Tributación del valor añadido

Cacophony and Harmony

The novel’s first installment, published on January 1, 1917 in the newspaper

Maeil sinbo, includes a remarkable cacophony as the text extensively incorporates

English and Japanese terms. The very first utterance in this novel is that of the protagonist Yi Hyŏngsik’s friend Sin Usŏn: “misŭt’ŏ Ri ŏdiro kanŭn ga

미스터리어디로가는가” (Mr. Yi, where are you going?), addressing Hyŏngsik with the English appellation. The dialogue between Yi Hyŏngsik and Sin Usŏn is a unique

demonstration of linguistic mixture. Sin Usŏn asks Hyŏngsik about Sŏnhyŏng, the new student to whom he is going to give private English lessons:

응 어떤 사람인데 말을 못 하고 얼굴이 붉어지나 응 형식은 민망하여 손으로 목을 쓸어 만지고 하염없이 웃으며 여자야」 요― 오메데또오 이 나즈케 (약혼한 사람) 가 있나 보네그려 음 나루호도 (그러려니) 그러구도 내게는 아무 말도 없단 말이야 에 여보게」 하고 손을 후려친다 형식은 하도 심란하야 구두로 땅을 파면서 아니야 저 자네는 모르겠네 김장로라고 있느니……. 옳지 김장로의 딸일세그려 응 저 옳지 작년이지 정신여학교를 우등으로 졸업하고 명년 미국 간다는 그 처녀로구먼 베리 굿」 자네 어떻게 아는가」

그것 모르겠나 이야시쿠모 (적어도) 신문기자가 그런데 언제 엥게지멘트를 하였는가」

“Hey, who is that? What makes you quiet and blush? Huh?”

Embarrassed, Hyŏngsik rubs his neck with his hand and says with an ambiguous smile,

“It’s a girl.”

“Wow! Omedeto! You’ve got an iinazuke (fiancée), right? Naruhodo (I see). But you haven’t told me anything,” says Sin Usŏn, hitting his hands.

Hyŏngsik felt so uneasy that he kicked the ground with his shoes. “No, you mustn’t know, but Elder Kim has a daughter and…”

“Okay, that was Elder Kim’s daughter, I see. Yes, she graduated from Chŏngsin Women’s School with distinction last year and is going to go to the United States next year. Berikut!”

“How come you know that?”

“Who wouldn’t know? I am iyashikumo (at least) a newspaper reporter. But when are you going to do the engkejiment’ŭ?”245

As the narrative unequivocally sets the stage for the story, this dialogue is said to be taking place at “2 pm” in “An-dong,” or what is today Anguk-dong, a district to the north of the city of Seoul. In this fictional space, Sin Usŏn, as a newspaper reporter, expresses his thorough knowledge about Elder Kim’s daughter, Sŏnhyŏng. The reader of this novel, itself serialized in a newspaper, is thus invited to appreciate this fictional story by

projecting it onto the real space of the city, producing precisely the effect of creating an “imagined community.”246 But what is more remarkable in this particular case is the voice that assumes this very communal function of the novel. In this first installment, Sin Usŏn in particular, and the narrator, too, use a number of Japanese and English

expressions, and for most Japanese words, the narrative adds notes in parentheses to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

245 _{My underlines in the quote of the original Korean text. Maeil sinbo, January 1, 1917, p.1. “Omedeto”}

means “congratulations” in Japanese. “Berikut” and “engkejiment’ŭ” are for the English expressions “very good” and “engagement,” respectively. Interestingly, in the text of the Complete Works, most Japanese terms are excised.

explain their meanings in Korean. This striking opening suggests that the ideal reader should have at least some knowledge of Japanese and English in order to participate in the imagined community, and the narrative, appending Korean renditions, aids the reader in satisfying this elitist requirement. If the modern novel is instrumental in engendering imagined nationhood, Yi Kwangsu’s Mujŏng plays this function not only descriptively but also prescriptively: it tries, with its pseudo-multilingualism, to educate the reader to become part of, as an enlightened individual, the imagined community.

