The Soil
- Author
- Yi Kwang-su
- Publisher
- Munji Publishing | Released 2005-06-25
- Category
- Novel
- Book description
- With the publication of 'The Heartless,' Korea's first modern full-length novel, Korean fiction...
To begin with a brief word on Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil': I would say it has a narrative structure similar to 'The Heartless,' mixed together with Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina,' and on top of that it brings in the quite social issue of the peasant movement. Reading Yi Kwang-su's 'The Heartless,' I felt it was a rather good novel, and the reason was that Hyeong-sik was such an indecisive character. He was the type we learned to call a Hamlet figure, and this kind of indecisiveness makes the reader curious about how the protagonist will make his decisions. The same was true of 'The Soil.' More than any other part, the scenes of indecision were the ones I could empathize with most.
Yi Kwang-su's works generally have such similar content structures that he is said to be 'formulaic.' This work too is not much different from his earlier ones, and for that very reason I want to note that I read this novel more comfortably and easily. However, being similar does not mean it is exactly the same novel at all. In any case, the subject matter of the 'peasant movement,' which had not appeared before, was introduced here. Of course, because of this it is also frequently compared with 'Hometown.' The usual point is that Yi Kwang-su's grasp of reality is far too weak, but I will address that part later.
First I'll talk about the intertextuality with Tolstoy's novel 'Anna Karenina,' and after that, about the structural aspects and points of criticism of this novel, and finally I'll close by considering just where the value of this novel lies.
1. Intertextuality with Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina'
In this novel especially, I kept thinking of Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina.' So many scenes were similar that I wondered whether I was under the illusion of watching an homage to 'Anna Karenina.' As it happens, when I looked it up there was even a research paper on it; I'll talk about the content of the paper a little later, but for now, if asked which points felt similar as I read, I could cite the following.
| Tolstoy – Anna Karenina | Yi Kwang-su – The Soil |
| Alexandrovich forgiving Anna | Heo Sung forgiving Jeong-seon |
| The scenes where Konstantin Levin says the peasants in the countryside must be saved, returns to the country, farms alongside the peasants, and feels catharsis through it | Heo Sung saying Joseon must be saved through the peasant movement, helping the farmers and forming a cooperative to try to make Saryeoul a place for the people. |
| The scene where Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train to commit suicide | The scene where Jeong-seon throws herself in front of a train to commit suicide |
'Anna Karenina' depicts the story of 'Anna,' who falls in love at first sight the moment she sees a soldier named Vronsky and ends up abandoning even her married family to live with him. Of course, since the narrative structure of 'Anna Karenina' is driven not only by 'Anna' but also by another character, 'Levin,' it is not entirely similar to 'The Soil'; still, the attitudes of the characters in Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil' and the attitudes in Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' are quite alike. As shown in the table above, the greatest catalyst for Heo Sung forgiving Jeong-seon lies precisely in his 'unwavering, rational conduct.' This is the same as Alexandrovich's attitude. Even after learning of his wife's affair, Alexandrovich forgives her on religious grounds. Though it is by no means an easy thing, Alexandrovich shows such self-restraint that Anna comes to fear him. This resembled what Jeong-seon feels toward Heo Sung. Jeong-seon, too, seeing Heo Sung stay quiet rather than getting angry at her, feels even greater pressure and comes to fear him.
The second is the attitude toward the 'peasants.' Levin goes directly to his own estate and works alongside the farmers. Just as Levin feels exhilaration taking up a scythe to cut grass, Heo Sung too, though his life in Saryeoul is somewhat more painful and grueling, holds a sense of satisfaction in one corner of his heart, feeling that this is what he must do. As for the difference, in Russia's case the countryside was not destroyed by a colonial structure, whereas in Joseon's case the peasants had completely collapsed under the colonial governing structure. Also, since the freedom of thought would have been more severely repressed in Joseon than in Russia, I think a similar but slightly different result emerged (as with the intervention of the character Jeong-geun).
