한국 근대문학의 러시아 문학 수용양상 연구

A Study on the Aspect of Acceptance of Russian Literature in Korean Modern Literature

The modernization of Korean literature was achieved by an acceptance of European modernism through Japanese translations during the colonial times in the early of the 20th century. Although Korean writers in the 1920s were highly educated, most of them read European literary works translated into Japanese. In 1918, the literary journal Taeseomunyesinbo was begun published aiming at introducing European literature to Korean readers not by Japanese translation, but by translation from original texts, so this journal was regarded as a beginning of Korean modern literature. Through this journal Korean writers introduced European modernism, particularly, French symbolism. It was not until the 1920’s that Russian literature was accepted actively in Korea. In this period Russian literature was introduced to Korea primarily by Korean students who studied in Japan. From 1920’s to 1930’s Russian realism and social realism were particularly popular, because Korean writers and intellectuals thought that these literary trend were more appropriate to show the sufferings and frustrations of Koreans in Japanese colonial times. However, the influence of Russian modernism was relatively low. Russian modernism was acknowledged as literary genre by Korean writers, as long as their themes are concerned with Socialism or Russian revolution. The representative Russian symbolists, Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely were accepted revolutionary poets of Twelve and Christ is Risen that describe Russian revolution as a beginning of a new era and a victory of Russian history. The aim of this article was to study an influence of Russian modernism in Korean modern literature by analyzing literary magazines of 1920’s. Russian modernism was not actively accepted to Korean modernism because of its difficulty of language and historical restriction, nevertheless we cannot ignore of its influence. We have to understand the peculiarities of acceptance of Russian modernism.