성장소설의 관점에서 본 케르티스 임레(Kertész Imre)의 홀로코스트 문학 - ‘운명 4부작’을 중심으로

Abstract

Kertész Imre, a Hungarian Nobel Prize winner in Literature 2002 has delved into the Holocaust since he experienced Auschwitz at the age of 14 years. His so-called Tetralogy of Fate, which consists of Sorstalanság (Fatelessness), Kudarc (Fiasco), Kaddis meg nem született gyermekért (Kaddish for an Unborn Child), and Felszámolás (Liquidation), is a series of autobiographic novels that depict the writer's Auschwitz experiences and rough and rugged paths of life with the ensuing trauma. The preceding studies focused on the narrative structures and techniques of his Auschwitz works as well as their differences from the existing Holocaust works in terms of features. The present study analyzed Kertész's Holocaust tetralogy in terms of Karl Morgenstern's Bildungsroman theory that did not apply to the existing studies. According to the analysis, the first work Fatelessness has a typical narrative structure of lack of self-identity-ordeal-establishment of self-identity. Having no juvenile protagonist, the remaining three works cannot be seen as Bildungsromans, but have Bildungroman's narrative structures, given the protagonists' processes of recognizing self-identity as Jews. The tetralogy's first work has an independent Bildungsroman structure, while the whole four works also have a Bildungsroman structure. Therefore, the tetralogy constitutes a dual Bildungsroman structure.