초록
Korean modernism supplanted realism as the dominant trend in literature with the demise of the Korean Artist’s Proletariat Federation (KAPF) in the early 1930s. There is in Korean literary modernism a strong sense of the belatedness that is found in many aspects of colonial modernity, and this perhaps explains why characteristic writings (in both prose and verse) were less the critique of modernity found in western high modernism than an expression of a “will to modernity” that included a strong desire to move away from traditional conventions, especially those governing art and morality. This article will discuss the critique of traditional morality and aesthetics as found in the writings of Yi Hyosŏk, one of Korea’s better known modernists. In mounting his modernist critique of the conservative Confucian morality that had governed social interaction in Korea for 500 years, Yi used a pronounced eroticism in his works and produced sexually liberated female (often femme fatale) characters who are not morally conflicted in the use of their sexuality for pleasure or power, a stance I am calling anti-morality.
키워드
literary modernism, will to modernity, anti-morality, eroticism, femme fatale
I. INTRODUCTION
Korea’s literary modernism movement of the 1930s created (arguably) some of the most iconic and enduring literature of the modern period. Interestingly, though, critical commentary on Korean modernist literature mostly relegates it to a subordinate position in relation to realism literature of the same period. This is partly due to the fact that most of the commentary on modernism was produced in the 1980s and 1990s when the prevailing critical sentiment was overwhelmingly informed by the
It is not merely technical innovation, however, that sets colonial era modernist literature apart from other genres of the period; modernist novelists like Yi Sang, Pak T’aewŏn, and Yi Hyosŏk were utilizing new, modern themes that in some ways challenged the traditional status quo and in other ways reflected the new, modern social consciousness. This was especially true of Yi Sang and Yi Hyosŏk’s use of erotic themes, images, and plot devices that were clearly subversive of traditional Confucian morality, most conspicuously in their liberal employment of the sexually liberated femme fatale, a modernist theme discoverable in the writings of D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Katherine Mansfield, writers that directly influenced both Yi Hyosŏk and Pak T’aewŏn.
While western modernism has been explained as a reaction to modernity, the Korean modernists had not been modern long enough to be disillusioned with modernity itself. Korean literary modernism of the colonial period came into being belatedly compared to that of the West and even of Japan, and how could it not? What is more, it had a very brief run before being choked off by the militarism and fascism of the later colonial period,
This article, then, after a review of the critical treatment of Korean literary modernism in general, will attempt to locate and explicate the modernist nature of Yi Hyosŏk’s writings as found in his use of erotic themes and lack of moralizing narrators that serve to both challenge and subvert the traditional (male-centered) morality of the time.
II. KOREAN LITERARY MODERNISM
In talking about what should be included in a modernist canon of fiction in his book
With the Japanese colonization of Korea beginning in 1910, the modernity that Japan had so single-mindedly been pursuing since the advent of the Meiji Restoration (1868-1869) began to literally pour into Korea. The success of Japan’s “benchmarking” of western modernity is well documented. What is not so widely known is that the Japanese, while constructing modern universities based mostly on the German model, took the study and teaching of English literature very seriously. The sixth imperial university constructed in Seoul in 1926, Kyŏngsŏng (J. Keijō) Imperial University was no exception. Satō Kiyoshi, the chairman of the English Literature Department studied in Britain focusing on both the romantics and the newly emerging modernists like Yeats. This, combined with the large number of Koreans studying literature in Japan, led to a rapid assimilation of western literary trends and techniques in the colony.
Just as the industrialization and modernization of Korea (and Japan only shortly before it) followed, somewhat belatedly, that of the West, so too did the formation of its modern literature. Most critics locate the beginning of “modern” Korean literature with the publication of Yi Kwangsu’s novel
Modernism was the major literary trend to replace socialist realism or “proletariat literature” with the demise of KAPF (Korean Artist’s Proletariat Federation) in the first half of the 1930s. The rise of literary modernism in Korea, exemplified in the formation of the writer’s coterie the Kuinhoe or Group of Nine in 1933 (of which Yi Sang, Pak T’aewŏn, and Yi Hyosŏk were members), was, to a certain extent, made possible by the degree of modernity achieved in Seoul at the time. Of course, Korean writers were also tapped into world events, and the same forces that were shaping modernist narratives in the United States and Europe were at work in the Korean colony as well, coalescing in the 1930s into a very high level of (localized) cosmopolitanism rivaling that of other major world metropolises.
