박 미하일 소설 삽입시의 의미와 효과 - 『밤은 태양이다』를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper analyzes the poetry inserted in Koryoin writer, Park Mikhail’s full-length novel, The Night is the Sun, with a view to exploring the world that the writer is aiming for in the process of overcoming the identity confrontation that Koryoin has gone through after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The novel focuses on the events the narrator, Vikenti, encounters in the journey to St. Petersburg to write poems, describing people who have lived a chaotic and anxious life since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This narrative is based on the characteristic subject of Park Mikhail’s novel - leaving. Having said that, this work portrays the inner world of the protagonist in his journey of leaving: the confusion of identity as a migrant Koryoin which results in wandering and his distressing self-examination It can be said that it is a technical characteristic of this work different from Park’s other works. Vikenti, a young Koryoin from Kazakhstan, travels via Moscow to St. Petersburg. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, societies in the CIS have been experiencing side effects and devastation everywhere, and Vikenti experiences this extreme chaos and disorder. Then, he meets a Russian woman, Lera; makes love and breaks up with her; and since then, writes poems while missing her. In reality, chaos continues without letting people know what is going to happen in the future. The ‘ruble’ is urgently needed to survive no matter what, but Vikenti’s bag has nothing but his poetry. In the society where art represented through poetry becomes useless, unproductive, and peculiar, he leaves with the ‘poetry’ manuscript as treasure. Just as the journey of ‘leaving’ is a process of finding himself in the unstable society and a process of exploring the identity of a Koryoin, a stranger to any part of the CIS for Vikenti, writing poetry is the only act that proves his existence. For example, he is ashamed of the loss of his native language and determined to reconstruct the history of migration of Koryoin in the form of epic poetry. For Vikenti as a Koryoin poet, love and writing poetry are like an exit that leads him to free and happy tomorrow rather than yesterday of the dark society after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most important function of the poems in The Night is the Sun, is to describe the inner world of the main character in detail. The confession, anxious mind, and the process of overcoming the difficulties are lyrically represented through Vikenti’s own poems which are written in the true words that Vikenti does not speak out, and show more clearly who the main character, Vikenti, really is. He also shows how he has lived his life beautifully while enduring the harsh reality after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The technique of inserting proper poems is effectively used to establish the main character’s self-identity and to realize the writer’s theme consciousness, which is the virtue of the poetry in The Night is the Sun.