The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
Transcript of The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 1/31
ACTA KOR Z A N A
VOL. 15, NO. 2, DECEMBER 2012: 311-340
THE LITER RY V LUE OF SIN CH AE-HO S
RE M SKY A M RGIN L ALTERATION
OF DANTE S COMEDY
By S NGJIN P RK
The issue of canonicity has been widely discussed, pardcularly since the spread of
cultural influence from the European great powers to the peripheral areas. In the past,
the classical canons suppressed differences in locality, gender and generadon. What
matters now is to recognize the changeability, rather than the constancy, of canonicity
which this árdele intends to observe in the historical and cultural processes of the
marginal alteradon of a Western canon in modern Korea. Indeed, we need to imaginehow a canon exists; it is premised on the dichotomy of center and periphery, yet with its
blurring reladonship, it repeatedly both negates and maintains itself so as to be
highlighted through its literary value. This article takes Sin Ch ae-ho s novel Dream Sk^ as
a good example with which to discern the minute crack of alteradon in • the
configuradon of the canon and to scrutinize how it is shown in the peripheral literature.
As a novelist as well as a historian and a revolutionary seeking nadonal independence.
Sin Ch ae-ho always thought about the importance and possibility of social pracdce
through literature. His acdvity as a literary writer pardy derived from his understanding
of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri; he adored Dante as an enlightened intellectual and
recognized his Divine Comedj as the record of his salvadon, and in writing Dream Sky he
took it as his own pointer for resisting Japanese imperialism. This árdele aims to re-
evaluate Dream Sky as an aesthedc reconstruction and thus to concentrate on textual
analysis, whereby I expect to re-highlight its ability to pracdce marginal alteradon and
the work of the dialogical imaginadon.
Keywords: alteradon, universality, metamorphosis, struggle, allegory
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 2/31
312 Ada Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
1. W Y OF RE-EVALUATING T H E W RITER
SIN CH'AE-HO
My premise is that the literary value of a text is not located only in the text but
also decided and changed according to the context in which the recepdon of that
text occurs. We need to imagine that the uterary value of Dante Alighieri's Divine
omedy is not fixed in any specific space-dme and cultural context, and if there is a
omedy of Italy, there may also be a omedy of Korea. T.S. Eliot observes that
Dante's language is easier to translate than Shakespeare's language; in other words,
in translating Dante, one can preserve much of the original meaning, which allows
the reader to enc oun ter D an te's language intact.' H ere the clear direct visuality,
which Dante's allegory offers, abolishes the distance between language and reality
(EUot, 22).
We might suppose, then, that Dante appealed to Korean readers more
strongly or uniquely than other Western writers. If they read Shakespeare, for
example, they might have developed a stronger and more obvious cultural
infatuadon with the West, in that they would be more conscious of learning about
and adopting modern Western civiüzadon. By contrast, Dante's most prevailing
infiuence on them was to encourage them to indulge in Hterary pleasure while also
raising a desire to learn about Western modernity.
I suggest that, unlike the recepdon of other Western writers, that of Dante in
modern Korea was pursued through a reciprocal, horizontal arid conversadonal
reladonship with the receiver. What made Dante's literature universal was its
power to endlessly alter its own language, rather than succumbing to the
hegemony imposed by an imperialist language.^ Although we cannot deny that
Dante's writings were regarded as a symbol of Western enlightenment, and, as
such, as a key factor in Korea's process of modernizadon, his literature can also
be understood as a creadve counter-force, an object of powerful resistance to the
homogenizing infiuence of modernity and the modern nadon-state system (see
Park, Sangjin 2007).It is for this reason that I turn to the modern Korean writer Sin Ch'ae-ho,
who strove to discover literature's potendal for resistance to the totalitarian social
and p olidca l system establishe d by Jap an ese imp erialist rvile, and further to
overcome the homogeneity promoted by the nadonalist tendencies in East Asia at
' Eliot observes that in the omedy we can fmd the logic of sensibility ; bo th log ic and
sensibüit) ' here indicate hum an abilities that have decidedly allowed Da nte the position of a
writer and us that of 'writerly' readers (Eliot, 32—35).
2 O n Dan te's linguistic experimen t to establish a de-centering language, see his usage ofvernacular Italian in the Divine omedy and his discussion of it in De Vulgari Eloquentia.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 3/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch'ae-ho'sDteam Sky 313
that dme. It is possible to say that Sin Ch'ae-ho wrote his novel Dream Sky' under
the influence of the Comedj This is so because, although it is very difficult to findraw materials showing the influence of the omedj on the Dream Sky, Sin Ch'ae-ho
himself was deeply interested in Italy and Dante, and indeed we can see many
simüarides of structure and contents between the two works; in other words, even
though there is no direct influence-reladonship, we can infer their reladon from
the concept of recepdon. The discipline of comparadve literature focuses not so
much on what one receives as how one digests and reconstructs the origin of
recepdon, and what meanings one recreates from it in one's sociohistorical
context (Weisstein, 52-53). So I wiH concentrate in this árdele on textual analysis
of Dream Sky and evaluadon of its literary value rather than comparing it direcdy
with the Comedy. In this process, we wül be able to invesdgate the aspect not of
urdlateral recepdon but conversadonal alteradon that Dream Sky promoted, and
thereby examine its literary value in a more universal dimension. Finally, my
discussion win converge on the alterado n rather than the omedj in the subdde
of this paper: a marginal alteradon of D an te's Comedy.
What the term alteradon implies goes beyond a certain kind of adaptadon of
the Comedy; it may mean a new form of creadve work that Sin Ch'ae-ho produced
in response to the demands of the dme. There have been many attempts to
explain the dissonances between Sin Ch'ae-ho's polidcal ideology and his literary
representadon. These encompass recognidon of the nadonal incompetence ofKorea in his realism, nadonalism in his historiography, arguments for the struggle
against imperialism in his árdeles, and anarchist conversion to phantasmagoria in
his novels. One of the values of his Hterarj' text is that it aüows us to seek the
modern significance of the attempts to transcend the conflict between those
heterogeneous aspects. *
^ Series ofTanfae Sin Ch'ae-ho. ed. by The Club of Commemoration for Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho. (Seoul:
Hyungseol. 1995. vol. 2), 174-224. Hereafter cited as Series. In relation to this point, Choi Su-Jung's statement is worth citing: The characteristics of thestructure and phantasmagoria in Sin Ch'ae-ho's literature shows his individual recognition ofreality and his power of material imagination that were all possible from his features of literaryman and fighter at his time. As we see from his moderated representations, his literature is theresult of both ideological attitude and radical imagination. (Choi Su-Jung. p. 197). On the otherhand we can refer to the argument that his novels contributed to the development of modernKorean literature by vktue of their heterogeneous peculiarity in comparison with other novels atthat time. The literary writing of Sin Ch'ae-ho leads us to question what modern Korean literatureis. His recognition and practice of literature differs from the concept and writings that themainstream of modern Korean literature had hitherto produced. We need to consider that hisparticularity has the possibility of overthrowing the mainstream. On this kind of discourse, see LeeDong-Jae.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 4/31
314 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
At a time when the style of the modern novel was coming to fulfillment in
Korea , Dream Sky included modern reality in its mythological imagination, whichhad mainly appeared in the traditional Korean war novel or hero novel. That is to
say, in ream Sky Sin Ch'ae-ho tried to reconstruct the spatial structures and styles
of the traditional novel according to his own situatedness. The transcendental
space and time that we can observe in ream Sky can never belong to the modern
imagination but insofar as it inherited the structure of the traditional novel via his
ow n sensibility, it was able to rep res en t his co nte m po rar y reaUty successfully (H an
Keum-Yun, 153). '
It is difficult to verify whether Sin Ch'ae-ho possessed comparative literature's
concept of alteration; however, we can find the symptom of this concept in hisliterature. Sin Ch'ae-ho intended to express himself rather than imitate Dante,
which means that his aim was to show his particularity situated in a particular era,
or more precisely, his marginaüty and its irreducibüity. Therefore, the traces of
alteration in Dream Sky do not necessarüy obtain their meaning only by being
linked to Dante but have their own independent power and structure inviting
open interpretation.
Many papers on the history of modern Korean üterature have tended to
classify the works of Sin Ch'ae-ho as historical or biographical novels and to
define their aims as patriotism and enüghtenment. But this vision looks too simple,
at least if we note that his texts are too soHd and evocative to be defined as such.
It is true that his aüegories indicate such forms of national consciousness as the
national spirit, national striving, historical consciousness and resistance, but, on
the other hand, in order to evaluate his text properly, we need to scrutinize the
universaüzabüity of the meanings that these aüegories may produce. In other
words, the concept of marginal alteration leads us to understand the ideas of
nation and history, which Sin Ch'ae-ho might have shown in his text, more
universally.
