earticle

영어

In Sacred Spring(2012) by Kang Seok-gyeong, the spaces are alwaysthe Greek and Roman relics. Consisting of 18 letters, the novel describesa journey of the protagonist who used to be a stage actress and one daywas thrown into the field of mythology. In the novel, the author borrowsmythical places and original mythological texts and plays variations ofvarious pixels toward the topic, thus reinforcing the narrative effects. In the novel, space changes serve as an important device to entailcharacter changes. In Kang’s novels, there is a pattern of expanding thestage space according to the expansion of a character’s internalconsciousness. She borrows a lot of outside worlds called foreign countriesin such a case. In Sacred Spring, space travel is a critical mechanism. The relics ofGreek civilization, which is borrowed as a background space of the novel,are the spaces that symbolically match the divinity of the ideal worldsought after by the main character, who reflects upon her life byidentifying with the characters of myths and plays at the Greekmythological relics, the birth place of play. The main character, who is a retired stage actress at the age of 60, hits the road to see her sonSubori(Peter) that has become a priest. Her internal pilgrimage that ispiled up one on another in the middle of the ancient relics is embodied asa novel in the travel account format with a structure of complex layerswith such narratives as the sad feelings and thoughts of human historyfossilized in history and civilization. In the early novels of Kang, the characters assume a closed space ofhome and struggle in it in order to escape from the ironic institutions andabsurd customs. In her later works, the characters borrow the travelmotif and expand and move the space, thus solving problems. “Will fortranscendence”for the secular world and “return to the archetypes”torestore the human nature through the characters’internal adventures onthe stage of Earth are the topics that Kang has consistently pursued inher works including Sacred Spring. The orientation of human nature sought after in her novels can beregarded as a type of work with similar patterns boiled down to the issueof fundamental existence. The novel examined in the present study,however, illustrates that the author reflects her intentions or especiallythe meanings of pixels in mythology to solve the difficult issues of thehuman world as reflective searches when approaching the mythical worldvia travel, a route open to the outside world. Sacred Spring well demonstrates the author’s capacity to reflect on andexplore the inner world of man as she deepens the depth of her thinkingby utilizing her knowledge about humanism and art in general. It is awork that intensively addresses the issues of life and salvation andcompletion and transcendence among artist-type characters that theauthor has long investigated.