Before beginning the discussion of Korean literary modernism, a short treatment of the concept of modernism by English speaking critics might be helpful. The term modernism as a descriptive category of literature has become so broad that it can accommodate a wide range of trends, techniques and sensibilities, many of which have nothing in common except the term itself. In fact, the scope within which the term is used is so open that its validity has recently come into question. In the 1995 work titled,
The problem is straightforward: any ‘modernism’ broad enough to embrace the variety of literary experiment in the first quarter of this century turns out to be nothing more than a portmanteau label, a synonym for ‘innovative or experimental writing’. Once reified, it inevitably becomes a straightjacket: the diverse history of the period has to be flattened and denatured in order to justify the existence of the concept.
Harwood is saying that ‘modernism’ as nomenclature applied to types of literary writing serves more to obfuscate meaning than to clarify it. While acknowledging that there are contradictory elements in the use of the term, Marianne Thormählen makes the assertion that “if Academe did invent ‘modernism,’ it did so in response to a need, and the swift acceptance of the term suggests that the need was answered.” She goes on to say that the functions assigned to the term in contemporary academic discourse are
A powerful attraction to formal experimentation and innovation; logical ruptures and the linking of ostensibly incompatible phenomena; a deliberate cultivation of ambiguity, multi-facetedness, and associations; a preoccupation with disorder, crisis, randomness, and fragmentation; tautness and irony in the chosen modes of expression; an extreme valorization of art; a rejection of history as a chronological process; cultural pessimism; moral relativism and ambivalence towards philosophical idealism; rootedness in urban, even metropolitan, settings, including the anonymity of crowds and the consequences of technological developments; an interest in representations of sexuality; and explorations of different conceptions of reality and the self.”
In looking at the above list, the first Korean writer that comes to mind is, of course, Yi Sang. In fact, almost all of these characteristics could be readily applied to both his poetry and prose. After him, the works of Yi Hyosŏk as well can be understood using many of the above classifications, especially valorization of art, cultural pessimism, and interest in representations of sexuality.
Western modernism was, among other things of course, “a reaction to and against the modernity that was dulling human instinct, impoverishing high culture, and that had killed millions in the first instance of ‘modern’ warfare.”
Free verse abandoned traditional versification methods including meter, rhyme, and stanza form; it often also violated syntax. In narrative, stream of consciousness purported to represent the thoughts of an individual character without any intervention of a narrator figure… These innovations, drawn from different media and genres, indicate the range of the crisis of representation and also how various its effects could be in diverse contexts. Certain shared concerns defined all these experiments as modernist. In each case modernism called attention to the medium of the literary or artistic work, defined itself in contrast to convention, and radically altered the means of representation.
Another common observation regarding western modernism was that its impetus was actually a “will to modernity.” This seems contradictory in the face of the assertion that modernism was “a reaction to and against the modernity that was dulling human instinct, impoverishing high culture, and that had killed millions in the first instance of ‘modern warfare’.” In fact, the high modernists exemplified by Eliot were pushing back against the kind of modernity foretold of by Nietzsche in his description of the last modern man who has accepted bourgeois values and whose happiness is nauseating.
On the other hand, this “will to modernity” could clearly be seen in the works of the Korean modernists as they had not been modern long enough to be disillusioned with modernity itself. In fact, the modernist poet and critic Kim Kirim described the modernist writers that were his contemporaries as “the sons of modernity.”
Modernism was being discussed in the 1930s starting with the debate between Kim Kirim and Im Hwa over literary technicalism (
(Kim) “Well, I can’t agree with Im Hwa’s opinion. He never deviates from his conclusions that all derive from a class-based position, and this trend for such poetry circles in the 1930s has been very disadvantageous and now that they have lost their vitality, I think it is wrong of them to attack the technique-oriented poets.”
“What do you think the reason for this is?”
(Kim) “As I just said, I think the loss of status and vitality in the unfavorable situation they are in contributes to this (attitude).”
“But those writing poetry or criticism who have this class-based outlook are not just attacking you it seems, but the majority of Korean poets as well. Is this intentional, do you think?”
(Kim) “I wouldn’t say it’s intentional, but this reaction is extremely emotional.”
This debate became moribund with the premature death of Yi Sang and the turn to the left by Pak T’aewŏn and others.
