식민지 지식인의 근대 인식과 윤리의식

• 영문명: Modern Perception and Ethical Consciousness of the Colony Intellectuals:A Study on Jeon Yeong-Taek’s Early Short Stories
• 발행기관: 한국문학회
• 저자명: 오창은(Oh, Chang-Eun)
• 간행물 정보: 『한국문학논총』제52집, 185~214쪽, 전체 30쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 한국어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2009.08.30

국문 초록

전영택은 김동인·주요한과 함께 조선 최초의 순문예지로 일컬어지는 잡지 『창조』의 창간을 주도했다. 그런데도, 전영택의 문학세계는 그간 상대적으로 덜 주목받아왔다. 논자는 전영택의 ‘근대인식’과 ‘윤리의식’을 파악함으로써, 식민지 근대의 복잡성이 근대 초기 문학 개척자의 세계인식에 어떤 방식으로 개입했는가를 추적했다. 전영택 초기 소설은 일제 강점기에 배제된 주체들의 비극적 삶을 포착했다. 이를 통해 조선의 식민지적 상황이 어떻게 근대의 부정성을 갈무리하고 있는가를 그려냈다. 전영택은 냉정한 시선으로 과감한 생략의 기법을 활용하고, 감정을 가급적 배제한 서술로 단편소설의 미학적 발전에도 기여했다. 전영택은 ‘구체적 개인’과 ‘보편적 윤리’ 사이에서 갈등하면서 근대적 소시민의 불안한 정체성을 포착해냈다. 그의 초기 작품세계는 ‘자기 삶에 안주할 수 없는 소시민’의 시각으로 ‘고통 받고 있는 하층민’의 삶을 주시했다는데 의미가 있다. <혜선의 사>을 통해서는 여인의 입장을 채택해 ‘자유연애’가 식민지 경성에 미치는 파국적 결말을 제시했고, <천치? 천재?>에서는 근대적 규율권력이 ‘자연인으로서의 칠성’을 어떤 방식으로 파괴하는가를 아프게 그려냈다. 또한, <화수분>과 <바람부는 저녁>에서는 소시민의 시선과 약소자의 상황을 겹쳐냄으로써 ‘식민지 지식인’의 ‘균열된 윤리의식’을 아프게 성찰했다. 이는 근대를 절대화하지 않고 근대의 그늘을 응시하는 태도이며, 자신의 소시민적 상황을 인식하면서도 약소자를 방기하지 않으려는 자기 성찰적 태도이기도 하다. 그런 의미에서 전영택의 초기 소설은 ‘보편(이광수)’과 ‘개인(김동인·현진건·염상섭·최서해)’ 사이에서 윤리의 문제를 고뇌하면서 ‘근대적 소시민의 발견으로 나아간 문학’으로 의미화할 수 있다.

영문 초록

Jeon Yeong-Taek was a writer whose literary intensity was most prominent in the 1920s. The value of Jeon Yeong-Taek’s early novels is pronounced in that he described the truth of negative modern times that had been formed in the colony Joseon by grasping tragic lifeof alienated people under the imperialist Japan’s colonial rule. He also contributed to the aesthetic development of short stories by utilizing bold ellipsis techniques with cool vision and by excluding emotion as much as possible in describing things. As a member of the literary coterie magazine “Changjo,” he embodied naturalistic literature in his works in order to overcome Lee Gwang-Soo’s enlightenment literature. Besides such formal innovation, we need to take notice of the aspects of contents embodied in his world of novels. The evaluation of Jeon Yeong-Taeekk’s novels in the history of literature has been stereotyped as ‘the expression of humanism based on Christian view of the world.’ However, Jeon Yeong-Taek’s early works make it possible to do diverse symptomatic interpretation of inner conflicts of the intellectuals in the colony. He compared men’s desires with women’s desires that were bound to be opposed to each other over free love (“the Death of Hyeseon”) and sensuously grasped the violent alienation that modern order imposed on people in the lower social classes (“Idiot? or Genius?).” He also gave a graphic description of catastrophic circumstances in petty bourgeois compassion with subtle self-consciousness (“Hwasooboon”), and described the ethical collapse that was imposed on the weak people by urban apathy (“Windy Evening”). His work of this kind ultimately formed a relatively high density in tension between art and religion. The “Idiot? Genius?” and “Hwasooboon” can be cited as hismost important works produced by his efforts to approach practical ethics instead of resigning himself to his fate. These two literary works symptomatically showed the violent circumstances faced by the weak people who were alienated from the modern age Jeon Yeong-Taek’s modern perceptionsecures the personality of a writer while it is conflicting between ‘a physical individual’ and ‘universal ethics’. He watched attentively the life of ‘people suffering in the lower classes’ from an angle of ‘petty bourgeois who cannot lead a comfortable life alone’. Through the "Death of Hyeseon" he adopted the woman’s position to present the catastrophic conclusion that the ‘fee love’ had brought about in awareness of the colony, and in “Idiot? Genius?” he poignantly described how the modern discipline power destroyed ‘Chilseong as a natural person’. Also in “Hwasooboon” and “Windy Evening”, he painfully reflected on the ‘cracked ethical consciousness’ of ‘the colony intellectuals’ by overlapping petty bourgeois’s visual angle with the weak people’s circumstances. This is the attitude that refuses to make the modern age absolute and is the outcome engendered by the efforts of ‘self-reflection’ not to abandon the weak people while he was conscious of his own circumstances of petty bourgeois. In that sense, Jeon Yeong-Taek’s early short stories can signify as the ‘literature of the weak’ that agonizes over the problems of ethic between ‘universality (Lee Gwang-Soo)’ and ‘the individual (Kim Dong-In, Hyeon Jin-Geon, Yeom Sang-Seop, Choi Seo-Hae).

목차

국문초록

Ⅰ. 『창조』와 세 명의 조선인 청년들

Ⅱ. 전영택 약전(略傳) - 신학과 문학 사이에서

Ⅲ. 식민지 지식인의 근대의식

Ⅳ. 식민지 지식인이 응시한 ‘근대의 그늘’

참고문헌

Abstract

키워드

전영택 식민지 지식인 근대인식 윤리의식 『창조』 <혜선의 사> <천치? 천재?> <화수분> <바람부는 저녁> Jeon Yeong-Taek colony intellectuals modern perception ethical consciousness “Changjo” “The Death of Hyeseon” “Idiot? Genius?” “Hwasooboon” “Windy Evening”