5 According to Min Chan, this is actually an original modern style of writing because it istradidonal. It is noteworthy that Sin Ch'ae-h o's tradidonal form and methodology succeeded as akind of post-modern literature. At his dme when the fact that the tradidonal literature and modernliterature were divided was approved tacitly, he developed his own way of writing though it was to
some extent closer to the tradidonal literature, which can be regarded as an important examplewith which to explore the universal role of literature. (Min Chan, 90).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 5/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Diezm Sky 31 5
2. READING DREAM SKY
2.1. Dream Sky and the Divine Comedy
In 1907, as Korea was coming under Japanese imperialist rule. Sin Ch'ae-ho
translated the Story of Three Heroes in Building Italy (MÍ\M ^ ^=.^W) by the
Chinese writer Lian Chi Ciao ( ^ ^ S ) . This was intended to indicate a Korean
way of coping with modernization and imperialism, drawing on the historical
examples of Garibaldi, Mazzini, and Cavour in the Italian Risorgimento, the
process of building up the modern-nation-state in Italy. Here Dante is described
as a pioneer, patriot and great poet who yearned for the unification of his country,
and in whom Sin Ch'ae-ho wanted to find hope for Korea. He paid specialattention to the mod ern history of Italy and w rote an article Th e Orien tal Italy
in a newspaper Taehanmaeil-sinbo in 1909^ which shows that he was already
equipped with some knowledge of Italy. He hoped to project the futtire of Korea
along the lines of the reconstruction and independence of Italy and argued that
the country could become an 'oriental Italy'. Perhaps Sin Ch'ae-ho himself also
dreamed of becoming the 'oriental Dante' .
Sin Ch'ae-ho's interest in Dante is evident in his novel Dream Sky, written in
1916 in Beijing, the place of his exüe. However, it coxold not be published at that
time and only became available later in the Series of Sin Ch ae-ho? Therefore,although he supposedly wrote it taking his contemporary readers into
consideration, the readers who actually read and evaluated his novel were the
people of almost a half century later. This means that the sociological-recepdonal
^ Series. (Annex), pp . 184—187. Sin Ch'ae-ho states that In Italy there were great poets like Dan teand great idealists like Mazzini; after they expressed the national spirit, the country gained order.(ibid. 187) Also it is worth noticing that in his writings Hero and World (ibid. 11 1-3) in 1908
and Heroes of the Twentieth Century New Oriental W orld {Series. Vol. 2. pp. 111-6) in 1909,Sin Ch'ae-ho focuses on the possibility of re-highUghdng the he roes ' lives in terms of the present.^ Many literary manuscripts by Sin Ch'ae-ho were not published. He was held in prison from 1928and died in 1936. Afterwards they were forgotten. Though some tried to publish them, it was tono avail because of the censorship under Japanese imperialism. In the 1960s they began to bepublished in such North Korean magazines as Chosön munhak and Munhak sinmun between 1964and 1965. Dream Sky was first introduced in Munhak sinmun on October 20, 1964 with Ju Ryong-Gul's commentary. According to Kim Byung-Min, his manuscripts were arranged in the NationalCentral Library of North Korea from 1966 onwards (Kim, Byung-Min, 2—3). In South Korea, theCommittee for Editing the Series of Sin Ch'ae-ho was established in 1970 and the first Series werepublished in 1972 at Hyungsul Press {Series of Tanjae Sin Ch ae-ho. ed. by The Club ofCommemoration for Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho. Seoul: Hyungseol. 1995). So Dream Sky was not shownto the public until 1964.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 6/31
316 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
approach to the contemporary meaning of Dream Skj might be less meaningful
than that based on the text itself which leads us to an aesthedc evaluadon.In general this approach is related to the canonizadon of a text insofar as it
aUows us to re-highlight its Uterary values from diverse aspects; yet in the case of
ream Skj this becomes more complex in that the text was a result of a response
to a so-caUed canonical work: the ivine Comedj It would not be an overstaitement
to say that the value of ream Sky is that it shows that literature can reflect the
pardcular or regional contexts by adapting a canonical work according to the
pardcular situadon of the margin.
Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no direct evidence that
Sin Ch ae-ho had direct contact with D ante s Comedy. However, Dante was alreadya weU-known writer in Korea at the time, so we can infer that he gained some
knowledge of Dante, and it is possible that he read the Comedj translated into
Japanese.^ H ow can I guess that? I can do so because Sin Ch ae-h o w as so
interested in the independence movement in Italy and recognized Dante as an
inteUectual who pracdced enUghtenment and überty. But more interesdngly.
Dream Skj and the Comedj show a strikingly similar s tructure, techn ique, and
subject in their narra dve s. It wo uld be very difficult to say that it is just by chance,
and even if it is just by chance, highlighting those similarides is undoubtedly
important for understanding not only their literary values but more cruciaUy their
relevance to such up-to-date issues as marginal alteradon of the canon.
Sin C h ae-h o, as the w riter of ream Skj intended a marginal alteradon, not a
unilateral rec ep do n, of the literary values of the universalized center (the Comedj
by Dante) and, as a post-nadonaUst and anarchist theorist , pursued the pracdce of
enlightenment by interpreting national history in such a way as to escape from
narrow nadonaUsm. This shows how alteradon on the margins helps to construct
true universal value in the Uterary and ideological d ime nsions .
It has been taken for granted that Sin Ch ae- ho a ccepted the survival of the
fittest, as supported by the theor} of social evoludon, which was no more than the
basic logic of imperiaUsm. (Park, No-Ja 2005a, 244) This was a sort of inteUectualsurrender. (Park, No-Ja 2005a, 243). In the same way, the evaluadon that the
anarchist revoludonary Sin C h ae-ho was overwhelmed by the nadonalist Sin
Ch ae-ho , who w as injured by imperiaUsm, might be m ore appropriate for him as
the author of ream Skj. (Choi, 27)
However, it is worthwhUe to re-highlight the symptoms of trans-nadonaUsm
in ream Skj which can be found in his attempts to overcome nadonaUsm as an
ideology and simultaneously to seek the site and sociohistorical meaning of
On the recepdon of Dante in modern Korean literature, see Park, Sangjin 2007.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 7/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 317
nadonalism in his reaüty.' Sin Ch'ae-ho was a representadve intellectual who
pursued this kind of discourse through literary writing; he thought that the onlyfreedom he coxild enjoy under the current oppression was to produce imaginadve
writing based on historical facts and to publish it so as to sympathize with the
society of his day. In fact, in Dream Sky he warns us not to commit the error of
following Am erica and Ge rm any.' H ere we can see that his nadon alism was no
longer the exclusive nadonalism based on modern evolüdonar)' theory but a much
more advanced type; for him, to imitate the modernized Western countries, as
Japan did, could not be the soludon.
At the beginning of the 1900s, Sin Ch'ae-ho strived to understand 'nadon' on
the basis of territorial homogeneity and historical continuity, but independendy of
nado nalism as an ideologji. H en r)' E m attem pts to read Sin Ch 'ae-ho 's literature
as showing that his freer concept of nadon led him to form his (literary) idendty
as a Korean under Japanese rule in such a way as not necessarily to be
homogenized into a nadon. (Em 1999a)'^ In fact Sin Ch'ae-ho argued that the
subject of revoludon is no longer a nadon but the proletariat, and that only this
group would be able to eradicate the insdtudons that made it possible; here there
exists a polidcal program beyond nadonalism and historical consciousness outside
nadonalist discourse.^^
Sin Ch'ae-ho's trans-nadonaüsm should be more acdvely interpreted in terms
of the complex logic of resistance and de-homogenizadon. This is stricdy linkedto the issue of ethics; his trans-nadonaHsm makes ethics softer and more context-
bound, which is what I describe as responding to the demands of the time. It was
Dream Sky that led or andcipated Sin Ch'ae-ho's trans-nadonal idea and ethical
emodon. As I mendoned above, i ts writing was bound up with the Comedy by
Dan te .
' Here we need to refer to his feature as the so-called 'inclusive transcendental' in his Chosönhyöngmyung sönön (Proclamation of Chosön Revolution). On the other hand, this point relatesto his unique recognition of modernity. See Kim, In-Hwan. hai Jin-Hong. Park Jung-Sim.'0 Sin Ch'ae-ho. Dream Sh . p. 175. Hereafter, only the page num ber will be cited with parenthesis.^' This proposition is the basis of the whole position of the book: Gi-Wook Sin and Michael
Robinson.'2 Henry Em. Nationalism, Post-Nationalism, and Sin Ch'ae-ho, Korea journal Summer 1999, pp.
283-317.'3 Henry Em maintains that Sin Ch'ae-ho's concept of the people {minjun¿) led him to overcomethe narrow category of nation and to move his historiography toward a transnational dimension.
(Henry Em 1999b).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 8/31
318 Arta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
Here Weisstein's statement on the omedj is wo rth quoting:
As a particularly fiagrant case of an influence lacking popular support, wemight mendon the Divine Comedy which has faüed to make a lasting
impression either with the general public outside Italy or with the bulk of
foreign writers, but which, through the mediation of the few poets whowere profoundly affected by it (as, later, a Baudelaire and an Euot), become
assured of ts firm place within the uterary trad ition. (Weisstein, 49).
Sin Ch 'ae-ho was also one of those few po ets , because his work bestowed a
pardcular significance on Korean literature and its readers by rewridng Dante in
the colonial period. He pursued a creadve betrayal. The term betrayal may suggestthat Dream Skj has less literary value tha n the Comedj but on the other hand, it
reminds us more powerfully of the meaning of alteradon. When we grasp the
reladonship between Sin Ch'ae-ho and Dante in terms of alteration rather than
influence, we can say that Dante's text realizes the power of alteradon by its
'betrayal' in Dream Skj and that thereby Dante's greatness is highlighted once
again in the context of the Other.