This pedagogical task, in fact, is precisely what the protagonist Hyŏngsik takes as his mission as a young Japan-trained, up-and-coming educationist. “Hyŏngsik would always say: ‘The only way for us the Koreans to survive is to elevate us all to the level of all the civilized nations of the world –– that is, to the civilizational level of the Japanese nation. In order to do so, our nation must have many people who venture to study ambitiously.’ Hyŏngsik says this as someone aware of his special responsibility, which was to study many books to fully understand the civilizations of the world, and propagate them to the Korean people.”247 Hyŏngsik, in his self-consciousness, is a “luminary” who should guide the rest of the nation into modern enlightenment:

Hyŏngsik has the self-confidence that he is a luminary who has the most progressive thought in Korea. Though he may appear modest, he harbors in his mind pride and conceit vis-à-vis the Korean people. He has read Western

philosophy and literature: Rousseau’s The Confessions and Émile, Shakespeare’s

Hamlet, Goethe’s Faust, Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread –– all of these he

has read. He also reads political discourse and literary criticism in the newest issues of journals; he even published a novel in a Japanese journal, which earned him a prize. He knows the name of Tagore and has read a biography of Ellen Key. He thinks about the universe and life; he is self-confident that he has his own views on life, the universe, religion, and art, and he possesses his own systematic thought on education. When he watches those people jolted on a packed train, he !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thinks he knows many words and thoughts that they do not know, and feels content with pride; but at the same time he questions, out of a sense of his responsibilities as a luminary, when on earth those people will become educated just like himself. He thus feels solitude and sadness at the thought that there are few people among those twenty-million Koreans who would comprehend his words and understand his intention. He then tries to think of his friends who may understand his words, and finds that he does not have to use both hands to count them. But those small number of people are the luminaries who understand new civilization [sinmunmyŏng 신문명] and thus will educate and lead the entire Korean nation.248

Hyŏngsik’s cutting-edge reading experiences and habits reflect, at least in part, Yi Kwangsu’s own exposure to modern literature in Tokyo. Yi, by way of transculturating works of world-literary value, projects an ideal image of the modern intellectual onto the novel’s protagonist, and sets the goal for the Korean nation to achieve in order for them to take part in the “new civilization.” Here and there throughout the story, the narrative highlights scenes of such enlightenment, particularly in episodes regarding Yŏngch’ae, who embodies the cultural past. One thing she has to learn is to listen to new sounds, the pronunciations of foreign words and the cacophony of a modern city, the soundscape of “civilization”:

“And do you know what we ate then?”

“I don’t know. I just watched you eating it because I didn’t even know how to eat it.”

“That’s what I thought. It was a Western food called saendŭwich’i… Wasn’t it pretty tasty?”

“Yes,” says Yŏngch’ae, nodding and learning the word “saendŭwich’i” in articulated pronunciation.249

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248 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.124-5.} 249 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.175.}

The backdrop of their conversation is the modernizing city Seoul, as the narrator continues,

Their train had arrived at Namdaemun station. Though it was not

completely dark yet, electric lights were illuminated here and there. The sound of trains, the sound of rickshaws –– the city soundscape that includes all those sounds is combined with the sound of wooden shoes that resounds through the wide platform. To the ears of those who have lived in tranquil nature until now, it sounds noisy.

The city sound? It is the sound of civilization [munmyŏng ŭi sori 문명의 소리]. The noisier that sound is, the better the country is doing. The sound of wheels, the sound of steam and locomotives, and the sound of steel carriages… only when all those sounds are combined is an illustrious civilization born. Indeed, modern civilization is a civilization of the sound. There are not enough sounds in Seoul. The sound of civilization must become so noisy that you cannot hear each

other’s voice at Chongno or Namdaemun. But it is a pity that those four-hundred-

thousand white-clothed people [i.e., Korean people] who live in the capital, Seoul, do not understand the meaning of this sound. And they are not concerned with this sound, either. They need to learn to listen to this sound, with pleasure, and in the end, they must make this sound themselves.250

Yŏngch’ae’s learning of the English word “sandwich,” “in articulated pronunciation,” bespeaks the narrator’s expectation that all the Korean people will appreciate the clamorous soundscape of a mechanized modern city. The cacophonic writing of the opening of the novel, then, represents what the modern reader should learn to read in a novel, so that it circulates among the reading public, providing them with a vernacular to articulate modern life. Then, just as the deafening sound of a city center overwhelms people’s intimate conversation, the novel must represent modern acoustic experiences, even at the cost of silencing the sounds that the audiences may be accustomed to enjoying in traditional reading experiences.

