蔡萬植의 <冷凍魚>와 內鮮 戀愛의 問題

Abstract

This study aims to rethink the meaning and the value of <Frozen Fish>, Chae, Man-sic’s novel written in 1940s from the viewpoint of a love narrative between imperial woman and colonial man. In this novel, the love between imperial woman and colonial man supposes the communication with colonial man’s translation. It is impossible that perfact and equal communication between colonial man who translates himself with imperial language and imperial woman who says her mother tongue. So the hero, colonial man constantly mistranslates the identity of imperial woman, and performs his love. He (mis)translates the heroine, imperial woman as a one in discord with the present age like himself. Meanwhile, the heroine (mis)translates colonial man as a substitute to her past lover whom she didn't divorce well. Her travel to the colony is the travel for extinction from her past as an imperialist. She goes to the Continent of China by way of the colony Chosun and reaches the high position of imperial lineage through nicely cutting her past. The hero misses the imperial woman, the mirror-figure of himself who can go to the continent and lost forever. This longing to imperial woman relates to the longing and the trial communicates between empire and nation through another way different from one-sided communication which was achieved through translating into the imperial language.