김동인의 문학창작觀과 문학의 역할論

Abstract

Kim Tong-in belongs to the generation of writers who, in the early 1920s, thrived to give Korea a modern literature. Unlike writers from the West who built modernity against tradition, Korean literature had no tradition to build itself against, ancient literature being written in classical chinese. Therefore in order to achieve modernity, they had to create a whole new literature out of nothing, or so they said. The first steps had been made by the generation right above, with the so-called Enlightenment literature, led by Yi Kwangsu who thought of literature as a way to teach modernity to the people. Yet the (moral) modernity put forward by Yi Kwangsu and the (literary) modernity sought after by the young writers of the 1920 was quite different. Kim Tong-in set himself apart from other writers as he didn’t satisfy himself with the general view of what modern literature should be like. Whereas other writers leaned towards realism and naturalism, Kim Tong-in thought of these trends as mere tools to create a work of modern literature. In other words, to Kim Tong-in’s eyes, literary modernity could not be reduced to realism. This is why literary critics and historians of Korean literature have struggled to define in a coherent manner Kim Tong-in’s literary world. He seems to be all over the places, leaning towards realism, then switching to eastheticism, before getting into romanticism or even nationalism. Instead of trying to define Kim Tong-in literary world in terms of literary trends as it has been done up untill now, we should try to grasp it in a more comprehensive way in order to seize its coherence within all these apparent incoherence. This article proposes to view Kim Tong-in’s approach to writing as an experimental approach. And by experimental, we don’t refer to modernism and avant-garde literary experimentations as much as a general attitude towards the very act of writing. In his search for literary modernity, Kim Tong-in, we believe, experimented with various trends, various concepts, looking for an answer to what literary modernity should be and without getting ever satisfied with one single answer. In his quest, two elements remained throughout his literary journey: 1. the belief that writing is an art form and therefore subjected to certain skills and techniques; 2. the dedication to give his country the literature that could best represent it.