The third is the scene where a female character throws herself in front of a train in a suicide attempt. In 'Anna Karenina,' Anna throws herself in front of a train and dies, driven by the doubt, despair, and frustration she has felt throughout her life (the scene of her leaping to her death is depicted very emotionally; it is described as if seen from Anna's point of view). Jeong-seon too throws herself in front of a train because of the moral collapse she experienced and her loss of the will to live, but her pulse remains, and as a result she is carried to a hospital and survives after surgery to amputate her leg. Moreover, Jeong-seon's death is not shown from Jeong-seon's perspective but is treated from Heo Sung's perspective. In 'Anna Karenina,' Anna's death carries the meaning of concluding one axis of the narrative structure, but Jeong-seon's death does not carry this much weight. Because, as you'll know if you read 'The Soil,' 'Jeong-seon' does not form one axis of the novel. It is a story about Seoul and Saryeoul centered on the anguish Heo Sung experiences, and after he comes to Saryeoul it becomes the story of Heo Sung protecting Saryeoul and 'Jeong-geun' who obstructs him. In this way, the women of 'The Soil' are objectified women. The same goes for Sanwol and Seon-hui.
I would still have to look into why such similar scenes appear in Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil,' but I came to think that the mention of 'Tolstoy' early in the work was not there for nothing. Many people may not have read 'Anna Karenina,' but I think that if you read 'The Soil' after reading 'Anna Karenina,' you would be able to understand more easily what feelings and scenes it is trying to convey.
| No Chun-seong, 'A Q&A Session with Mr. Yi Kwang-su,' 'New Literature,' 1936.1 I am someone who supports Tolstoy's theory of art. I believe that literature has the value of its existence as a great consolation to human life…… Good literature is a consolation while also being without unpleasantness and without harm, and it thus lifts life one step higher. It is the same as religion; I think that for those who do not know religion, literature can take its place. |
Because of this I borrowed a book. I think that if you read Tolstoy's book 'What Is Art?' — his theory of art — you might be able to understand Yi Kwang-su's thought at least a little. As he himself says, Yi Kwang-su's uniquely humanitarian, idealistic literary outlook can be seen to have been influenced by Tolstoy. Let's take a brief look at some of the text of this book.
| What is art — what is art, for which the efforts, lives, and even the morals of millions are offered up as sacrifice? The answers we have obtained from the various current aesthetics on this question all come down to the assertion that the purpose of art is beauty, that this beauty is recognized by the pleasure we derive from it, and that the pleasure given by art is something fine and important. In other words, it amounts to saying that pleasure is good because it is pleasure. ...... A great work of art is great only because it is accepted and understood by all people. The story of Joseph translated into Chinese moves the Chinese. The story of Shakyamuni also moves us. This is the same in architecture, painting, sculpture, and music. Therefore, when art fails to move people, we must not say it is because the spectators or listeners fail to understand it. Rather, the conclusion that follows, and that must be drawn, is no more than one of two things: either this is bad art, or it is not art at all. |
On the whole, Tolstoy seems to have dreamed of an art that the common people could feel. Within such influence, I suspect Yi Kwang-su nurtured his own humanitarian, idealistic thought. In his theory of art, Tolstoy says that the sacrifice and labor of countless people are needed for one work of art to be made, and he asks whether such labor too can then be called art. I suspect Yi Kwang-su felt, in Tolstoy's literature, that what is ultimately for 'people' is what art is, and seems to have concluded that enlightenment through that art would be for the people.
(As an aside, I think I'll revisit this theory of art if I ever come to study aesthetics, but I probably won't end up reading it much.)
2. Characteristics of the Characters
As Professor Kwon Du-yeon said, the characters in a novel generally possess 'character traits' that represent each era. A character, too, amounts to a kind of 'device.'
1) Heo Sung
Heo Sung is a character very similar to 'Hyeong-sik' whom we saw in 'The Heartless,' but the difference from 'The Heartless' is that Heo Sung is portrayed as a character who throws himself directly into rural enlightenment. Also, the fact that Heo Sung's figure is drawn like a 'great man,' a person who from the outset seems to have big, weighty aspirations and to do the right thing, is proof that this novel's development is very easy to predict. Yet considering what happened to Heo Sung at the drinking gathering with his senior lawyers, it would be no exaggeration to say that a moral weight is always pressing down on him. In that he accepts such moral weight well himself and regards rural enlightenment as something he must of course do, he is also praised as a character modeled on Yi Kwang-su himself.
2) Yun Jeong-seon
Jeong-seon's way of life is a window into the decadent love and views on affection of the New Women of the time. (A Comparative Study of Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' and Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil'_Kim Tae-nyeo_Academic Journal_Dankook University Graduate School_1991) Jeong-seon was never satisfied with Heo Sung's way of loving. The catalyst for her to truly rally as a member of the rural community lies in the situation of losing her leg and having her ties with her parents severed. Watching Heo Sung nurse her after she is hospitalized, Jeong-seon finally changes. Within this change of Jeong-seon's, the reader comes to wish that Jeong-seon would share Heo Sung's purpose; and since the viewpoint of every character itself is seen through Heo Sung's viewpoint, this is utterly natural, and Yun Jeong-seon appears as an objectified woman.