Critical interest in Korean literary modernism resurfaced in the 1980s and peaked in the 1990s but has since trailed off with little being written in Korean
The first approach was mostly utilized in master’s theses and Ph.D. dissertations written in the 1980s and early 1990s; the second was utilized by two major studies in book form that came out in 1991 and 1992 respectively.
Ch’a’s approach is similar in placing modernism alongside realism in the flow of Korean literary history, however; there is a clear tendency in her writing to privilege realism over modernism due to the perception shared by many critics writing in the 1980s and 90s that realism better represented the Korean ethnic consciousness and was more critical of colonial modernity (and by extension all things Japanese). Consider the following:
Modernist literature, characterized by a sophistication of language and a revolution in the techniques of aesthetic production, when contrasted with the society of the time, could not help but be saddled with an inferiority complex vis-à-vis realism when it came to reflecting reality. Therefore, modernist literature wound up being nothing more than descriptions of the rupture between the individual and the group or the self-consciousness of the petty intellectual.
This passage clearly demands further discussion due to the oversimplified manner with which she categorizes a fairly complex phenomenon; however, Ch’a’s real ideological agenda is fully revealed in the following assertion:
Modernist literature was produced during the heyday of western industrial development. The corresponding Korean situation not only could not equal the capitalist development of the West, but as a colony, its economy was distorted. The claim that, in such a defective industrial society, Korean literature achieved similar results as that of the West, shows that
The major problem with the first statement is that Ch’a seems to be (willfully) ignorant of the nature of modernism’s approach to reality. To say that it had an inferiority complex in regards to realism when it came to reflecting reality is like saying that Pablo Picasso painted the way he did because he was not artistically capable of producing paintings that were literal depictions of physical reality. Ch’a’s assertion that, due to the fact that Chosŏn’s industrial development was too far behind that of the West and that its economy was “distorted” meant that Chosŏn modernism was nothing more than an attenuated and fetishized dandyism displays a remarkable ideological bias.
Na Pyŏngch’ŏl develops this line of thinking further. He states that both “critical” and “social” realism allow the reader to gain a “proper” conception of reality that can lead to an overcoming of the contradictions of society (caused by bourgeois values). On the other hand, modernism, being “merely” a literature of alienation, cannot reflect or depict reality.
Of course, much of the disparity evident between the two literary camps arises from their different perspectives of history. Both modernists and realists were critical of Chosŏn’s past and traditions,
It is likely, however, that the privileging of realism over modernism by nationalist critics has a more fundamental cause. As seen above, Korean literary modernism was seen as more embracing of modernity than its western counterpart (recall Kim Kirim’s description of Korean modernists as the “sons of modernity”). Much nationalist writing on the colonial period is uncritically critical of modernity itself. The logic goes that colonial modernity (imposed by Japanese colonialism) was “the deformed child of rape”
3 Stephen Kern,
4 For a good discussion of this process of importation and assimilation of western literary trends into Korea through Japan see, An Yonghŭi,
5 For a discussion of what makes this the first “modern” Korean novel see, Michael Shin, “Interior Landscapes: Yi Kwangsu’s ‘The Heartless’ and the Origins of Modern Literature,”
6 It is significant that it only took some fifteen years for Korean writers to go from producing the first modern novel (which was in no way modernist) to consciously producing modernist texts.
7 Yi Kwangsu, “Munhak iran hao” (What is literature?),
8 John Harwood,
9 Maria Thormählen,
10 Pericles Lewis,
11 Lewis, 3.
12 For more on this see Allen Bloom,
13 Kim Kirim, “Modŏnijŭm ŭi yŏksajŏk ŭich’i” (Modernism’s historical position),
14 Kim Kirim,
15 Im Hwa,
16 Kim Haktong,
17 There is some work being done on this subject in English, however. This year saw the publication of
18 Ch’a Hyeyŏng,
19 Sŏ Chunsŏp,
20 Sŏ Chunsŏp,
21 Ch’oe Hyesil, p. 16
22 Na Pyŏngch’ŏl,
23 Regarding this, Kim Yujŏng notes the following: “The indiscriminate denial of our traditions that arose out of a longing for the promise of Utopia that western civilization seemed to offer was clearly a distorted mentality that resulted from the exigencies of the times; however, it cannot be denied that the writers of the time felt that outside elements (that is modern elements) were incompatible to, and could not coexist with, traditional elements of Chosŏn society. Kim Yujŏng,
24 Lukacs was de rigueur reading on Korean college campuses in the 1980s and early 1990s, especially in Korean literature departments.
