과거의 구원과 현재의 수용 ― 타이완 외성인 2세 작가 張大春, 朱天心, 平路의 작품을 중심으로

Abstract

From around 1987 when the decades-long martial law was lifted,writers in Taiwan, not just “islanders (benshengren)” but “mainlanders (waishengren)” as well, began to show a wide range of diverse voices. While “islanders,” who regarded themselves as victims, tried to engage the past directly, “mainlanders” adopted metaphoric and indirect narrative strategies, maintaining a certain distance from the historical experience under the martial law. This essay looks into a few representative “mainlander” writers of the 1980s and 90s, to see how they faced the history, how they responded to what may be called cries for help from the past, and what types of historical writings they attempted. In his “General's Memorial Steele,” Zhang Dachun rejects the understanding of time as a concept of single linearity, and instead shows that both the past and the future carry significance in the present. By silencing the general in the story, Zhang Dachun resists history constructed and distorted by a few. Zhu Tianxin's “Nostalgia for My Brothers in Juancun” stresses the importance of the past by bringing characters in the past memory back to present time. As a work by a writer of second-generation settlers in juancun village, her attempt shall be considered a maximum signification of the past history. At the same time, it can be considered an effort to overcome the sense of identity crisis as a mainlander writer after 1987. “A Story of an Artificial Robot” by Ping Lu, carries these efforts further by dreaming of a futuristic hero, and thus giving a limitless hope to the time of the past as well as of the present. This line of exploration may appear a hope for the future, but it is at the same time an expression of despair toward the past and the present. These three writers shared a common attitude that they were mindful of the watchful gaze of the “islanders” to the past. They also harbored in their stories defense for and sorrow of the powerless mainlanders. It can be said that they interpreted the time of the present and the future by demonstrating that their own past had also been meaningful.