In the Comedj Dante gave life to the structure of the afterlife: hell, purgatory
and paradise. Sin Ch'ae-ho, in Dream Sky relocates such order into purgatory-heU-
paradise, according to the demands of his dme. For Sin Ch'ae-ho, purgatory was aplace that refiected human reality in that it offers a chance to purify ourselves of
our sins. Sin Ch'ae-ho probably located the purgatorial experience in the first part
of his novel because he wanted to foreground the ruin of his country. That is to
say, he wanted to remind the Korean people of the historical reasons that they
had faüen into the 'hell' of colonial reality. In the Purgatory Dante describes the
pügrim Dante progressing towards salvadon. Sin Ch'ae-ho represents purgatory as
a place where the Korean people must, fight against the great enemy, experience
severe trials to reach 'the country of hope' and examine their wül for patriodsm. It
seems to show a response to the very urgent demand of the dme for resistance toJapanese imperialism.
Interestingly, the seven sins that Dante postulates in the Purgatory are pride,
envy, w rath , sloth , avarice, glutton y, and lust, wh ich are aU related to lov e (the first
three are a perversion of love, the fourth is a sign of defecdve love, the last three
represent excessive love, and love is in fact a more universal concept than nadonal
independence in Sin Ch'ae-ho's case). By contrast, the seven trials to which Sin
Ch'ae-ho submits are pain, poverty/, envy, wrath, despair, solitude, and lust, which
are to be understood in reladon to the Korean independence movement. Pain,
despair and lust represent the situadon that the cidzens of the colony must face
and overcome. The pügrim Dante finally purifies au his sins in purgatory and
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 9/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 3 9
ascends to paradise, whue the protagonist of Dream Sky does not overcome the
trials and rather descends to heü. The descent from purgatory to heü ki Dream Skycan be understood as a metaphor for the loss of sovereignty of Korea under
Japanese rule.
The heü described in Dream Sky is much simpler than that of Dante. Only two
types of souls, die enemy and tiie traitor to die nation are located diere, whereas
in Dante's heü, many tripes of souls are described. This is because Sin Ch'ae-ho
intended to concentrate on the crisis of his country. What he means by the
'enemy ' are Ko rean people w ho are mobü ized by Japan, or who make a fetish of
Japan or marry Japanese p eople, and what he means by ' traitors ' are Kore an
people who uve their Uves satisfactorüy despite the niin of their country. SinCh'ae-ho shows his refusal to aüow an inch of compromise with the invaders in
the first case, and exposes his resentment towards those who lost their combative
spirit in the second.
Dante's paradise guarantees eternal happiness but Sin Ch'ae-ho's paradise
differs; it was once a peaceful place where the cultural properties of Korea were
gathered and where those who had dedicated themselves to the independence of
the nation üved, but now it is covered with dust. This ruined paradise symbolizes
the reaüty of Korea under the rule of foreign countries. Sin Ch'ae-ho never aüows
himself to describe his paradise as a place separated from reaüt)?, but can only
describe the figure of the 'new man' who incessandy fights for the national spirit
even in this hopeless paradise.
In sum. Sin Ch'ae-ho's Dream Sky can be evaluated as a localized revival of the
Divine Comedy as a Western canonical work, which supports the idea of the
universaüzabiüty of the Comedy very powerfuüy. Here I think what is caüed
marginal alteration operates. We could postulate that, to borrow Franco Morretti 's
metaphor (Morretti), Dante is a wave and Sin Ch'ae-ho is a tree. A wave runs into
the branches of local traditions, and is always significandy transformed by them.
M orre tti states that this[relation ship of wav e and tree] is the basis for the division
of labor between national and world üterature: national üterature, for people whosee trees; world üterature , for people wh o see wa ves. (Morretti, 161) H e states
that there is always controversy about whether the tree or the wave, the nation or
the world, is the dominant force. This leads us to consider the comparatiye
approach to üterature, which aüows us to look at üteratures from a different
viewp oint. Th us , in order to evaluate a uterary text, we need to maintain no t ugly
one-sidedness and narrow-m indedn ess but a comparativis t perspective (Morrett i,
161), which wiü possibly be ünked to the concept of marginal alteration and
thereby a tnüy universal dimension of uterary achievements. But in order to reach
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 10/31
320 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
this kind of conclusion, we need to pursue first a scrupxolously close reading of
Dream Sky.
2.2. M etamorphosis : Th e Ha rm ony of Phantasmago ria andReality
The hero of Dream Sky is H an no m w ho is described as a being in w hom sleep
and dream are united with each other (174 ). Ina sm uch as his characteristics as
well as the whole setting of Dream Sky are surreal, most scholars' * have regarded
it as traditional or pre-modern phantasmagoria.'^ What matters in this article,
though, is to ask more profoundly how we can define the world of the text as
such and what implications it has. In this sense, it is wordi considering the
argument that phantasmagoria can be an effective means to communicate with
reality.' H ow eve r, what we also need to consider is that the text ado pts an
aesthetic form by virtue of which it can guarantee the diversity of interpretation.
We can imagine the text as a response to the demands of its time and
simultaneously as a work open to diverse interpretation beyond its time.
The basic framework of Dream Sky can be found in the mixture of
phantasmagoria and reauty. The elements of phantasmagoria can be seen in
Hannom's diverse ways of existence: conversation with the flowers, which is
oneness with nature or the outer world; meeting with the sages, which is thesurpassing of dme; exchanging the right hand with the left hand and becoming
eight entities, which are the supernatural metamorphosis or non-separation of self
and world. The elements of reality can be seen in the fact that most of the
characters and events in Dream Sky draw on historical materials. But the writer
advises die reader to w atch [them] separately w ithou t m ixture (175), w hich I
think means that he wishes for phantasmagoria and reality to establish the
relationship of harmony and supplement within the reader. T he elements of
phantasmagoria in the text are never limited or confined to the text itself but are
meaningful only insofar as they extend toward realit}' or relate to it; indeed in thetext the writer invites the reader to dream ver}' freely rather than to follow his pre-
fixed intention. He wants to be free at least in writing because his real situation
does not allow him freedom, and he leads the readers x.o play with the elem ents o f
phantasmagoria such as flowers, sages and heroes (175) and at the same time to
''' Sin Ch'ae-ho's novels have long been evaluated as examples of the traditional and pre-modernstyle. See Han Keum-Yun, Ryu Yang-Sun, Kim Sung-Kuk, Yun Myung-Ku, Yu Jong-Kuk, SinCh'ae-ho Jae-H ong, and C ho Dong-Il.
'5 Yang Eon-Suk defines it as a traditional mong u -g-n-) novel. (ï'ang Eon-Suk, 1). ^ See Han Keum-Y un (1998).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 11/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 32 1
watch [them] separately wit hou t m ixtu re (175) because even thou gh the text is
fuU of unreaUsdc, poedc and mythical elements, it always refers to the historicalfacts based on such books as Kogi ( í i S ) , Samguk sagi ( H i l l i s S ) , Samguk jusa
= i a i l * ) , Koryösa ( i í H i ) , Kwangsa (iÄ5t), and Yöksa (,lf .Í) (1 75 ). W iüi such acontradictory statement, the writer desires to harmonize phantasmagoria andreaUty in such a way that they maintain their own territories. In a situadon inwhich he is deprived of his freedom, die only freedom that he can enjoy is tocreate imaginadve work based on historical facts and to disseminate it so as toextend the scope and in pardcular the depth of sympathy with his readers.'
There fore, by declaring that H ann om is the being in wh om sleep and dreamare united with each other , Sin Ch'ae-ho shows his own desire for ind epend ence
in a very simple, direct and succinct way that jusdfies adopting Hannom as a guide.This reminds us of the Comedj in which Dante indicates diat the sleep and dreamof the pUgrkn signify not a synthesis but something which makes them (sleep anddream) different, by showing that the writer Dante exists in the same way as thepUgrim Dante.'^ The sleep and dream are a rite of passage and progress towardsthe transcendental world, playing the role of self-reveladon and self-guiding. Inthe preface to Dream Skj Sin Ch'ae-ho teUs readers diat he wrote Dream Skj no tafter a dream bu t during a dream (174). Lee C hang-M in holds - that thisproclamadon may weU be a device for eUminating the narradve stage of immong
(entering the dream ). ' ' O n this Kim Young-Min com men ts;
The realization of hope is disturbed when it is in reality. Further, as in thedme when Sin Ch'ae-ho lived the frustration was incomparable, althoughone feels hope in the dream one feels more frustration after the dream. If awriter creates a work in his reality he cannot but think of his realityeventuaUy although his work is based on a dream. However if he writes in
'^ I agree with Lee Chang-Min's argument that Dream Sky can be more properly understood whenwe approach it through the theory of representation which differs from the theorj' of imitadon; ittends to stimulate imaginadon so as to harmonize phantasmagoria and reality. (Lee Chang-Min,67). I think his argument sustains the assumpdon that Sin Ch'ae-ho utilized Dante in order tocreate his representadon rather than imitate him. Interestingly Yi Do-Yeon grasps this point froma romandcist perspective; that is. Sin Ch'ae-ho's imaginadon starts from yearning and proceedswithin yearning so that it does not reach completion and remains in the process of eternalgeneration. (Yi Do-Yeon, 224-225). In my view, eternal generation is something that Dream Sk j
appeals for over and over again: for instance, in the future potential for an independent nation.18 See Park, Sangjin, 2011 (particularly chapter 2). Yi Chang-Min. p. 68. We can define Dream Skj as one of the mong/u novels lacking the stage ofentering the dream(zOTOTO«¿/•?]•§-), if we foUow Sin Ch'ae-ho Jae-Hong's classification according towhich the typical narrative structure consists of entering the dream, guiding, sitting, discussing, the
banquet, the performance and exiting from the dream (Sin Ch'ae-ho Jae-Hong, 275).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 12/31
322 Ada Koreana Vol 15 , N o . 2, 2012
the dream he is free from the hardship of reality. Here the dream and
reality do not have to create a harmony; the writer can tell everything he
wants without being restricted by reality. Sin Ch'ae-ho, when he wrote the
Dream Sky, never thought of how it would be realized.in his times. (Kim
Young-Min, 320)
However, regardless of such an authorial intendon, we need to consider its
effect which does not signify something diat occurs in contemporary society (the
problem of socio-recepdon histor)') but rather something diat the text embodies
and raises in the process of interpretadon. Then, even diough the text that Sin
Ch'ae-ho wrote in his dream is free from the hardship of reality, diat freedom
does not indicate its irrelevance to realit)' but the liberty of dreaming itself, whichis nothing other than a creative work.