25 Georg Lukacs, “The Ideology of Modernism,” in
26 For a detailed discussion of this topic see Sin Hyŏn’gi,
27 See Im Chongguk,
III. YI HYOSŎK’S MODERNISM: EROTICISM AND ANTI-MORALITY
Yi Hyosŏk’s anti-morality emanated from the perception that morality was an impediment to the creation of beauty and the enjoyment of aesthetic pleasure. His moral stance was one of neutrality. His later novels mostly dealt with a broad ranging sexuality wherein his protagonists, liberated from moral restrictions, were able to pursue sexual pleasure.
Yi Hyosŏk majored in English literature at Kyŏngsŏng (Keijō) Imperial University. His literature for the first six or seven years of his writing career (he debuted in 1928) was characterized by socialist themes, and he was considered a “fellow traveler” writer until, suddenly, he was not anymore. From about 1934 on, his fiction dealt with highly individualized themes of the personal search for beauty, sexual awakening, betrayal, and the redemptive and universalizing (Whitmanian) power of love. He borrowed freely from western literature and was influenced by John Milton, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Lawrence, and Mansfield, among others. What made his writings modernist was his willingness to utilize sexual themes to push the boundaries of what was acceptable, earning him comparisons with Lawrence. He was clearly in thrall to western civilization and culture, something for which both Korean nationalist and Marxist critics (these two identities often ironically co-existing in one person or camp)
However, in spite of his socialist leanings, Yi had been incorporating themes of sexuality into his literature since early in his career. The degree to which such themes appeared in his work increased with time, becoming major aspects of plot structure and character development. The full-length novel
Generally speaking, Yi’s use of erotic themes was negatively viewed by Korean critics, earning him a number of pejorative appellations as discussed above, mostly revolving around the idea that such writing was frivolous, decadent, and, in the extreme betrayed a simultaneously insidious fascination with western culture and a crypto-collaborationist mentality.
Concepts like “nature” or “primitiveness” in explaining Yi’s interest in sexuality are, in reality, useless terms. Paradoxically, attempts to link Yi’s use of sex to nature only serve to highlight how ‘sex” during that period was tied to “the order of human relationships (
Rather, Han asserts, Yi is “using literature to open up the discussion of sex that had been up until then considered a taboo topic, and doing so to a degree that could be seen as dangerous.”
This is perhaps the essence of Yi’s modernism: a willingness to break some of the eggs of convention to make his literary omelet as it were. Yet, while Yi’s role in the formation of a “new sexual modernity”
This effort as well, however, fails to acknowledge the clearly modernist aspects of Yi’s writing and, instead, relies on the ideology of post-modernism and post-colonialism to recast Yi’s work as a kind of anti-imperial, anti-modernity resistance literature. One of several such arguments in this vein should suffice to illustrate this point. In her article titled “A re-interpretation of sexuality in Yi Hyosŏk’s novels,”
Im never clearly delineates how modernity and colonialism have distorted human sexuality. In one of Yi’s stories titled “Field” (Tŭl), the male first person narrator ends up having a sexual liaison with Okpun, a local maiden, under an apple tree some time after the two have together witnessed two dogs copulating, an event that, together with the ripe strawberry that the protagonist feeds Okpun, seems to act as a catalyst to their own coupling. In describing Okpun’s attitude regarding losing her virginity in this way, Im points to the fact that she is unencumbered by guilt, or feelings of anger or recrimination and emphasizes that this attitude is in contrast to the “distorted modern sexual consciousness” and is a refutation of a “modern sexuality that has undergone a westernized colonization.” She goes on to say that Okpun represents the embracing nature of the field (nature itself) that is able to accept society’s outcasts (the narrator has been in trouble with the law for socialist activities). This magnanimity and liberalness is, according to Im, the symbol of the power of female sexuality, one that “while being threatening to the male cannot be resisted by him” and which is depicted in the story as the cyclical life force of nature. Im describes this life force in the following way:
Such life force can bestow comfort and happiness. It is in direct contrast to the colonial reality of the time wherein Japanese tyranny destroyed life. In this context, Okpun’s character, depicted as a unified subjectivity with the field that represents the energy of new life blossoming in spring within the absolute oppression of the colonial state and that can bestow freedom on the organisms that reside within it, is a symbol of resistance and can be seen as a criticism of and rebellion against distorted modern sexual consciousness.
