It was a transition period in the history of modern literature between 1920s and 1930s. Various trends were introduced by students studying in Japan and literary coterie magazines were established. There was a tendency to deny conventional values and...
It was a transition period in the history of modern literature between 1920s and 1930s. Various trends were introduced by students studying in Japan and literary coterie magazines were established. There was a tendency to deny conventional values and to emphasize an understanding of human being and individual autonomy. Numerous writers were emerging through literary coterie magazines and they tried to create new literary works. In such influence, artist novels containing conflicts with art and reality were emerging too. Kim Dong-in is a representative writer who has shown his own originality in his experimental works in his time. He tried to present his viewpoint of arts in his novels with artists appearing in his work. His artist novels are divided into two distinct aspects revealing his agonies for reality and art.
Artist novels are categorized as a madness destroying daily life and a mirror reflecting everyday life based on the distance between art and reality. Various shapes of madness appear in the process of pursuing an aesthetic beauty along with a madness destroying daily life. Artists are passive and timid in their daily lives but they become to reveal their creativeness as creators who are out of moral ethics. Artists seek newness. However, the newness disappears when their work comes into the world and then they try newness all over again. Seeking newness drives them to destruction world without ceasing.
The mirror reflecting everyday life shows images of artists who get frustrated by environment and moral collapse. Artists are forced to face a reality which they have to live a life as low class in a materialistic perspective world even though they are mentally oriented to the upper class. They are poor but the artistic self makes a lot of effort not to be poverty. Poverty makes them be conscious about their readers and incapacitate their writing but artists try to preserve their pride.
Artists keep their artistic-self by concealing and revealing their own problems in the reality in novels. Concealing is plural spaces for artists and only defined beauty is recognized in this monolithic space. It also becomes a negative space for hiding themselves. Artists isolate themselves having a conflict with the times. Revealing justifies their artistic-self through confession. Revealing of artists is unethical and immoral, so they do not get the sympathy of others but they find their own way of living in recognition of their presence in it.
Artists are able to preserve artistic-self and pride through concealing and revealing in the reality of novels. However, this process reveals limits soon. First of all, when they put the aesthetic beauty first, artistic-self and moral-self get to cause collision. This means that artists seem to exist separately from reality but are bound to reality at the end. Along with this, artists look for the aesthetic beauty everywhere but end up with non-satisfactory beauty at the end. This is ironic but it becomes the source of the artists artistic desires. Finally, there is a limit in the way a male intellectual treats a female. A male intellectual seems to treat female intellectual equally but he considers her as a temporally subject of love. This reveals the limitations that a male intellectual seems to be enlightened and to deny a conventional system but still has a patriarchal attitude.
The distance that artists recognize reality and art is a way of preserving the artistic-self. They have chosen the best way to protect the artistic-self by transcending reality or by compromising with reality. Whatever the choice is, the artists try to satisfy the artistic-self. There is no satisfaction but only emptiness. They are tragic artists who live a lonely life. This is reflects Kim Dong-in himself.