Realism, Irony, and Temporality in Rohinton Mistry`s Such a Long Journey = Realism, Irony, and Temporality in Rohinton Mistry`s Such a Long Journey

국문 초록 (Abstract)

본 논문은 로힌턴 미스트리의 첫 장편소설인 『그토록 먼 여행』에 대해 논의한다. 인도 출신 캐나다 작가인 미스트리의 소설은 전형적인 사실주의 작품으로 평가받으며, 대부분 그의 작품이 현실성을 충분히 반영하고 있는가에 초점을 맞춘다. 하지만, 이러한 접근법은 오도된 것으로, 필자는 미스트리 소설의 미학적 관념을 논의하기 위해서 문학적 사실주의의 다른 개념이 필요하다고 주장한다. 헝가리 출신의 문학비평가인 게오르크 루카치의 『소설의 이론』의 논의를 통해, 필자는 미스트리의 소설 형식이 해석의 역학을 밝히는 미학의 이중적 전략을 전개한다고 본다. 즉 소설 형식은 완벽한 서술 없이도, 개인적 경험들이 어떻게 인과적 관계망과 그 연결의 궤적을 쫓는지 밝히고 분석하는 것이라 할 수 있다. 따라서 미스트리 소설의 사실주의 미학은 역사를 정확하게 묘사하기보다는, 오히려 고립된 개개의 관점과 역사의 영향력 사이에 나타나는 관계 또는 역학을 해석하고자 한다. 루카치에 따르면, 이 관계는 아이러니로 인해 불안정하기도 하지만 시간의 축적으로 강화되기도 한다. 시간이 거듭될수록, 미스트리의 소설은 객관성, 즉 루카치가 지칭한 유아론적 경험을 극복하는 서사적 감각을 생성한다.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article discusses Rohinton Mistry’s first novel Such a Long Journey (1991). Mistry’s novels are typically labelled as realist novels, and much of the critique of the Indian-Canadian writer has focused on the question of referentiality-whether his works are realistic enough. I argue that this approach is misguided and that a different notion of literary realism is needed to address the aesthetic project of Mistry’s novels. Via a discussion of the Hungarian literary critic Georg Lukacs’s early treatise Theory of the Novel (written 1914-15), I argue that Mistry’s novel form develops an aesthetic double strategy which unfolds a dynamic of interpretation; the novel form essentially traces and explores the ways in which individual experience is embedded in causal networks and trajectories of concatenations and connectivity, but without making any absolute statements. Thus, the realist aesthetic in Mistry’s novel is less an attempt to create an authentic depiction of history; rather, it is an endeavour to interpret a relation or dynamic between the isolated individual perspective and the forces of history. It is a relation haunted and troubled by irony, but also reinforced by the accumulation of time, as Lukacs argues. Over time, Mistry’s novel creates a perspective that achieves a kind of objectivity, or what Lukacs calls a sense of the epic, which dissolves the isolated, solipsistic experience.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Lukács, Georg, "The Theory of the Novel. Translated by Anna Bostock" Merlin 2003

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16 Mistry, Rohinton, "A Fine Balance" Faber and Faber 1997