0. Before we begin
This is just my personal thought, but I often confuse Kim Dong-ni and Kim Dong-in. Thanks to their names differing by only one syllable, I keep mixing them up. Still, Kim Dong-ni wrote works with a stronger Korean coloring and rose to the core of South Korea's literary establishment power, whereas Kim Dong-in died early in the 1950s, and his representative works — 'Potatoes,' 'Baettaragi,' 'Sonata Appassionata,' etc. — are generally called pure literature, aestheticist literature. In any case, Kim Dong-in and Kim Dong-ni are different. The work I'll look at this time is Kim Dong-ni's 'Deungsinbul.'
Deungsinbul
- Author
- Kim Dong-ni
- Publisher
- Munhakgwa Jiseongsa | published 2005-01-25
- Category
- Novel
- Book description
- Nine short stories that Kim Dong-ni, author of 'Munyeodo,' put out after the 1950s...
1. Points of criticism about Kim Dong-ni
Kim Dong-ni is very controversial. When he first joined the generation debate, he was a character who claimed a 'literature' unrelated to ideology. But at some point, after liberation, he founded a magazine called Haebang, and then became a character whose political color deepened. Whether we should see Kim Dong-ni as someone who aimed at the 'pure' literature he spoke of, or whether we shouldn't view him only through pure literature because he also walked a political path — we can't choose just one of the two. Both are apt descriptions of Kim Dong-ni, so we have to compromise.
Even so, among these I'd like to define Kim Dong-ni as a person who changed into a writer who was not pure.
Kim Dong-ni, 'The Writer and Engagement with Reality — Centered on a Dialogue with R about Engagement with Reality,' <In Search of Myself>, Mineumsa, 1997, p.379 You seem to regard poetry and fiction as nothing but machines for rooting out corruption, but my opinion differs. I think corruption is far more directly and effectively dealt with through investigative agencies or political activity. Fiction and poetry can do such work too, but compared with doing it directly through law and action, they are weak and inefficient. Moreover, since literature differs by the writer's individuality and view of literature, not all literature should serve as such a political auxiliary organ. …… Don't forget that, just after liberation, the communist writers said exactly what you are saying. They too did not outwardly profess the Communist Party, but their hidden aim was solely to add to the Communist Party. |
As shown above, Kim Dong-ni takes the offensive in criticizing writers in whom the tendency of 'engagement with reality' appears strongly. The period when this criticism appeared most prominently was the 1970s — the very end of the Park Chung-hee regime, which was running anti-communism to its extreme. One could see Kim Dong-ni's claim above as the pursuit of a 'Third Humanism' that transcends the problems of reality, but at the time his criticism was not criticism of works but criticism of works having a tendency. Also, unlike the period when he debated generations with Yu Jin-o, his remarks and contributions of this time are not logical and begin to lose validity.
When he first debated generations with Yu Jin-o, Kim Dong-ni's criticism did not yet bear illogic. Even in the early period of the generation debate, Kim Dong-ni has been studied as a figure who solidified his standing from the start through a logic of exclusion. I can't say for sure because I haven't yet read many records about Kim Dong-ni, but it's clear that the 'ultimate life (gugyeongjeok salm)' he speaks of is very vague. The 'ultimate life' Kim Dong-ni speaks of is received as a very universal and abstract image, and because of this, critics could not help finding it hard to criticize Kim Dong-ni's literary tendency. Moreover, the 1970s was surely a time when merely being branded pro-North, or making a counterargument to liberalism, truly put your life at risk. At a point when the very act of criticizing South Korea's liberal system was driven as a 'pro-enemy act,' Kim Dong-ni draws a line that we must not criticize our system.
Yet this attitude of Kim Dong-ni ultimately brought about a result that harmed the diversity of literature. Also, the way he ceaselessly criticized others in order to make his own thought firm is an example that, conversely, proves his standing was not firm. Because he couldn't reveal his own literary qualities himself, he criticized others' literary weaknesses and through this made his own standing even more solid. Researchers seem to have noted this part too. Most researchers likewise say that Kim Dong-ni could not solidify his standing on his own.
2. So then, what about 'Deungsinbul'?
Deungsinbul is one of the many short stories Kim Dong-ni wrote. Yet it's worth thinking about why Kim Dong-ni wrote such a novel. There are papers that researched Deungsinbul by connecting it with Buddhist and shamanistic thought, but since I don't understand them well even after reading, I'll write a personal impression. 'Deungsinbul' was, personally, a very ambiguous novel. But at the same time Kim Dong-ni's literary tendency appears strongly. Kim Dong-ni doesn't use a structure resembling the plot of Western novels in his fiction. It's really unusual. I think this unusual part is what lets Kim Dong-ni prove his own literariness. I think that, crying out his Third Humanism, after contemplation about a new universality, he created a character like 'Mohwa' in Munyeodo. Because a character like 'Mohwa' is a type not well revealed in France, England, Germany, or America. They had no occasion to reveal conflict over other religions. But the Eastern sphere is different. Catholicism, which came into the Eastern sphere, could be a very alien religion. Of course, due to its egalitarian thought many accepted it positively, but not necessarily so. Kim Dong-ni depicted this conflict in works like 'Munyeodo.'