3) Kim Gap-jin
Although Kim Gap-jin comes from an aristocratic family, in reality he doesn't have much money, so he is one of the men whose goal is to marry the daughter of a wealthy house. From start to finish he maintains the attitude that there's no hope for Joseon, and he doesn't show a very good attitude toward the students studying in America either. He can be seen as representing the fallen aristocracy that has lost its morality. The part where such a Gap-jin comes to Teacher Han Min-gyo near the end of the work, saying he will take up farming, is a passage that shows Gap-jin has changed.
4) Yu Sun
If Yun Jeong-seon shows wealth, the educated, and the urban woman, Yu Sun from the beginning represents poverty, the uneducated, and the country woman. Yu Sun is expressed as having had the character of a Joseon woman from the start, and is not drawn very negatively. She is similar to 'Yeong-chae' of 'The Heartless,' yet also different. Yu Sun's death also has a religious tendency, in that as a sublime sacrifice it becomes the foundation for the development of the Saryeoul community. It also shows, through Yu Sun, the image of the powerless woman of that era.
5) Han Min-gyo
Han Min-gyo (the teacher) is a figure like a spiritual pillar for Heo Sung, portrayed as someone who rallies the intellectual class. But it can be seen that he too, in his later years before coming down to Saryeoul, lived a very impoverished life with his income cut off; this is the part that shows how the disciples who studied under him shared his purpose for the first year or two but gradually became tainted by society and the world, so that in the end very few people shared Han Min-gyo's purpose. He represents the intellectual who exhausted his strength in the course of the national movement.
3. The Work's Structure and Criticisms of the Work.
This novel's content is largely made up of three sections, with each chapter numbered. Because this novel was a serialized novel, it is numbered like this: 1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-22, and so on. By the nature of serialized novels, if a work isn't popular it has no choice but to be pulled. The biggest example is easy to grasp if you think of how the poems and novels Yi Sang serialized during the Japanese colonial period were ultimately pulled amid harsh reviews like 'What kind of poem is this?' In that sense, Yi Kwang-su's novels take on a quite popular character. One of the reasons Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil' could appeal so strongly to the public, despite being a novel about the rural movement, lies precisely in its 'popular appeal'; had it not depicted the conflicts between characters within the course of romance, their psychological anguish, and so on in such detail, many readers would likely have turned away while reading 'The Soil.' Then, must we define this novel as a popular romance novel? I don't think so. This novel's most important theme is unmistakably the story of 'Heo Sung' trying to make the space of Saryeoul into an ideal rural community. That being so, criticisms like the ones below are bound to arise.
The most frequent criticism was that the reality of the Japanese exploitative economy hidden within Saryeoul is ignored, and that the picture of rural society is drawn unrealistically. I wondered how I should take this. To bring in those criticisms, there are the following.
Therefore, Saryeoul fails to depict the true face of the colonial exploitative economy, and Seoul, set up as a space of opposition, ends up failing to embody the colonial governing structure.
First, this work has far too many flaws in terms of structure. Its structure is far too similar to Chunwon's earlier works 'The Heartless' and 'Prosperity,' and coincidental events — which could be called a taboo of modern fiction — appear frequently. Second, the author's grasp of reality is incomplete. Chunwon was ignorant of rural conditions. Third, the protagonist's intentions and actions are far too disconnected. Although the protagonist's intent is the rural improvement movement, he gets distracted by things like popular romantic entanglements.
