Saul Bellow의 소설에 나타난 道德的 人間

Abstract

Saul Bellow who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 is considered to be the writer with tremendous intellect and extraordinary modern largeness. As one of the touchstones of mass society, the theme of Bellow's work could be summarized as the fate of self against the massive urban society in contemporary life. Bellow's fiction - an attempt to define the habitable limits for contemporary man - offers a look at life that is not only essential but is unique among his contemporaries. His cultural outlook could be said modernistic or even existential in that he perceives human existence as profoundly and inherently problematic. But his unique place among contemporary writers comes from the fact that he rigorously refuses the doctrine or the mood of nihilism - the denial of meaning in life and thereby, if pushed hard enough a denial of life itself. In this paper efforts are made to discover the innate moral and ethical structure of Bellow's two novels - The Victim and Mr. Sammler's Planet. The Victim is a book about the oblique bonds of moral responsibility with emphasis on the strange psychological bonding of Leventhal, the protagonist and Allbee, the antagonist. The drama of existence is shown through the victimization process, the interaction between the Jew and gentile, the ethical man and the sensual man, the roles which need each other bringing to his opposite a reality and a stature neither could attain alone. Their psychic bonding is manifested by the technique of doubling, a way often used in modern literature to have one character objectify the varied aspects of another character. In a way what The Victim is about is the way in which Leventhal is changed, the process by which he finally rids of the sense of unworthiness, guilt and suspicion and become a better person or, on the deeper level to prepare himself to become a good father. Bellow in Mr. Sammler's Planet is different. In his 1970 National Book Award winning novel, Bellow for the first time argues on the side of the father. In Mr. Sammler's Planet the plot develops very marginally unlike the hard won plot of The Victim where the plot is the struggle of the hero himself. Unlike Leventhal, Mr. Sammler, Bellow's complex surrogate, is not going to change. Bellow makes Sammler, an enormously learned wise old man, into a fundamental post-Holocaust voice confronting contemporary phenomena. This compact novel with rather few characters and carefully limited perspective on everything is in many ways a philosophical novel, or a highly polemical novel whose antagonists are recognizably the advocates of the "counter-culture" of the sixties. Sammler, a septuagenarian Polish-English intellectual and the victim of the Nazi Holocaust is an ironic survivor who saved his life by having come out of a grave. A moral creature and killer, Sammler embodies the painful contradictions of human nature in himself. However his assignment in the novel can be viewed as the refinement of the ethical imperative. The second part of this paper attempts to show the idea of character and social reality in Mr. Sammler's Planet conceived both in its moral and aesthetic dimensions. Mr. Sammler's Planet seems to present a moral spectrum. At the top appears the characters who adopt the ethical or moral mode of life by "being good" while at the bottom belong the characters who adopt aesthetic mode of life by "feeling good", a life of sensations for acting only out of pleasure. Despite the apparent formal and thematic differences, the two novels both echo Bellow's consistent fictional concern-what is viably "human" in modern life. Bellow's particular ethical position on this question appears that a man could still be noble inspire of many weaknesses. Thus, Leventhal and Sammler, the two disparate heroes of Bellow in the two bleak novels both could weather the blows of being the victim of society and of life and still keep their faith in "human".;1976년 노벨문학상을 수상한 Saul Below는 현재 대중사회속의 個人의 문제를 천착하는 데 있어 試金石과 같은 역할을 하는 작가이다. 23년의 간격을 두고 발표된 그의 初期小說 The Victim과 後期小說 Mr. Sammler's Planet는 Bellow의 작가적 변모와 技倆을 가늠할 수 있는 좋은 작품이 된다고 본다. 두 소설은 主題·形式上의 차이에도 불구하고 Bellow의 작가의식에서 비롯된 근본적인 긍정성과 도덕율이 거듭 천명된다는 점에서 공통점을 발견할 수 있다. 人間은 內在的으로 존엄의 가능성을 가진 존재라는 Bellow의 人間 認識과 社會가 움직이는 方式에 관심을 기울여 온 그의 現實認識이 두 작품을 통해 어떻게 形象化되는가를 살피는 것이 本 論文의 목적이 된다. The Victim에서는 주인공인 유태인 Leventhal과 반유태주의자 Allbee 사이에 일어나는 victimization의 과정을 심리적으로 고찰하는 동시에, 지은 일 없는 죄를 떠맡게 된 주인공이 加害者와의 관계를 통해 실존적 책임의 의미를 어렴풋하게 나마 깨닫고 내면적인 성숙을 이루는 변모의 과정을 고찰한다. 일종의 哲學小說인 Mr. Sammler's Planet에서 Bellow는 그의 생각하는 주인공 가운데서도 가장 사려깊은 72살의 노인-나치집단학살의 희생자이며 박학다식한 코스모폴리탄인-의 고정된 視點을 사용하여, 현대사회, 현대문명의 광범위한 문제를 성찰한다. 미국 도시생활이 주는 억압혼란, 소외된 개인의 存立과 위엄을 위협하는 과도한 文化, 歷史, 情報의 홍수속에서 자신의 本性을 보존하기 힘든 개인의 모습이 부각된다. 바깥세계의 제도적인 힘이 너무도 압도적인 나머지 현대사회의 개인은 오히려 個性과 독창성을 과장된 형태로 추구, 自我를 왜곡시킨다. 本 論文은 Mr. Sammler's Planet가 性的, 범죄적 狂氣에 사로잡힌 60년대 미국사회의 삶의 모습을 일종의 모랄스펙트럼을 통해 제시하고 있다고 보고 이를 美的樣式과 道德的樣式의 두 가지 차원에서 고찰한다. 동시에 'disinterested charity'를 最善의 목표로 삼았으나 어쩔 수 없이 현실로 얽혀드는 모순의 존재인 Sammler가 추구하는 도덕성의 의미란 어떤 것인가를 탐구한다.