Sin Ch'ae-ho and Dan te use the same narradve technique in that they appeal
to the readers direcdy; this is because they aim for the pracdcal (or polidcal)
literature that can be achieved by the writer who maintains a clear consciousness
of his reality.^° As in the omedy the writer Dante and the pilgrim Dante are the
same character, so in Dream Sky the w riter Sin Ch'ae-ho and the hero Hann om are
idendfied with each odier.^' The whole structure of Dream Sky is sustained by the
memory of I (the writer), who is die same endty as Hannom (191). Accordingly
Sin Ch'ae-ho makes Hannom act as a subsdtute for him, yet the writer himself liesconcealed behind the text and instead m akes H ann om represent both the writer
(reality) and the character (ficdon or phantasmagoria). This means diat Sin Ch 'ae-
ho, as the intellectual-writer who responds to the demands of the time, projects
his own self-consciousness and historical consciousness into the character^^. As in
the case of Dante, Hannom idendfies himself with such figurai elements as
freedom, independence, inidadve, enlightenment and exile, and is thus solitary and
belongs nowhere, which can be called the idendtj ' of non-affiliadon; he can only
place his reliance on the ancestors (184).^ ̂ So Ha nnom appears by himself.
2 On this proposition, see George Orwell (p. 5). According to him, all writings are political.
2' The writer calls Hannom I , which indicates the writer himself (185). According to the
Chronoloff ca l Record o f Sin Ch ae-ho, he used Hannom for one of his pen names { hronological Recor
I n Series. V o l . 2. p. 495 ) . In all. Dream i'/é) ' wa s an a u tob iogr a ph ic a l nove l ( s e e ChronoloncalRxcord. P
5 0 0 ) .
22 In na t iona l l i te ra ry t rend s of the 197 0s , Sin C h ' a e - h o w a s mainly highl ighted as a his tor ian and
th inker , and there w a s d i sc uss ion of ho w such asp ec ts were projec ted in his figure of t h e li terary
writer. (Han Keum-Yun, 137-138).
This corresponds to the way that Dante takes the Roman poet Virgil as his guide and considers
Rome as the ideal community. In addition, they dream the 'utopia' which is die community that is
now absent but to be achieved in the near future; for them the commutiity is represented as the
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 13/31
Park: The Literary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 323
without colleagues (188), and although he has a number of alter-egos, all of them
disappear and he remains alone eventuaüy.He was not alone from the beginning; his seven alter-egos form a oneness
wid i the writer by being called w e (191).^ Th e writer separates himself from
the Hannom composed of seven endues and simultaneously unites himself in
them; this is the landscape in which, through his separation and synthesis at the
same place, the writer reflects himself by making them console, encourage and
rep rov e each othe r. VUl of them are in fact a single body (this is wh at H an n om
means actuaüy) which is precisely Sin Ch'ae-ho himself and die community of the
Korean nadon. Therefore we can say that the scene where au of them are
disunited and isolated aüegorizes the coüapse of community.
As the pügrim Dante maintains his will to ascend throughout the Comedj
Hannom and his alter-egos do not cease to move forward in the Dream Sky. In
this process, however, most of the alter-egos faü by the wayside; Innom faüs out
of die ranks because of pai n (199); Yö tchain om is separated from die odiers
becau se of his desire for gold (199); Sen nom dies because of die disaster of
Saeam (199); N en no m , w ho shot Senno m m istakenly, is bur nt to death (199).
H ere Sae am , wh ich means a water stream , implies betrayal. It reminds us of the
rivers which penetrate hell tul they reach its bottom and form a lake where the
soxils who committed the worst crime in this world are situated. Their crime is
precisely betrayal as we see the same posidon in the Comedy. Dream Skj describesin detaü how the crime of betrayal has been committed historicaüy (196-197). To
pass diroug h Saeam impUes to overcom e crime. As the pügrim Dan te succeeds
in reaching purgatory by escaping from hell, Hannom and his alter-egos cross the
Sa ea m successfvüly. In Dream Skj the essendal tools for overcom ing Saeam
are suggested as Hwarangdo^^ Chinese literature. Buddhism and Chrisdanity, au
of which are derived from the pursuit of reciprocal communicadon among
universal morality, knowledge and belief
As mendoned above, the diverse idenddes which compose Hannom connote
the situadon of his split idendt)' . Now there remain Tannom and Tunom;Tannom decides to uve with a disengaged atdtude and Tunom to surrender to the
enemy. Hannom's final decision in this situadon is that as each has its own load
each needs to go separately (200), yet in fact he hesitates about his decision
process of achieving itself rather than that achieved already. I have explained this with the term
u topia in-process. (Park, Sangjin 2010, 27-47).2 Dante uses the pronoun 'our' in tiie first part of Inferno to show that his book was written for
all mankind.25 This term refers to the rule of the elite youth in the Silla Dynasty who excelled in beauty,
bravery and military arts.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 14/31
324 Ada Koreana Vol 15, No. 2, 2012
because for hün there remains the desire to unify his own alter-egos and internal
troubles, and set diem \n order. Nonedieless he remaüis alone, which means thathe bears die load by hünself ^ ̂ Th e six Hann om s w ho were reproduced in the
same figure of Hannom were put in die text to show the problems diat can take
place wh en die nationaüst w ho mus t be Tae-a {-jz. ̂ cannot but be ardendy
attached to the desires of So-a(/J^|lc) diat he enc oun ters in the real situation:
desperation due to hardship, temptation to uve in splendor, jealousy of coüeagues
and, as a result, loss of nationaüs t patdo tism so as no t to buüd up Tae-a. ^^
Ultünately, Hannom has to travel ki the transcendental world by himself; he
deskes die country of N im (esteemed perso n) yet is lonely, tough and sad
üidefinitely (201). He deskes a guide who can carry sympathy and an object of the
sympathy, yet reaüzes that he wül be unable to encounter the guide with his alter-
egos or his contemporary community because the destination of that guidance is
precisely his own future akn; ki odier words, die akn itself is die guide for
Hannom. Thus Hannom's travel is always guided by its prospect, and therefore
Hannom is obüged to change incessandy yet remain the same; he is endlessly
extended, continued and radiated, yet ki this process of metamorphosis he cannot
escape from the struggle (184), wh ich, as discussed abov e, guarantees die endless
contüiuity of Hannom's identity of non-affiüation and context-boundness. Only
through struggle do the metamorphosis and identity of Hannom co-exist (I wül
return to the issue of struggle ki chapter 4).
At this pokit, it is kiterestiüg to observe diat Dream Sky is composed of 6
chapters b ut m os t of chapter 3 does n ot exist and chapter 6, w hich is beüeved to
be the last, remakis unfinished. It is very probable that die kicompleteness of such
a creative form was intended by die writer. Ind eed tiie discussion abo ut w heth er
Dream Sky was reaüy kitended to be read^^ and the reasons why he left it
unfinished wül never be properly resolved. Instead I would üke to pay more
attention to his assumed intention, which means that he kitended not to be
obsessed by a certain uterary form: die novel as the typical, canonical modern
Western genre; in odier words, die kicomplete form helps us consider that the
^ This soludon sounds similar to diat in the Comedy. See Purgatorio 6. 133-135 and Paradiso 5 57.
^ ^ Han Geum-Yun. 145. Here Ta e-a ' can be w dtten as 'die Big I' while 'So-a' is 'the Small I'. Thereladonship between the Big I and die Small I is the main basis of his ambitious construcdon ofKorean history Choson saniosa, in which he strives to seek the origin of Korea.28 See Ho ng Myung-Hee's statem ent; Sin Ch'ae-ho w rote many novels but he didn't have anyintendon to present them. He did it in order to express the outcry of Choson, die fidelity of .Choson, broken out from die bottom of his unbearable heart. (Hong Myung-Hee). See also theconcep t of acceptability suggested by Jung Gin-Won (108-111) in reladon to die aesthedcevalúadon of Dream Sky.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 15/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dr eam Sky 32 5
writer aimed at an unrestricted expression of his own internal world and his
reaction to his contemporary situation.In fact, he declared in the preface of Dream Sky that he did not seek formal
com pletion (174). At the end die text finishes with the inco m plete phras e: I am
naturally heardess and do not realize how many tears I shed for my
hum ank ind (224). This is the quintessen ce of Sin Ch 'ae- ho's self-reflection.
Thus we can say that Dream Sky as an unfinished text exists as a part and process
of his historical insight that has neidier beginning nor end. Another point is that
the form of Dream Sky is unique in that it is a mixture of poem and novel; poetry
doubles the appeal whüe die novel explains, yet in the prose-description of
characters and struggles we can find rhythm.^' In his paper Ch'önhüidangsihwa,Sin Ch 'ae-h o defines a po em as the essenc e of national language. ^ In particular,
the poem in which Hannom realizes why the sky is covered with dust in the
country of Nim and imagines die future when someday the sky will be blue
again(l 19-220 ) shows exquisiteness in ad optin g the basic characters of the
Korean language for alliteration.