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Unlike what the narrator insists on, it is, of course, not “in tranquil nature” that his audience has lived. In the narrative, indeed, contrasted to the cacophonic “sound of civilization” are the harmonies of classical poetry and traditional narrative, which Yŏngch’ae particularly masters, and all the other characters, too, know to appreciate.

Yŏngch’ae’s youthful training in the Confucian classics –– in particular the texts

traditionally used for female moral education including Lienüzhuan (The

Biographies of Virtuous Women) and the “Neize ” (Domestic Rules) chapter of Liji

(The Book of Rites) –– is combined with extensive cultivation in classical Chinese

poetry. This makes Yŏngch’ae a modern incarnation of the idealized femininity expressed in traditional Korean narrative literature, such as the canonical Ch’unhyang

chŏn 춘향전 (Biography of Chu’unhyang, c.18th C). As a pleasure-quarter performer,

Yŏngch’ae is mentored by Wŏlhwa, who, while disparaging her greedy and licentious

customers, is keen on “high-Tang poets such as Li Taibai [Li Bai , 701-762],

Gao Shi [c.704-765], and Wang Changling [698-c.756]” and is attached to

virtuous male protagonists in traditional narratives like Yang Ch’anggok 양창곡 in

Ongnumong 옥루몽 (Dream in the Jade Chamber, 19th C) and Yi Toryŏng 이도령 in Ch’unhyang chŏn. When she teaches Yŏngch’ae Tang poetry, Wŏlhwa wonders, “Why

were you and I born in a country like Korea?”; and she expresses the regret that “she was not born in Jiangnan during the high Tang era.” “She regretted, the narrative adds, that there was no Sima Xiangru who would seduce her with the Song of Phoenix, even though she would be a perfect Zhuo Wenjun.”251 _{The narrative here refers to an}

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archetypal topos of unconditional love in classical Chinese literature recorded in sources

like Shiji (Records of the Historian) and Hanshu (The History of the Han).

The well-known story goes that Zhuo Wenjun (2nd C BCE) falls in love with

Sima Xiangru (179-127 BCE) as she hears the latter’s passionate song “Feng

qiu huang ” (A Male Phoenix Longs for a Female Phoenix).

In light of the idealized aesthetic and moral world of traditional literature, contemporary Korean society appears all the more corrupt and hopeless to Yŏngch’ae and Wŏlhwa. Adapting the anecdote of Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun in particular,

and the narrative format of the “scholar and beauty” (caizi jiaren ) romance

subgenre in general, Mujŏng features a melodramatic moment at which Yŏngch’ae and Wŏlhwa, at Taedong River, suddenly hear an anonymous poem unexpectedly conveying refined aesthetic taste and great moral integrity. The song goes:

굽이지는 대동강이 Curving, Taedong River

능라도를 싸고도니 Wraps Nŭlla Islet.

둥두렷한 모란봉이 Towering, the Morang Peaks

우쭐우쭐 춤을 추네 Are dancing a rhythmic dance.

청류벽에 걸어앉아 I sit at the Ch’ŏngnu cliff.

가는 물아 말을 들어 Listen to my words, running water!

청춘의 더운 피를 I shall send to you

네게 부쳐 보내고저 The boiling blood of my youth.

And then goes:

새벽빛이 솟는다 The morning sunshine is gushing out;

해가 오른다 The sun is rising.

땅 위에 만물이 Everything on earth

기뻐 춤을 추노나 Is dancing a happy dance.

나만 일어나 Only I am awake.

하늘을 우러러 Looking up the heaven,

슬픈 노래 부르네 I sing a sorrowful song.

