Mo Il Man, Hong Ho Yeong, Wang Soon Pyeong, Yoo Cho Soon, Choi Mi Sil, Yoo three brothers gathered together with their own personal story on the spot of the change of the burial site in the public cemetery. Kim Sang Bae is a dropout from the English literature department of a college. In addition, he is an incapable person living in his wife's home. The laborers undertaking the work of the change of the burial site were in the similar situations. The circumstances,under which Ma Gil Sik and Lee Sang Pil and others were driven out to illegal shacks that can be removed anytime, are no less difficult. Such scenes of the outskirts of the urban area of Seoul in the 1960s is described vividly by Lee Moon Goo's narrative power. Noteworthy is the fact that the public cemetery is set as the scene of a kind of religious ritual. In that place, each character purifies the past and explores the possibility of making a new start. Kim Sang Bae and Goo Bon chil are driven out to the outskirts of life due to the wound of the war. In everything they lack confidence and they lead a life never revealing their own selves. Mo Il Man who entered the temple as a cooking monk in order to quest for the meaning of life but were expelled as an attempted rape criminal, Park Won Dal who sells fake anti-Communist counterespionage paper, Yoo Han Deuk three brothers who crossed the border into South Korea to escape from the disgusting social status of butcher are all the great unwashed of the urban area. Their tenacious struggle to lead a life is contrasted with the cemetery that the site of the dead. On the spot of the change of the burial site where life and death are mixed up, 'the truth of life' is faced. So the public cemetery is overflowing with 'the image of the ruins.' Janghanmong weaves the events, which happened in the work of the change of the burial site for five days, in the form of episodes. Some critics raise the criticism that this novel lacks the organic quality of the overall plot. However, this novel should be reevaluated in that it actualized the grotesque realism to purify life. This novel makes onereflect on life of urban people who have lost self through the describing the people who are grotesquely deformed. The destruction of ethical consciousness is described to the extreme degree but this can be said as a way of revealing the negatives of the urban space. Also, noteworthy is the act that Janhanmong is positioned in the course of Lee Moon Goo's novels passing over from urban novels to rural novels. With this novel as the starting point, the author reached 'subjective world consciousness' and through the course of such discoveries he could advance into the embodiment of the people and the rural realities with more dignified voice.