2.3. T h e C ountry of N im : T he Structure of Sin Ch'ae -ho 's World
Sin Ch'ae-ho's world appears succinct but if we look into its strata we can find
there innumerable folds, which leads us to consider two points.First, he designs the spiritual world as an eternally repeatbg world (182), in
which die same scenes, including the errors of the earthly life, appear over and
over again (199). It reminds us diat in die Comedy hell is sustained by eternal
punishment and paradise is full of eternal happiness, while purgatory reflects the
errors of the earthly life, yet also offers chances of correcting and even
overcoming them. Once repetitions begin, diey continue widiout difference;
however, die contents can differ according to the order, achievement and result of
the earthly life. In diis structure in which the order, achievement and result of the
earthly life are maintained changelessly, the position of purgatory is no longerstable and dius very ambiguous, which is linked to die determinist world view that
whatever is determined in the earthly life condnues in the spiritual world.
Although the function of purgation is caught, it never opens itself up (183).
Second, die writer asks readers to consider as allegory what Buddhism and
Christianity say about hell and paradise. This means abolishing the unrealistic view
that this world is the middle and thus passive stage wherein one's destiny, whedier
to go to hell, or paradise, is decided. Prob lem s that o ne faces, such as diose of
Yi Seon-Y oung defines it as poetic prose style. (See Yi Seon-Yo ung).See Cho D ong-Il ' s com ments in his Hankuk munhak t ongsa. Vol. 4. p. 330.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 16/31
326 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
community, salvadon and jusdce, are to be solved here in the earthly Ufe, and die
division between heU and paradise is made according to how hard one tries tosolve such problems.
In Sin Ch'ae-ho's world, everything is concluded according to the message
from the sky (Nim ), in Une with w hich, more concretely, die victor goes to
paradise while dae defeated goes to heU. However, diis principle cUffers from die
logic of the survival of the fittest that we find in Social Darwinism. For Dante as
weU as for Sin Ch'a e-h o, to win in the struggle for jusdce is impo rtant;^' but w hat
is more important is to ask what the struggle for jusdce should be and how one
has to work for it. This ambiguous and fluid definidon of jusdce and struggle is
indispensable for understanding Dante as weU as Sin Ch'ae-ho; die ways to solvethis problem are w hat we have to consider in bod i writers.
After aU, it is the struggle that su stains the fu ndam ental w orld view of Dream
Skj. The influence of struggle ranges from the earthly world to the spiritual world,
from the East to the West, and it continues endlessly. Therefore, man in his
historical context must inexorably pardcipate in the struggle, and in Sin Ch'ae-ho's
era, when Korea was under Japanese rule, pardcipating was much more
indispensable. In fact the writer describes how Hannom perceives die
cosmological significance of struggle and represents die pracdcal inteUectual who
feels soUtude and sadness before such a huge stream of history. In this respect, itis worth nodcing that Nim, whom Hannom meets in paracUse, appears as the
companion who shares die soUtude and sadness of Hannom. For Hannom, Nim's
existence is indispensable because neidier he nor his alter-egos alone can
overcome die existing difficuldes as I discussed above. Nim, as a sympathedc
companion for Hannom, is also Hannom's emodonal and ideological aim; in
other words, that aim itself is Hannom's companion and guide. Here Hannom
appears as the self-reflecdve inteUectual who takes his aim as his guide.
The odier companion of Hannom is history. For instance, Nim gave him a
sword that Chöng Ki-ryong, the general of loyal troops in 1592 when Japan
invaded Korea, used. The writer makes the sword speak;
A certain enemy commander leaning on the desk is reading the history of
the war between Japan and Korea while the sword in Hannom's one hand
shivers and shouts indicating the comm ander;
That guy is exacdy Toyotomi Hideyoshi who strived to disgrace Chosön
(Korea). (202)
5' T he problem of justice was one of Da nte's main concerns for building up a hum an com mu nity,
as we can see in his omedj a nd De monarchia. There are many articles about it, and I discussed it inmy paper (Park, Sangjin 2010).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 17/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 327
This is precisely to make history speak so as to highlight the judgment of
history and the sword's will to punish commander Toyotomi Hideyoshi. However,at the instant when To yo tom i HQdeyoshi is transformed into the greatest
beaudful wom an of the age, H an no m drops the sword which becomes one of
the reasons why Hannom falls into hell rather than jusdy ascending to paradise
(211). Hannom, along with other people who do not understand what crime led
them to hell, meets Kang Kam-ch'an, who was a distingtiished general in Korean
history and is now the messenger of hell, and he explains all. Now Hannom
realizes diat hell belon gs to this world^^ and asks a no table qu esd on :
If hell was buut by us, can it be b roken by us? (206)
The answer is:
The small crime can be broken by you but the big crime cannot be broken
even by Nim, and it wi decay for thousands and thousands of years. (206)
The big crimes that Kang Kam-ch'an enumerates are five, but he sends to hell
only the souls who committed the first unfaithfulness to their nadon, which is
exacdy the crime of not responding to the demands of the dme. Here hell
becomes an ethical space. The nature of this crime is clarified in great detaü bycomparison widi the rest of Dream Sky In fact, it covers most of die crimes that
man can commit in this world.' '^
Kang Kam-ch'an also emphasizes love; there are many kinds of love but the
love that he emphasizes is directed only toward die nadon. He takes love for a
woman as an example of the other kinds of love and says that the two cannot be
compadble at all (211). Eus concept of love includes the physical aspect and
ideology. Concerning this, Kang Kam-ch'an says:
Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time and two
thoughts cannot exist in the same mind at the same time. Please infer fromthis sentence. If a man has two loves in his whole Hfe, he can hardly achieve
. even one love; as an old book says that one must not have two integrities,which is a reproof to unfaithfulness (211).
The recognition that hell belongs to this world has long been expressed by Italian writers such
as Dante Calvino Pasolini and Primo Levi.
Interestingly, ti ie punishment in Dream Sky is based on tiie principle of contrapasso as in tiie
Comedy
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 18/31
328 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
What the physical aspect signifies here is that ideology must be sustained by
pracdce, which is comparable with the non-physical aspect in paradise. That is,whue the love in paradise is not physical, the love in the situadon which Hannom-
Sin Ch'ae-ho faces must be physical. Kang Kam-ch'an's moraUzing lecture (212)
concentrates in this way on the originality and uniqueness of patriodsm.
What is interesting in ream Skj in this respect is the recognidon of space; heü
and paradise exist in the same place and at the same dme.
If one thinks that the Country of Nim (paradise) is in the sky and heü is under
the earth, and thus the distance between them must be a thousand or ten
thousand tnües, this is merely so in human thought. The reaüty differs; the earth is
the same and the time is the same; likewise, if you bring it down it becomes thecountry of Nim and if you turn it upside it becomes heü; if you run verdcaüy you
can go to the country of Nim and if you run horizontaUy you can go to heü; if you
fly you wiü be in the coxintry of Nim and if you crawl you wül be in heü; if you
catch it you wiü be in the country of Nim and if you lose it you wül be in heü. In
au, the d istance between country of Nim and heü is merely this (213).
H an no m mo ves from heü to paradise in the same place. Just as in the Comedj
heü is under the earth and paradise is above it, but whue the two are distincdy
separated materiaüy and physicaüy in the Comedj in Dream Skj paradise can be
located in the very same place as heü, depending on Hannom's way of Uving.
Saying "M y bo dy was no t intrinsicaüy bou nd to heü, so there is nothin g to
unbind," Hannom shakes himself free, and thereupon without chain and jaü only
the body of Hannom rises aloft (212).
The idendty of unbounded-ness, the liquid and fiuid idendty of Hannom
makes the interleaving (existing in the same place) of heü and paradise possible,
which means that Hannom's subjecdve pracdce is what reaüzes the place of
paradise; heü and paradise co-exist flexibly. They exist as non-place-ness, and
change according to the ways of existence of the souls who cope with them or
reside there. The souls in paradise are historical figures who pursued the
subjecdve pracdce in diverse fields. Their work is to make brooms and sweep thesky because "today our sky is more dusty than our earth"(261), and the dust
continues to accumulate so that there is no more "blue sky" and instead "white
sky covers our h ead"(217). Han no m 's ques don on this is scrupulous and striking;
Is there even a misty sky? (217)
Although we cati hardly find the answer to this quesdon in the text, we can
reaüze that there is not always a blue sky; there may be a misty sky co vered with
dust. Although it may sound self-contçadictory, it exists in reaüty. Then we need
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 19/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dtezm Sky 3 9
to pay special attention to how that can be. If a sky is truly a sky, it is not because
it is so origkiaüy or unchangeably but because it becomes so due to the endeavorof the subject who makitains the sky as it is. Therefore the Nkn who is ki the sky
is described not so much as the absolute being who transcends man but as the
being who shares Hannom's tears; paradise and reaüt)' aügn with each other,
progress together, and influence each other.
It is not possible to know how many died badly under this misty sky; thus if
they repent of thek past errors in this world and sweep the dust out of the sky
altogether even from now on, it would not be difficult to maintain this sky, this
sun and this moon as they are (219).
The salvation of Choson is also the salvation of paradise and vice versa, whichis the pardcular and universal mission for au manldnd. This for Ski Ch'ae-ho is
linked to opening up the horizon of a nation beyond the modern nation-system
for which power and struggle function indispensably.