First, the rural movement that the work's protagonist intends is no more than a hypocritical act for the glorification of the era's intellectuals' self-deception and egoism. Second, because of a forced love triangle, novelistic unity is not achieved. Third, the protagonist refuses to face reality squarely. |
As I read the work, I too couldn't shake the feeling, throughout, that the changes in Heo Sung, Jeong-seon, Gap-jin, Jeong-geun, and others were excessively coincidental. The sense of Yi Kwang-su's 'unnatural development' had been continuously present from his earlier work 'The Heartless,' but this kind of 'flaw' is also a part one cannot overlook. For a person to change, a catalyst is needed. For there to be a catalyst, one needs either to capture the scene of an enormous realization sweeping in all at once (if it were the kind of enlightenment like 'sudden awakening, gradual cultivation' in Buddhism…), or one needs an 'inspirer' or 'educator' who can continuously change one's thinking. And yet!!!!! In Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil,' there is far too little of that. The part where Jeong-geun is inspired by Jageun-gap, the part where Heo Sung agonizes the whole time and then has a realization after hearing Teacher Han Min-gyo's words, the fact that Kim Gap-jin is somehow already farming — none of these show plausibility clear enough. Of course, Heo Sung's change and Jeong-seon's change are at least acceptable, since they were characters who continuously agonized and then reached a conclusion; but because not all the characters go through such a process, the structural 'flimsiness' becomes even more apparent.
The second is the perception of 'rural reality.' It does tend to get compared a lot with 'Hometown,' and the image of the countryside in Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil' is often評価 as excessively fantastical and beautified. Since Yi Kwang-su did not actually go to the countryside to write this novel, nor did he properly do farm work, it is only natural that he receives such criticism. It is, quite literally, far too 'beautified.' The setting of forming and running a 'cooperative' like this in that era is quite unrealistic. It is hard to believe that one could have formed and run such a thing without being dragged off and made to suffer considerably. I haven't yet read 'Hometown,' so I plan to discuss the realism in more detail after reading it, but even for me, who has not read 'Hometown,' I couldn't shake the feeling that it was 'unrealistic.'
However, it is not that I felt this novel's worth was diminished. The following is Gu In-hwan's assessment.
| Gu In-hwan, 'A Study of Yi Kwang-su's Novels,' Seoul National University doctoral dissertation, 1982 First, it is a work of very deep literary quality in which Yi Kwang-su's craftsmanship as a master novelist is fully displayed. Second, from a structural standpoint, it is an outstanding work in which the consciousness of returning to the land establishes a Joseon-oriented aspiration through the dual structure of personal triangular conflict and collective oppositional conflict. Third, in terms of content as well, it can be seen as a work that presents a guidepost for life by which the colonial situation can be overcome. |
I think it is precisely this 'unreality' that plays a part in defining Yi Kwang-su as a representative author of idealist literature; in other words, the unreality is the ideal, and that ideal can have value in the sense that it depicts a positive image of the future. I suspect researchers like Gu In-hwan discussed 'The Soil' by citing Yi Kwang-su's unique literary characteristics and idealistic nature.
4. What Is the Value of Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil'
So then, just what is the value of Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil'? It is certainly true that this novel failed to properly capture reality in terms of its grasp of reality. But I think that one thing alone is not quite enough to dismiss this novel as a poor work.
1) A work in which Yi Kwang-su's literary characteristics all appear together
This work is surely one in which nearly everything Yi Kwang-su had been thinking about up to then is dissolved together. Various features of the era — the peasants, intellectuals, students abroad, the police substation, the Peace Preservation Law, and so on — are dissolved into it. The most fundamental reason any novel gives a feeling more real than history is precisely this 'reconstruction of reality.' Also, Yi Kwang-su's novelistic characteristics — the enlightenment outlook and the humanitarian perspective — are all packed in together. The very fact that the protagonist who realizes all of this is 'Heo Sung' is the limitation, but Heo Sung, in any case, tries to save Saryeoul by forming a cooperative through nonviolent means. He aims to bring about change in people by helping it grow into a true community, and to help the lives of the Saryeoul peasants.
2) From the standpoint of literary diversity.
It is certainly true that he told an unrealistic story, but even so, I think it has value in itself that it depicted what society would look like if, in the rural society of the time, the peasants escaped the pressure of the police substation and made a path to live. There must be diversity in literature. Even people's thoughts must allow for diversity, and in the case of Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil' too, I think it is a necessary work even though it lacks realism. Isn't it because Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil' exists that Yi Gi-yeong's 'Hometown' gets discussed all the more? Sim Hun's 'Evergreen Tree,' Yi Kwang-su's 'The Soil,' and Yi Gi-yeong's 'Hometown' were all created as part of the V Narod movement of the 1930s, and I think they have value in that they show each of their different perspectives on this movement.
5. Closing Remarks
For the time being I intend to keep writing in this way. I don't know how much I'll be able to write, but I want to read more than two books a week and write more than one piece a week. I think it might be one of the most meaningful things among the things I should be doing during the break.
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