The flimsiness of this argument as an analysis of sexuality in Yi’s literature becomes instantly apparent when we look at the fates of almost any of his other sexually active female characters.
In the short story “Punnyŏ,” the eponymous main character, in direct and stark contrast to Okpun, is humiliated and spurned by her socialist first love after he returns from a time in jail for his communist activities to find that she had been busy exploring the possibilities of sexual pleasure afforded her (ironically) by the “new sexual modernity” identified in Han Suyŏng’s article.
Well, she had been unlucky from the start. With both Myŏngjun and Chŏnsu she had been forced. At first she had pulled at her hair and cried, but now she thought that Myŏngjun, Chŏnsu, and even Man’gap for that matter, were all the same. Whether it was a matter of vigor, or desire, or emotion, all men were the same. Since they all had one nose and two arms, one was really no better or worse than the next and there was no need to dislike or be more afraid of one than another. There was no reason that this body, which had been given to Myŏngjun, could not be also given to Man’gap or Chŏnsu.
The above is an example of one aspect of Yi’s modernism: the critique of the vested rights of the male-centered sexual morality of his society. He has provided Punnyŏ with an amorality that provides her with sexual autonomy free from the (male imposed) strictures of the times. He invests her with a natural and unfettered curiosity about, and interest in, sex that leads her to the realization that there is more to sex than the simple act she has so far experienced. In one episode, she is spying through the bedroom shutters on the master and lady of the house in which she is employed as a maid.
She barely breathed. Her blood raced and her face flushed. A small whimper escaped her throat. She pressed herself flat against the blinds like a gecko clinging to a wall…
Even after several days had passed her excitement had not subsided.
“I never knew there was such a world.”
Compared to what she had seen in that room, the world she had experienced up until now was nothing… The guilt she felt for the various experiences she had had suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the thought that such things were natural, and she now felt that she had so far been short-changed.
Like Yi Sang, Yi Hyosŏk’s most sexually liberated and dangerous characters are women. If Yi Sang viewed sexuality as a way to reveal truth (for Yi Sang the truth was often found in secrets), Yi Hyosŏk saw it as the most honest expression of human nature, something he thought essential to both beauty and truth. Yi Hyosŏk’s work, like Yi Sang’s, is tinged with the modernist’s cynicism and skepticism, directed in particular at conventional (hypocritical) views of sexual morality. In a short story titled after William Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose,” Yi deals directly with a subject alluded to in the poem: syphilis. In discussing sex, obscenity and censorship in modernist literature, Rachel Potter states:
One could go so far as to suggest that the term modernism, in its more liberatory and futuristic guises, implies radical transgression, whether with regard to a literary break from the past or in the impulse to overstep religious and moral boundaries…
Modernist texts often stage the discursive prohibitions against which their transgressions take place. In
This is exactly what Yi is doing in this story with his use of not only a sexually liberated female protagonist, but one with syphilis as well. In the story, the protagonist Hyŏnbo reunites with Namjuk, a girl he knew as a passionate, politically-minded (socialist) young student seven years after losing touch with her. He recalls that she was a “healthy yet fragile flower”
Here again, Yi has reversed the typical sexual roles. Not only is Namjuk exercising her sexual agency, she is doing so for the two-fold purposes of pleasure and money. She has no moral qualms about sleeping with Hyŏnbo for the pleasure it brings her while at the same time bringing the rich man’s son to her place in order to secure the money for her trip. The fact that both men contract syphilis from her is evidence that she has been sexually active before she met them. Her unselfconscious willingness to dance in a bar both by herself and with the rich man’s son shows that she is clearly unburdened by a sense of shame, the traditional emotion imparted unevenly to women in Korean society to act as a damper on just such behavior. And her equally unselfconscious use of her own body for both her own pleasure and as a means of securing a train ticket shows she is also unencumbered by a sense of guilt, the other moral harness fettering female sexuality. Here again, Yi’s inversion of traditional morality without a moralizing ending is characteristic of his modernist critique of his society’s hypocritical sexual mores.