2.4. Power and Struggle
The writer sets the historical background of Dream Sky as so m e day in the year
4240 of the Tan'gun era (1907 A.D.) and the place as the city, countryside or
foreign countries; the time and space are ambiguous and even unimportant. This
indicates that the scenes of the novel are not confined to any particular time andspace; the writer seems to show that his story can be reaüzed not only in his time
but also any tkne in hum an histor}^.
In the introdu ctory pa rt of the text, the writer sits on the blossom w hich is as
large as a big room, laid on the kinumerable mues of branch of the huge Rose of
Sharon . (176) Suddenly the sky parts and re ddish rays stream out, and a
government official, who wears a hat of soft cloud and a Turumagi (a traditional
Korean man's outer coat) which is more red than those rays, appears and shouts
üke thunder:
For man there is only struggle. If one wins one Uves, if one is defeated onedies. This is the order set by the god (176).
This proclamation is placed at the begkining of Dream Sky so that the readers
can not but consider die mearüng of struggle. Th e struggle here encom passes
not only man but also au things; in other words, au things in the world exist in the
form of struggle (177). Th e struggle is the natu re of the univ erse (178) and it is
m an's respo nsibü ity to take part in tiie struggle (178). In reaüty, the gru esom e
struggle between the East and the West breaks out before Hannom's eyes; that is.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 20/31
330 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
Hannom is invited by the Rose of Sharon to become the observer.' ' ' ' At this sight
Hannom sheds tears (178), and faüs on his face and cannot stand up again (180).Then he experiences the metamorphosis of his own body after hearing fromgeneral Ülchimundök about the structure and meaning of earthly and spiritualworlds, their inter-relationship, and the historical impücation of the struggles hehas witnessed (181-183). ' '
Th e Rose of Sharon teaches the meaning of the struggle with her sweet
voice :
The struggle should take place between me and the other; if it is the
struggle between m e and me, it is suicide, not struggle (185).
What draws our attention here is the fact that the metamorphosis of Hannomleads the Rose of Sharon to suggest the meaning of struggle. His metamorphosisis linked to that of au things and nature, and appears as the figure of struggle.Although the metamorphosis takes place in his body, Hannom stands back in theposition of an observer. However, even in that position Hannom is unable tounderstand the meaning of struggle, and the Rose of Sharon comes to teach it .
Here the flower undoubtedly indicates the abstract reality of the Han (Korean)nation (tFíl^). It is abstract because it does not indicate the immediate realityrepresented by Paektu Mountain and Chosön, but reality as the historical potentialthat is connoted in the flower's statement:
The Rose of Sharon crosses Hwanghae and Parhae, covers the continent ofManchuria and passes through it so as to spread over UsùUi (-rE'Sl) (180).
Interest ingly Ha n (tb) may mean both Ha n { ) and oneness (—), and n om ( ^ ) means a real hum an existence and Sin Ch 'ae-ho himself Sin Ch'ae-hoidentifies himself with Korea and thinks that struggling for the independence of
Ko rea is his destiny and way of Hfe. Ultimately, H an no m means the K orea nnation as oneness and its reaüzation, and further Sin Ch'ae-ho's endeavor for it.The Han nation reproves and guides Hannom-the writer Sin Ch'ae-ho, andconversely Hannom-Sin Ch'ae-ho begins to reaüze fuüy his moral responsibility torespond to the demands of the time. The historical potential of the Han(Korean)
^ Here the East and the West directiy indicate Koguryö and Sui (PS) (182) and indirectiy indicateChosön and Japan or the W estern powers. This reminds us of Dante's pride in his own description of metamorphosis, which he considers
much better than that of Ovid. See nferno 25. 92-103. Sin Ch'ae-ho's description of themetamorphosis of Hannom (184—185) is verj' dynamic and vivid.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 21/31
Park: The Literary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 331
nad on is Unked to the emergence of Toryön ggun ( £ ^ 3 - ) a t the end of the text
(221). H ere To ryö ng gu n indicates directly the H wa ran g of ShUla yet itencompasses the whole history and spirit of the Han nadon, enlarging its originand scope by referring to such historical texts as Samguk sagi and Korjösa an dthereby connecting the historical facts—e.g., the Hwarang of SiUa and Buddhistarmy of Korea—^with each, oth er.
The general Ülchimundök plays the same role . Hannom meets Ülchimundök,who Uved about 2000 years ago. To Hannom, who hesitates over how to addresshim because of the distance in dme, Ülchimundök explains the historicalcondnuity of Korea ranging from Tan'gun to Koguryö and the historical idendty
of the H an nadon.^*^ In respo nse to his kindness H an no m makes a low bow in theKo gury ö way (181 -182), which shows the. unificadon of the two idendd es byverifying their common historical roots. Here Ülchimundök's definidon ofstruggle is notewo rthy in reladon to p ow er and salvadon:
Have you forgotten my saying that power is the ladder to paradise? Thereare very few people of Chosön who know its meaning. . . The termbenevolence makes us decline. Benevolence to our nadon may become thereason of prosperity yet benevolence to the enemy should become thereason of decline (187).
I t foUows that Ülchimundök, in response to Hannom's mendon of the History
of Korea by Chöng In-gi, argues that although the Han nadon was originaUy huge,it is now reduced to smaU dimensions because it has always been humane andindulgent, not disdnguishing the subject and the other (186). According toÜlch imu ndó k, if pow er is the ladder to paradise (187), we must pursu e thestruggle against an enemy country, not be indulgent towards it. It reminds us ofthe fund ame ntal historical view of Sin Ch 'ae-h o that history is the struggle of theI (*}) and no n- I (ü jof) as he clarifies in his bo ok Chosön saniosa ^
^ Virgü does the same thing to the pilgrim D ante.^ ^ What is history? History is the record of the psychological activities of the struggle between theI and the non-I in human society, which has enlarged and developed in time and space. . . what isthe I and what is the non-I? . . . the I is one who is in the subjective position and the rest is thenon -I. . . Therefore history is the record of struggle between the I and the non -I. Sin Ch'ae-ho .Chosön saniosa. In Series. Vol. 1. p. 33. This fundamental view of history was repeatedly submitted,along with the terms indigenous Cho sön, free people, popular econom y and popularculture, in Sin Ch'ae-ho's papers Chosön hyöngmyöng sönö n and Nanggaek ùi sinnyönmanp 'ü. According to Yi Do-Ye on, we can hardly find such an acute recognition of thecontemporary situation and the nature of empire in other papers of that time. (Vi Do-Y eon, 228—229).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 22/31
332 Ada Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
If one gains victory, one gets power which must be right; in other words, a
righteous struggle is required for righ teous pow er. '^ So struggle m eansestablishing a righteous reladonship. This is the indispensable process for
construcdng a human community and at the same tifne reconstructing a
misguided realit)^ Here it is important to note that the struggle must be pursued in
this world first and then condnued to that world, which leads us to consider the
con dnu ity and universaMt}' of the (re -)cons trucdon of comm tinity and conversely
the principle that righteousness should be sustained by power. After witnessing
the struggle in the country of Nim, Hannom gains such understanding:
All advocate apparendy: we are the sons of justice and thus the enemiescannot defeat us no matter how strong they are. However under force anykind of justice is useless; all dead are the army of Nim and all overthrownare the army of Nim. Great expanses are fuU of the corpses of justice butthe enemies' force never ceases (200).
This principle is a universal one which can be applied to both this world and
that world even in the country of N im . Ju sdc e is no t a clearly defined con cep t and
thus pracdce (struggle) is required to maintain jusdce; jusdce can be jusdce only
through struggle, which means that jusdce is always a process of pracdce. To
think of this process-like nature is to maintain jusdce.Here we need to scrutinize further the implicadons of the statement above
that the writer Sin Ch'ae-ho and the protagonist Hannom are united. The Rose of
Sharon asks Hannom to become conscious of the derhands of the time; Hannom
asks how to distingtiish his own idendty and the object of struggle:
What does the term I indicate? If I open my eyes widely, the universebecomes my body; and if I open my eyes, my right arm tells my left armthat my left arm is other.
The fiower gives this acute explanadon:
The scope of the I gets smaller and bigger according to the time: in the
time of the family system the family is the I, in the time of the nation
system, the nation is the I. If you precede the time your feet will be torn
38 T he Comedy tells that in Limbo there are many souls who w ere lazy in their com mitm ent to
struggle or duty in earthly life: for instan ce, Pont ius P ilatus, wh o avoide d jud ging Jes us, and
Lucifer, who rejected God's grace. They were faithful only to themselves, without pursuing the
struggle for justice. See Infemo Ca.nto 3. The metamorphosis of Hannom shows that just ice can bejustified only in and toward struggle.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 23/31
Park The Literary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dream Sky 333
and if you are behind the time your head wül be broken. So do you know
what kind of time today is? Greece loses its position as a strong nation dueto its narrow mind and India suffers the disaster of national ruin due to its
local mind (185-186).
Sin Ch'ae-ho's world view, in which the metamorphosing subject includes the
universe, could be understood as cosmopolitanism. But the meaning of
metamorphosis is neither complete nor sufficient in itself In order for the
metamorphosing subject to obtain self-sufficiency and perfecdon, it mus t be able
to pursue struggle within itself The metamorphosis consists of struggle. This is
th e way our world exists and operates. We do not know whether it is universal or
not; au that we can teü is that for the writer Sin Ch'ae-ho these were the demands
of the time, to which he had to respond as a pracdcal inteüectual.
