최인훈의 <가면고>에 나타난 가면의 의미 - 인도 문화 브라흐마교의 사유에 근거하여

Abstract

This paper provides an important clue to understand the significance of the Mask―the duplicate face―and significance of time period of the work through the analysis of Indian cultural elements which appears in Choi Inhun’s work “Reflections on a Mask.” The paper is exploring the identity of Min, a young person who lives in the post‒Korean War time era. A war veteran and a writer Min finds his life unfulfilled until he stumbles upon a mysterious Psycho organization that offers him a procedure to aid in his search for true self. Min continuously reflects about war, sage, mask, bare face, brahma and love. He also captivated himself in the phenomenon of ancient Indian king, queen, karma, namelessness, brahma’s face of three thousand year ago through the hypnotic treatment. Choi In‒hun setup a search process of treatment method by going into the past age of India in order to understand the root cause of contemporary person’s agony. He discovers that the perspective of Indian Veda period’s culture is the most appropriate to understand the significance of the Mask. The modern man Min pursues peace, equality and liberty that was not possible to be realize due to the confliction of ideology and identity. On the other hand, his former character and Indian ancient king pursues an impossible transformation of Kshatriya’s identity into the Brahma. It exposes Choi In‒hun’s expectation about the peace and liberty and transformation of leadership at that time period. In fact in India, belief in Brahmanism and belief in Anti‒brahmanism crisscrossed each other and finally Brahmanism have been revived with a substitute of anti‒brahmanism in early time. In the same way, Choi Inhun’s “Reflections on a Mask” suggests that the mask was generated in the Korean society because society was not living in the real freedom at that time period, and if people really want to be free from the unfree society, they must avoid the ideological war with each other. A strong ‘faithful love’ is enough to resolve the disbelief and violation from the society and that is only best way of solution.