三島由紀夫ほど言葉と肉体において敏感な作家はいなかった。｢肉体は言葉に蝕まれて、言葉に蝕まれた肉体｣と作家が自ら語ったように、彼の肉体に対する渇望は並ならぬものであった。三島由紀夫は自己改造を通して肉体を獲得した。その背景には精神(観念)と肉体の離れに対する自覚の始まりがあったと言えよう。そのような言葉(観念)と肉体とは、三島由紀夫においては避けられない存在不安の問題であり、切実なものであり、自決にまで繋がるものである。このようなテーマを据えて、三島由紀夫の初期短編小説である『仮面の告白』をもとにしながら精神と肉体の分離という課題に近づいていきたい。その方法として『仮面の告白』を細かく分析し、まずは’仮面’に光をあてていく。仮面の持つ重層的意味を押さえながら暗喩としての仮面と男色、幻影の現前性を帯びて近づいてくるところから現実と観念の対立について模索する。そして観念への回帰について論を進めていくことにする。
No one has been so much acutely sensitive to the conflicting relations between the body and the soul as Yukio Mishima. His remark, ‘Our body is eaten away by the language’, epitomizes his admiration for the physical body like no other. It may even be said that the process by which he fashions his life to get a perfect body is made possible by his perception of separation of the body from the soul. His notion of these two conflicting entities is basically a matter of existential anxiety, which was so acute as to drive him to commit suicide. In this paper, I propose a separation between the body and the soul as the central idea in Confessions of a Mask, one of Mishima’s early short stories. In terms of methodology, I focus on the meaning of the ‘mask,’ delving into its multi-layered structure of meaning. Specifically, I try to probe into how the conflict between actual entities and notional entities unfolds, especially by considering the metaphorical aspect of the mask and homosexuality as well as the shift of an illusion to a real-life presence. I also discuss the issue of conceptual aspect of reversion.
1. ‘언어와 육체’의 문제 제기
2. 암유(暗喩)로서의 ‘가면’과 남색
3. 현실과 관념의 대립구도
4. 관념으로의 회귀
참고문헌