2.5. Allegory
Allegory deserves to be highüghted as the Hterary technique for sustaining
concepts that are useful for understanding Dream Sky such as alteradon,
metamorphosis , power and struggle. Dream Sky is fiüed with the tradidonal t5^e of
aüegory whereby something is introduced merely as a signifier whose existence is
entirely depen den t on what is signified. Hannom, the bird and the flower in DreamSky do not exist in our reaüty but are merely signifiers which exist in order to
connote something. Through the signifier the reader can grasp the signified if he is
faithful to the writer's intendon, or can constitute it if he is faithful to the reader's
intendon. Those elements mendoned above in Dream Sky are meaningful only
insofar as they bear their own impücadons and connote something, regardless of
whether they exist or not in reaüty. Therefore, when readers interpret Dream Sky
as an aüegorical text, they should be able to grasp and consdtute new meanings,
which wül extend almost indefinitely according to the contexts in which the
readers are situated and the perspecdve from which they consider the writer and
read the text. The traversing of presence and absence is indeed the methodology
and definidon of aüegory.^^
Wha t is the signified that we have to grasp and consdtute in the aüegories that
Sin Ch'ae-ho created in Dream Sky? The concept of nadon wiü be a strong
candidate; what matters is that his aüegory starts from the problem of the nadon
^' In this sense I agree with Kim Chang-Hyun's explanation that the past research into fabularliterature has not sufficiently considered the historical consciousness and the aesthetic form in
Dream Sky and therefore the concept of allegory needs to be used for more profound research.(Kim Chang-Hyun, 365-366).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 24/31
334 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
(or nationaüsm), yet impües something beyond it. In fact his translation of the
Story of Three Heroes in uilding Italy was the result of his choice of póütical aüegoryto reaüze the national consciousness, and thereafter póütical aüegory became the
fundamental form of aüegory that he attempted (Hong , Kyu ng-Pyo, 289).
The most urgent uterary task in the time of Sin Ch'ae-ho was to estabüsh the
perfectiy new form and content through which the writer coiüd configure the
rapidly changing world situation. His approach was unique; its uniqueness derived
from his attempts to embrace and express very actively his duty as an inteüectual-
writer on the ideological and aesthetic bases of Korea, in terms of both form and
content. It is precisely in this respect that we need to pay special attention to the
aüegory. Probably Sin Ch'ae-ho had no chance of acquainting himself withaüegory, insofar as it has been a technique formed in the long history of Western
üterature. Nevertheless we can recognize that the abundant aüegories in Dream
Sky were used as a spontaneous and promising response to the demands of the
time. This becomes more plausible when we remember that in a uterary text
aüegory operates in response to the socio-historical contexts of the writer as weü
as the reader.
Allegory should be explored because it unks the problems of the here-and-
now to the universal. The aüegories that Sin Ch'ae-ho used were general and
traditional rather than particular and individual, so that readers are able to
understand the connotations in the text through them without difficulty. In this
respect Dream Sky can be considered a uterary achievement for communication
and consensus rather than for self-completion. Now the indivisible relationship
between aüegory and contextual interpretation needs to be emphasized; the
aüegorical text reaüzes its meanings in the process of being interpreted.
Sin Ch'ae-ho used aüegory to fulfiü his responsibiüty as an inteüectual to the
contemporary times and society. What we can find in the aüegorical
representation in Dream Sky can be summarized as a historical consciousness of
the people's struggle, which was to suggest his historical consciousness of the
confrontation between the I and the non-I as the strenuous efforts for nationalindependence. To repeat. Dream Sky describe s struggle by saying tha t th e struggle
should take place between me and the other. W hat m e means here, as Sin
Ch 'ae-h o's early article Th e Big I (tflû}) and the Smaü I (¿û l- ) declares, is die I
w ho n ever ever dies ; althoug h the sm aü I may die, the big I never dies. *
Th erefo re th e I that he intends to signify mus t be the Big I wh ich decreases an d
increases according to the time; in other words, in the age of the famuy system,
the famuy is the I, whue in the age of the nation system, the nation is the I. (185)
'«' Sin Ch'ae-ho. The Big I and the Small I. In Series. Vol. 2. pp. 81-83.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 25/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Drea m Sky 335
Indeed in Dream Sky the I does not appear as clearly as the non-I. The non-I
indicates the diverse characters in heü and the objects of struggle and unfaiüngvictory. However, it is ironic that in Dream Sky the I is not so much concretely
shown as represented by Hannom, who is characterized by sadness and tears. This
might be because the social system of the people, which should be meant by the I,
had not yet settled down properly, or because what is represented through the
existence of Hannom includes more complex aspects of that time such as
tradition, changing emotions, subjects who opposed radical social change, clear
inteüectual consciousne ss, and the peop le w ho were still ambiguous. In this
context we can understand that sweeping the sky connotes the fact that the
contamination of this world ranges over the sky, that the sky is no longer anisolated and pure place yet it is the place which must be purified by the being of
this world (Hannom-the I or the Smaü I), and that consequently there is the
oneness of this world and the sky (Hannom-the Big I)
Yi Do-Yeon holds that in Dream Sky the gap between fiction and reauty is so
narrow that it does not rely on rhetorical modification of the novel form but
shows direct contact with reality, and it may be the key for understanding Dream
Sky as a text sustained by an aüegorical structure (Yi, Do-Yeon). However the
narrowness of the gap between fiction and reauty does not necessarüy make
aüegor}' operate. As I mentioned above, the operation of aUegory depends on the
abüit}' to pursue context-bound interpretation; it does not rely on the fact that the
meaning of the text and its structure show familiarity with reauty; Dream Sky
involves the overcoming of reauty but this overcoming stems from the
transcendental nature immanent in it; namely phantasmagoria. In short it yields
possible worlds through repetitive overcomings.
3 . The Horizon of Marginal Alteration
David Damrosch holds that works of world üterature are best read with an
awareness of the work's original cultural context, but they typicaüy wear thiscontext rather Hghdy. When we read the Comedy as an Itaüan uterary work, we see
it naturaüy as a work related stricdy to the medieval poets, theologians and
poUtical thinkers who have not been known further afield. But Dante's poem
transforms itself whüe traversing borderünes. The Comedy is a com pletely different
work in foreign countries and even in Italy it was a very different work for ítalo
Calvino and Primo Levi in the twentieth century than it was for Boccaccio in the
fourteenth century. The Comedy ̂ effect has been always shaped by the readers'
' In this respect. Sin Ch 'ae-h o criticized the fact that the non -I is included in the I in his article Proclamation of Chosön Revolut ion . ( in Series. Vol. 2. pp. 38—40).
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 26/31
336 Acta Koreana Vol 15 No. 2 2012
strong sensibility to it as a poem which stemmed from a very different time and
space (Damrosch, 139-140). ^How many contexts are required to evaluate a text properly depends on the
text itself and the aims with which the text is read. Therefore we can say that the
universaUty of a text derives from its power to overcome any specific space-time,
which means that the text should be read differendy according to the different
space-times and at the same time maintain its consistency. This is what I have
described as alteradon. A high level of diverse alteradon, which requires the text
to sustain its consistency along with its altered features, guarantees its
universaUzabiUty. The original context of the omedj stUl remains in Dream Skj yet
more importandy the scope of alteradon in it was rather radical. The alteradonrarely occurs direcdy; alteradon needs cUstance, yet consistency tends to remove
cUstance. I find here the power of universaUty which is nothing other than the
power of embracing the presence and absence of distance. Damrosch states:
The texts themselves exist both together and alone: when we read Dante,we are aware that we are encountering a major work of world literature,one that draws on a wealth of previous writing and that casts its shadowahead onto much that will foUow it. Yet even as we register suchconnections, we are also immersed within Dante's singular world, an
imagined universe very unlike any envisioned by Virgu or by Saint Paul, andone that Muton, Gogol, and Walcott wül radically revise in turn for verydifferent purposes of their own (Damrosch, 298).
Da nte has his own pardcular world and aU the notes of the Comedj are the
supplements added to it. AU the notes have the same rights; they color Dante's
pardcular world only until it maintains itself T he omedj has been re-canonized by
a process of intermingUng the original and the alteradon. Dream Skj is one
instance of such processes; it tesdfies to the universaUty of the omedj and more
importandy becomes a new canonical work born in the cultural context ofmodern Korea, and further the Jens through which we can observe the ever
transforming geography of world Uterature.
We can never neglect both the original context of the omedj and the readers'
strong sensibUity to it. In the case of Dream Skj the former was to o weak whUe
the latter was too intense. What does this mean? Should we think that, just as
Dante's originaUty arose from demoUshing his own theological frame. Sin Ch'ae-
ho's radical alteradon inherited and operated Dante's originaUty as such? If we do.
« Damrosch refers to Dimock, Wai Chee. Literature for the Planet. PMJLA. 116.1. 2001. 17 3-188.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 27/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch ae-ho s Dteam Sky 337
Dream Sky may well have made the Comedy r icher rather than damaged it, and may
have go ne b eyon d it toward creating its own literary world based on the writer sknowledge and consciousness of both general human history and Korean history.
Therefore, we can conclude that, in evaluadng the aesthedc and ideological value
of Sin C h ae-h o s literature, it shotild be m uch m ore meaningful to consider
alteradon rather than recepdon, the subject of recepdon rather than the object of
recepdon. However, this does not mean that I value Dream Sky more strongly
than the Comedy or vice versa; rather this ardde aims to focus on their dialogical
partnership and therewith evaluate Dream Sky from a broader sense of ctiltural
exchange.