In Yi’s first full-length novel titled
Now that she had a moment of leisure, Ongnyŏ put her kitchen chores aside and stood outside the window watching with desire the beautiful flesh of Miran as she splashed in the bath. It was all she could do not to jump in and caress those soft arms and those cherry-like nipples. If she were a man, she would sink her teeth like an eagle into those white thighs. If the snake that had caused such a commotion under the rose briars had been a thinking beast, it would not have left those beautiful arms and legs in peace…
While there are further descriptions of homoerotic longings between the women in the story (including that of Seran for her sister Miran), there are several instances of male homosexuality, one of which is surprisingly straightforward and is actually consummated.
It had been a long time—a strange impulse came out of nowhere, like the recurrence of an epileptic seizure. Suddenly his soaring feelings caused him to lean into Tanju and press his lips over Tanju’s. Just like that time when he had first got to know Tanju and they had come to his apartment and shared this kind of secret time, he now pressed himself with overwhelming strength on top of Tanju’s body. There was a powerful ebb and flow of their bodies of exactly the same kind as when he made love with his wife Seran in their bed.
This is, as I have said, perhaps the most direct depiction of a male homosexual liaison in all of early modern Korean literature. Yi’s use of homoerotic sexuality in
The image of indiscriminate pollenization evoked by the title of the novel is discernable in the sexual configurations of the plot that are so complicated as to require a diagram to follow:
.
In
While watching the temptation scene in the garden, Miran wonders about the following: Why did they eat the forbidden fruit? It must have been an enormous wrong to have been thus forbidden, so even if the temptation were also enormous, it must have taken great courage to go against God’s law. How did the two of them overcome the terror and anxiety? Where did they get the courage to take the first bite? How brave Adam and Eve must have been. Without knowing what would follow, they had disobeyed and had broken the sacred law. How could such courage be acquired?
Miran then goes on to contravene the taboos of her own society by giving her virginity to Tanju in Hyŏnma’s apartment shortly after seeing the movie.
Yi rehabilitates the “fallen” Miran through the agency of art. Art for Yi is both a synonym for beauty and the source of its creation. Miran, through the redemptive powers of art-beauty, is able to overcome her extremely compromised status (having lost her virginity to the licentious, bi-sexual Tanju and having been raped by Hyŏnma) to become once again worthy of love and happiness. Her music teacher, the classically trained Yŏnghun, by virtue of his art, possesses superior wisdom and is the dispenser of redemption in the form of an unbiased love that can easily accept Miran as he has no compunctions whatever about her past. He has come to know the events of Miran’s past through a fight with Tanju at a hot springs resort and, when Miran finds the courage to confess her “sins” to Yŏnghun, he surprises her by announcing that he knows all that has happened and that no “sin” has been committed, and, what is more, that nothing that has transpired has affected his love for Miran in the slightest.
Yi’s privileging of both eroticism and art (explicitly western beauty/culture) over convention was one of the most conspicuous aspects of his modernist critique of the moral status quo. This is consistent with Fredric Jameson’s use of the term “taboo” to describe modernism’s rejection of tradition. He states that “we should think of the quintessential modern gesture as one of taboo rather than discovery,” and goes on to explain this as meaning that “modernism is seen as originating in an ever-keener distaste for what is conventional and outmoded, rather than as an exploratory appetite for the undiscovered and unexplored.”
28 Han Kyejŏn et al., “1930 nyŏndae Han’guk munhak ŭi pigyo munhakchŏk yŏn’gu” (A comparative literature approach to 1930s Korean literature),
29 This isone of the major contradictions in the Korean critical tradition: the wedding of nationalist and Marxist approaches; something clearly antithetical to the internationalist nature of the Marxist critique of modernity.