Seen that way, Deungsinbul can be viewed as a work that purely depicts Third Humanism without value-conflict between religions appearing. (The tale of Deungsinbul is obtained through a dialogue between Beombu and the abbot.)
Kim Dong-ni, 'In Search of Myself,' 'Complete Works of Kim Dong-ni 8,' Mineumsa, 1997, pp.181-182 "Beombu, in the Chinese Biographies of Eminent Monks, records of soshin-gongyang (self-immolation offering) or bunshin-gongyang (body-burning offering) appear now and then, but in our country they're hardly seen." My eldest brother slowly opened his mouth and said, "Well, if you haven't seen them, brother……," meaning he had no memory of them either. I cut in. "What is soshin-gongyang?" It was something I was hearing for the first time. Then the abbot took on the answer. "In the old days, when meditating monks couldn't attain enlightenment as they wished, they would burn their own bodies and offer them to the Buddha as a sacrifice. To become a Buddha." "Do they jump into the fire?" "Would that be an offering?" "Then how?" "You must sit with palms joined toward the Buddha, and place atop your head a censer holding a ball of fire, or something like it." |
The story shown here can be compressed into the tale of the protagonist and Manjeok, who became a Deungsinbul, but what's more important here is the story of the 'Deungsinbul.' In fact, 'human sacrifice' is taboo in the West, yet uniquely there are many Deungsinbul in the East. Searching for materials, I found that there are many Deungsinbul in China. The 'Deungsinbul' — not a Buddha statue cast and carved, but a person himself becoming a Buddha statue — was a very good vessel for holding Kim Dong-ni's story about 'human-divinity thought.' It's true Kim Dong-ni was unrivaled in dealing with such material. The surreal literature Kim Dong-ni spoke of seems to lie in unfolding very everyday stories hard to tie to any society's political phenomena. (I haven't read it, but let's leave a work like 'The Hungnam Evacuation' as a bit of an exception.)
Above all, I'd like to note that Kim Dong-ni's talent for writing is very outstanding. The ability to hear a particular story and write it to match the literature one envisions is, I think, quite remarkable. When I usually write, I tend to want to write about social problems, but Kim Dong-ni dealt with surreal problems apart from such things and focused on universal narrative — that, I think, is revealed in a work like 'Deungsinbul.' Of course 'Yeongma' also shows nothing 'Western' at all, but 'Deungsinbul' is, I think, the work that maximized Eastern material.
3. Inner frame / outer frame
In this novel the relationship of 'inner frame' and 'outer frame' is very important, because of the contrast between them. If the 'inner frame' — the story of Manjeok — reveals the core story of a proper monk, that is, of a Deungsinbul who understood self-sacrifice and others' pain and compassion, then the narrator 'I''s story is composed as an 'outer frame' of merely enduring a slight sacrifice — a 'blood-written pledge' — to preserve my own life. Usually in a frame structure this kind of composition is uncommon, because usually the content outside the frame consists only of the minimum story needed to develop the novel. So the story outside the frame, which forms the frame, often only tells what sort of person the 'narrator' is. But Kim Dong-ni's 'Deungsinbul' treats the 'story outside the frame' with considerable weight as well. Telling one's own story at length, and hearing the story of 'Manjeok' from the people of the temple where one is staying, is quite a natural method that makes us compare Manjeok's story with the narrator's story.
Outer frame | Inner frame |
The story of the narrator 'I': dragged off as a Japanese-army student soldier, but through Mr. Jin Gi-su's help he becomes a monk via a 'blood-written pledge' and preserves his life. Later, seeing the 'Deungsinbul' and feeling the pain inherent within it, he begins to hear the story about the Deungsinbul. | After a childhood 'connection' with Sin, he becomes a monk and lives under the name 'Manjeok'; he meets again the 'Sin' who suffers from leprosy, and afterward sacrifices himself through soshin-gongyang. Even when it rained, the spot where Manjeok had sat was full of radiance. |
4. In closing
Kim Dong-ni is surely a writer who needs study. His works are far too numerous, and his trajectory is very ironic. He's called a writer pure yet not pure, and it's also said no writer expressed the Eastern so well as Kim Dong-ni. These are all true. As a member of the literary-association orthodoxy positioned at the very top of right-wing literary-establishment power, Kim Dong-ni said engaged literature was wrong and spoke of pure literature. Promising to make time to read more research on Kim Dong-ni and then write, however briefly, a study of him as a writer, I close this piece.
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