위화(余華)의 『형제(兄弟)』와 ‘두 공간’의 공존

Abstract

Yu Hua’s Brothers was written with the purpose of vividly showing the whole history of contemporary China by the form of “bildungsroman” dealing with the lives of two characters named Li Guang-tou and Song Gang. This novel comprises of ‘the Cultural Revolution’ and the period following Reform and Opening. At the postscript, the writer, Yu Hua said that this novel had been born by the encounter of these two periods, and explained the former period as the time dominated by “the frantic fever of minds, the repression of human desire and the misery of destiny”, the latter one as “the time when the morality has fallen and unruly desires have erupted into a lot of awkward things”. As much as Yu Hua stressed, the reality of contemporary china’s history depicted by the novel is full of violence, fear, overflowing desire, human misery and absurdity. Like many other literary works which dealt with the tragic and ugly human reality, Brothers shows us unsparingly and openly the reasons for which human beings cannot help despairing of themselves. But, when carefully reviewing this novel, we can find that there still exists alive another different place that is not overwhelmed and not swept away by the places of the tragedy and ugliness of the lives. This article specially notes the co-existence and mutual interaction of these two places, which is revealed by the contrast of the extreme violence of the Cultural Revolution and the heroic character of Song Fan-Ping at vol. I and the contrast of the place of Li Guang-tou which embodied the dominance of naked desires and the place which was hidden within the inner life(represented by the sea gull) of Song Gang who failed to adapt himself to the rapidly changing environment at the vol. II. The existence of this ‘another place’ which exists covertly in Brothers, even if it seems very weak quantitatively, is qualitatively very intense just like a small light beam making a crack in the darkness. By demonstrating the features of the co-existence and interaction of these two places, this article explores the fundamental meaning of humanity and human life that Yu Hua grasped in Brothers.