30 For more on this see Steven D. Capener, “Paradise Found: Recovery and Redemption in the Later Literature of Yi Hyosŏk,”
31 Kim Hyŏn, “Wijangdoen ch’ohwa wa punyŏl, Yi Hyosŏk” (Disguised harmony and discord, Yi Hyosŏk),
32 Ironically, but not surprisingly, the portion of Yi’s work that is positively evaluated by nationalist critics is exactly the same as that acknowledged by recent North Korean literary criticism, i.e., his early “fellow-traveler,” or so-called engaged literature. The point at which both South Korean nationalist writers and recent North Korean criticism switches from positive to negative occurs at precisely the same point in Yi’s trajectory as a writer: the early 1930s starting with works such as “Orion and the crabapple,” “Pig,” and “Field.” See, for example, Sŏk Kŭmch’ŏn, “Kap’ŭ ŭi tongbanja Yi Hyosŏk ŭi segye wa t’ŭkk’ihan ch’angjak hwaltong” (KAPF fellow traveller: Yi Hyosŏk, his life and unique writing),
33 Kim Chaeyŏng, “Yi Hyosŏk sosŏl e nat’anan “sŏng” ŭi t’ŭksusŏng yŏn’gu” (A study on the characteristics of “sex” in Yi Hyosŏk’s literature),
34 Han Suyŏng, “Chŏngch’ijŏk in’gan kwa sŏngjŏk in’gan” (The political human being and the sexual human being),
35 Han Suyŏng, 142.
36 Han Suyŏng, 143.
37 Im Ŭnhŭi,
38 Im Ŭnhŭi, 117.
39 Han Suyŏng, 143.
40 Yi Hyosŏk, “Punnyŏ,”
41 Yi Hyosŏk, “Punnyŏ,” 41–42.
42 Potter Rachel,
43 Yi Hyosŏk, “Changmi pyŏngdŭlda” (The sick rose),
44 Here as well, Im Ŭnhŭi’s argument falls flat (in fact it suffers an inversion) when we substitute Namjuk for Okpun, especially regarding the assertion that her (here Namjuk’s) attitude is in contrast to the “distorted modern sexual consciousness” and is a refutation of a “modern sexuality that has undergone a westernized colonization.”
45 This phrase and many others in Yi’s works that reference sexual secrets are highly redolent of Yi Sang. He begins his short, autobiographical story “Silhwa” (Lost flower) with the line, “A person with no secrets is as poor and empty as one who has no belongings.” These secrets, it turns out are secret sexual liasons engaged in by Yŏn, his live-in girlfriend (and modeled on his wife) with his best friend S. She is a femme fatale in her own right, and Yi, after discovering some (but not all) of her secrets, ends the story on the same note with which he begins: “What secrets of the cushion and couch, then, do you possess underneath that thick make-up?” “A person with no secrets is even poorer than one with no belongings. Just look at me.” Yi Sang,
46 For more on this see, Steven D. Capener, “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Influence of William Blake, Walt Whitman and Katherine Mansfield on the Literature of Yi Hyoseok,”
47 To date I have only seen one critical treatment (and that a very cursory one) of this topic in
48 Yi Hyosŏk, “Hwabun” (Pollen),
49 To my knowledge, this is the most striking description of male homosexuality in Korean literature of the modern period.
50 Yi Hyosŏk,
51 Again, see Steven D. Capener, “A Rose by Any Other Name: The Influence of William Blake, Walt Whitman and Katherine Mansfield on the Literature of Yi Hyosŏk,”
52 I was unable to determine if such a movie existed or if it was a plot device employed by Yi.
53 Yi Hyosŏk,
54 Yi Hyosŏk,
55 Frederic Jameson,
III. CONCLUSION
Yi Hyosŏk’s modernism emanates mostly (but not entirely) from his use of erotic themes and images to contest a Confucian based traditional (sexual) morality that suppressed natural feeling and emotion thus impeding the experience or creation of beauty. This characteristic places him securely in one of the main arteries of the modernist aesthetic. Pericles Lewis summarizes this aesthetic as follows:
The most evident transformation of literature and the arts in the period, however, and the one that brought about the most direct conflict, was the modernists’ attention to previously taboo subject matters, such as masturbation, sodomy and other sexual acts, homosexuality, menstruation, and digestion. The modernist often encountered censorship, and it is sometimes difficult to say whether this censorship resulted from the content of modernist representations or from their form and especially their moral ambiguity. Modern writers frequently present works in which conventional morality is challenged, often without specifically telling readers whether or not they should approve of the behavior of the characters in the books.
With the exception of censorship, something from which Yi does not seemed to have suffered, the above passage could have been written specifically to describe his work. He placed his characters in conflict with traditional moral conventions regarding pre-marital sex, cohabitation, female sexual agency, and homosexuality. What is more, unlike other writers of the time that visited cosmic retribution on their characters for contravening the prevailing moral strictures,
56 Pericles Lewis, 28.
57 See the works of Na Tohyang, for instance.
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