The Manifold Naturalisms of Kim Tong-in

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 국제비교한국학회
· 수록지 정보 : 비교한국학 Comparative Korean Studies / 21권 / 3호 / 203 ~ 224페이지
· 저자명 : Simon Kim

초록

When introducing Kim Tong-in’s Literary World, critics and historians usually use Literary Trends, and yet it is noteworthy that there is no consistent definition. In other words, Kim Tong-in is described as a writer belonging, at the same time, to very different trends such as naturalism, realism, nationalism, aestheticism, etc. This article proposes a different approach to the Literary World of Kim Tong-in. Instead of accumulating literary genres to grab his Literary World, we observe how, within one single trend - naturalism -, Kim Tong-in proposes and utilizes several interpretations of this one trend in order to achieve his own personal literary trend.
First when Kim Tong-in is referred to as a naturalist writer, naturalism generally relates to the literary trend developed by French writer Emile Zola. Zola was greatly impressed and influenced by the development of sciences at his time, and Naturalism as he defined it aimed at bringing scientific experimentation into the field of creative writing. Thus, the term ‘nature’ in Naturalism refers to the natural sciences. The Naturalist Literature’s writing methodology can hence be described as follows: put an individual belonging to a certain type in a particular environment, then observe and record how this individual adapts to the environment changes. Kim Tong-in’s masterpiece Kamja shows a very similar attitude from its author: it records the changes undergone by a young woman as she is led to live in a poor neighborhood outside P’yeongyang.
Though this particular story bares many similarities with Zola’s naturalism, literary critics connect other stories with other literary trends. For example, in another well-known story, Baettaragi, elements of such a Naturalism can also be found, but when attempting to link it to a literary trend, it is usually described as a romantic story.
Here it should be reminded that Kim Tong-in studied Literature in Japan. It is also noteworthy to note that when Kim Tong-in came across Zola’s naturalism, it was not by reading directly Zola’s works but in a form that had been already processed and adapted by Japanese authors. Naturalism played a major role in the forging of modern Japanese Literature. However the Naturalism that developed in Japan is quite different from Zola’s Naturalism. Japanese authors understood the ‘nature’ in naturalism not as much as the ‘natural’ of Zola’s ‘natural sciences’ but rather as found in the expression ‘Mother Nature’. Therefore their posture in front of Nature was closer to Romanticism than to the French naturalist writers. In front of Nature’s greatness these authors saw their inner self emerge to the surface of consciousness and this became a characteristic of Japanese Naturalism. Thus, stories by Kim Tong-in such as Baettaragi or the Whispers of Taedong River in which a great emphasis is put on Nature as a shelter, that have often been described as Romantic works, have in fact much more to do with this Japanese interpretation of Naturalism. Furthermore, Japanese naturalist authors slightly transformed Zola’s motto to describe reality ‘as it is’ and advocated a truthful description of one’s personal reality, thus giving birth to a new Literary genre specific to Japanese Literature: the shishosetsu or “novel of the I (self)”. Kim Tong-in introduced in Korea and made frequent use of a similar type of ‘confessional novel’. However what differs from Japanese Naturalist authors of the shishosetsu genre is that Kim Tong-in uses the confession merely as a narrative device. And this is also true for his use of Zola’s Naturalism and Japan’s Romantic Naturalism; Naturalism is a tool, part of the creative techniques the writer has at hand. In other words, Kim Tong-in’s Naturalism is methodological. To him, the ‘nature’ in Naturalism refers to the adjective ‘natural’ we use when we ask someone to ‘act natural’. While French Naturalism as well as its various Japanese interpretations follow trends and ideas from Sociology, Psychology, Poetics, etc. Kim Tong-in’s Naturalism, as a narrative device, mostly acts as a tool ensuring that the story ‘feels natural’. By experimenting this manifold Naturalisms and the various narrative possibilities they offer, Kim Tong-in succeeded in laying the ground stones on which a modern Korean Literature could be built.

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