It turns out to be students of a newly-built school who are singing this song, whose content implies the themes of the youth and enlightenment. The content, on one hand, distances this poem from traditional poetics; but on the other, the song’s form clearly conforms to an orthodox prosody of Korean verse based on three- and four-syllable lines, giving it traditional sonority. “There must be a true poet among them!” Wŏlhwa exclaims, and her intuition is eventually proven true, when she later witnesses the nobleness and virtue of the school principal’s reformist political will. But Wŏlhwa, knowing that she will not be able to bring to fruition her admiring love of the principal due to the

difference in social status, drowns herself in Taedong River. Wŏlhwa’s message, “Make old poetry [yennal si 옛날 시] your life’s companion,”252 is firmly inscribed in

Yŏngch’ae’s mind, enabling her to endure harsh life as a pleasure-quarter girl in the vice- ridden society, until she reencounters her idealized “true poet,” Hyŏngsik.

Youth of “the Age of Transition”

In sharp contrast with the scene of poetic communication at Taedong River, and with the world of “old poetry” that it is modeled upon, Yŏngch’ae’s encounter with Hyŏngsik in the modernizing capital of Seoul is but a clumsy one. The young man and woman first exchange much emotion and shed many tears at their serendipitous !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

reencounter after a harsh seven years, but as he listens to Yŏngch’ae’s lengthy story, related in a style strongly reminiscent of traditional narrative prose, Hyŏngsik soon stumbles upon questions that he as an enlightened individual cannot but raise. “But what if Yŏngch’ae has not learned anything until now? What if she has not received enough education to understand my heart and thought? … Ah! What if Yŏngch’ae is ignorant? How could we make a happy family if she were ignorant? Ah! What if Yŏngch’ae is

ignorant!”253 While Hyŏngsik thus wonders whether Yŏngch’ae has, like Sŏnhyŏng,

obtained a proper modern education, Yŏngch’ae in turn worries, urged on by her traditional morality, whether Hyŏngsik may disdain her if he comes to know that she works in the pleasure quarter.254 Despite the long-awaited reencounter, the abundant emotions of the man and the woman fail to bridge the distance between them, which separates an enlightened, “heartless” (mujŏng 무정) subjectivity from the old “feeling” (chŏng 정), which has already lost its currency in the modern world.

Young Hyŏngsik, moreover, is powerless if enlightened. Hoping to pay off a thousand-wŏn ransom to rescue Yŏngch’ae out of the kisaeng business and become her guarantor, he ponders whether he could make that money by selling off a hundred Western books he has collected. He also muses about writing and selling a book in English; but he quickly realizes that it would take too long for him to first study English composition, and then to prepare a manuscript, send it to an American or English publisher, have them review and publish it, have them send a check across the Pacific, and finally receive it at a post office in Seoul. “No! Too slow… When would I

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253 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.32.} 254 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.33.}

accomplish … this all?”255 Hyŏngsik is thus unable to cash in his first-class educational capital. He can only speak Korean and Japanese and cannot reach the English-speaking market, and Seoul is still too remote from the capitals of modern print culture. As an untested intellectual living in a peripheral city of global print culture, Hyŏngsik’s Korean or Japanese writing would be too minor a product to create any value in the worldwide market.

At the same time, for the domestic audience, Hyŏngsik’s scholarship would be too idiosyncratic and modern to be appreciated. “What was characteristic about Hyŏngsik,” says the narrator, “was that he mixed a lot of English and dropped a lot of famous names and words from the West, and rambled on about unclear topics. Hyŏngsik’s speech and

writing seemed as though they were literal translations [chikyŏk 직역] of Western writing.”256 Elsewhere, Hyŏngsik is criticized by his friend Sin Usŏn for his insufficient training in classical Chinese.257 Sin Usŏn, the narrator observes, “had the style of a chivalrous young man coming from somewhere like Suzhou or Hangzhou during the Tang era,”258 and he publishes in the end of the story a best-selling book about the future of Korea, which gains him “literary fame that resounded throughout the country.”259 Drawing upon the traditional literary capital –– particularly erudition in classical Chinese and styles associated with it –– Sin Usŏn can sell his writing and secure his position in the contemporary Korean literary field. But Hyŏngsik, representing a more radical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

255 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.53.}

256 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.125. My italics.}

257 _{“Hyŏngsik, to begin with, does not have enough classical Chinese.” See: Ibid., vol.1, p.74.} 258 _{Ibid., vol.1, p.73.}

cultural transformation, remains an obscure, immature, and unproven youth who is about