The consciousness of marginal alteradon helps us quesdon whether
universality can be maintained in die Others contexts and vice versa. To sum up,
the ultimate concern of what I have called marginal alteradon is to maintain both
universal and local contex ts; we nee d to try to maintain a consc iousne ss of the
Others contexts which enables us to have a more just vision. In the case that
concerns us, the original Dante, which consists in his own poedc form, characters
and eve nts , mo sdy disappeared in Dream Sky which means that it was received by
Sin C h ae-h o in the way that E ur op e received the Arabian Nights and the Epic of
Gilgamesh. Yet we need to pay more attendon to the fact diat Dream Sky has the
effect of recreating the original as well as that of losing it. We also need to return
to the original of the Comedy over and over again so as to compare the odginalaura and the reproduced plural auras. I expect this wül allow us to highlight the
literary values of the Comedy and Dream Sky in a more democradc way.
Submitted: 23 August, 2012
Sent for revision: 6 September, 2012
Accepted: 19 September, 2012
S A N G J I N P A R K ( s jpa rk(§buf s .ac .k r ) is a professor in the Department of Comparative
Literature atBusan University of Foreign Studies Korea.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 28/31
338 Acta Koreana Vol 15 , No. 2, 2012
R F R N S
Aüghieri, Dante. Divina commedia. a cura di Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio.
Firenze: Le M onnier. 1988.
Aüghieri , Dante. De vulgari eloquentia. Edited and translated by Steven Botterül.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1996.
Chai Jin- H ong (Ch'ae Chinhong ). Th e View of M ode rn Man in Sin Ch'ae-ho's
Novels. Han'guk ömunhak [Korea Language and Literature]. 55 (2005).
Cho Dong-Il (Cho Tongü). Han'guk munhak t ongsa [History of Korean Literature].
Seoul: Chisiksanöp sa. 1998. Vols 5.
Choi Won-Sik (Ch'oe Wönsik). Cheguk ihu üi Tongasia [East Asia After the Em pire].
Seoul: Changbi. 2009.
Dam rosch , David . What Is World Literature? Vimceton University Press. 2006.
Em , H enry Nadonaüsm , Post -Nadonaüsm, and Sin Ch 'ae-ho Ch 'aeho . Korea
Journal. Summer 1999a.
Em , H enry. Minjok as a M odern and De m ocradc Co nstruct: Sin Ch'aeho 's
Historiography. Colonial Modernity in Korea. Gi-W ook Sin C h'ae-ho and
Michael Robinson, eds. Cambridge(MA ): Harvard University Press. 1999b.
Euot, T. S. Dante (1921). New York: Haskeü House Pubüshers LTD. 1974.
Han Keum-Yun (Han Kùmyun) . Sin Ch'ae-ho sosöl üi michök t üksöng jön'gu [AStudy of the Aesthedc Aspects in Sin Ch'ae-ho's Novel]. Hjöndae sosöl jön'gu
(Korean Society for Modern Novel). 9 (1998).
Hong Kyung-Pyo (Hong Kyöngp'yo). Tanjai sosöl üi uüi [Aüegoq^ of the Novels
by Tanjae]. PaedalmaKBíi&ázknú Society). 21 (2003).
Hong Myung-Hee (Hong Myönghüi). Munhak sinmun [Literature New spaper].
March 1 1966
Jung Gin-Won (Chöng Chinwön). Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho üi kkumhanülpunsök [The.
Textual Analysis of Dream Skj by Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho]. Text önöhak.
(Korean Society of Textual Linguisdcs). 2005.Kim Byung-Min (Kim Pyöngmin) ed. Sin Ch'ae-ho Mu nhak jugo sönjip. Yönbyön
University Press. 1994.
Kim In-Hwan (Kim Inhwan). Sin Ch'ae-ho üi kündaesöng insik [Sin Ch'ae-ho's
Recognidon of Modernity]. Han'guk munhwa jön'gu (Korean Cultural Studies
As sociadon). 30 (1997).
Kim Sung-Kuk (Kim Söngguk). Kaehwagi mongyu sosöl jön'gu [A Study of Mongyu
Novel in the Enlightened Age]. MA Thesis, Keimyung University. 1984.
Kim Young-Min (Kim Yöngmin). Han'guk kündae sosölsa [History of Korean
M oder n No vel]. Seoul: Sol. 1997.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 29/31
Park: The Uterary Value of Sin Ch'ae-ho's Dxeam Sky 339
Min Chan (Min Ch'an). Tanjae sosöl üi kyöngno wa chönt'ong ü i chajang [The Channels
of Sin Ch'ae-ho's Novels and the Magnetic Field of Tradition]. Tanjae SinCh'ae-ho üi hyöndaefök chomyöng (Institute for Regional Cooperation. Daejeon
UniversitjO. 2003.
M ignolo, W alter D . Th e Many Faces of Cosm o-poüs : Border Thinkkig and
Critical Cosmopoütanism. Cosmopolitanism, eds. by Carol A. Breckenridge,
Sheldon Poüock, Homi Bhabha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty. Durham &
London: Duke University Press. 2002.
M oretd, Fran co. Conjectures on W orld Literature. in Debating World Üterature.(ed. by Christopher Prendergast). Lond on: Verso. 2004.
Orweü, George. Why I Write. L ondon: Penguin. 2004.
Park Jung-Sim (Pak Chöngsim). Han'guk kündae chisigin üi kündaesöng insik [The
Recognition of Modernity of the Modern Korean Inteüectuals]. Tongyang
ch'örhak (Korean Society of Eastern Phuosophy). 56 (2008).
Park No-Ja (Pak Noja). Kaehwagi üi kungmin damnon kwa ku sok üi taja tul [The
Discourse of Nation in the Flowering Time and the Others]. Kündaekyemonggi chisik kaenyöm üi suyong kwa küpyönyong [Reception and Alteration of
the Concept of Knowledge in the Period of Modern Enüghtenment]. Seoul:
Somyung. 2005a.
. Usüngyölp'ae üi sinhwa [The Myth of the Survival of the Fittest]. Seoul:
Han'györe. 2005b.Park Sangjin (Pak Sangjin). Han'guk kündae munhak üi Dante suyong yon'gu pThe
Aspects of Reception of Dante Aughieri in Modern Korean Literature].
Pig^o munhak (Korean Comparative Literature Association). 41 (2007).
. Dante üiyönok kwa kongdongch'e üi hyöngsik [Dante's Purgatory and the
Form of Community]. It'allia ömunhak (Kore an As sociation of Itaüan
Linguistics and Literature) 31 (2010).
-. Dante sin'gokyon'gu [Reading Dante's Divine Comedy: Universaüty of the
Classic and Sensibiüty of die Otiier]. Seoul: Acan et. 2011.
Ryu Yang-Sun (Ryu Yangsö n). Kaehwagi sosa munhakyön'gu [A Study of NarrativeLiterature in the Enlightened Age]. Hyöndae munhak yon'gu (Association of
M oder n Literature). 28 (1979).
Sin Ch'ae-ho, Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho chönjip [Series of Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-hó\. ed. by The
Club of Commemoration for Tanjae Sin Ch'ae-ho. Seoul: Hyöngsöl. 1995.
Vols. 2.
Sin, Gi-Wook and Michael Robinson ed. Colonial Modernity in Korea. Cambridge:
Harvard University Asia Center. 1999.
Sin Jae -H on g (Sin Chaehon g). Han'gük kündae sosölyön'gu [Study of Korean Mongyu
Novels]. Kemyung munhwasa. 1994.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 30/31
340 Acta Koreana Vol 15, No. 2, 2012
Weiss te in , U l r ich . Comp arative Literature and L iterary Theory: Survey and Introduction.
Indiana University Press. 1974.Yang Eon-Su k (Yang Önsök). Kkum hanul e nat'anan chakchung inmul punsök
[Analysis of the Characters in the Dream Sky\. Sae kugö kyoyuk (Associationfor New Ed ucation of National Language). 23 (1993).
Yi Chang-M in (Yi Ch'angm in). Kk um han ul üi kusöng kw a munch e [The Structureand Style of the Dream Sk^. Kugömunhak (Korean Association of KoreanLiterature). 36 (2002).
Y i D o - Y e o n (Y i T o y o n ) . Nangm anjök chöngsin üi hyönsilchök kujo [The Reaüs t ic
Structure of Romantic Spirit]. Minjok munhwa yön'gu. (Research Institute for
Korean Culture). 35 (2002).Yi Don g-Jae (Yi Tongjae). Sin Ch'ae-h o sosol üi munhakchök kyeboyön gu [A Studyof the Literary Genealogy of Sin Ch'ae-ho's Novels]. Hyondae munhak iron
yön'gu (Assoc ia t ion fo r Contemporary Literary Theory). 20 (2003) .
Yi Seon-Young (Yi Sönyöng). Minjok sagwan kwa minjok munhak [View ofNational History and National Literature]. Seg^e üimunhak (Minumsa).Winter (1976).
Yu Jong-K uk (Yu Chongguk). Mongjiu sosol yön'gu [Study of M ongyu. No vels]. Aseamunhwasa. 1987.
Yun Myung-Ku (Yun Myonggu). Kaehwagi sosol ü i ihae [Understanding the Novelsin the Enlightened Age]. Inha University Press. 1986.
8/12/2019 The Literary Value of Sin Ch'Ae-ho's Dream Sky: A Marginal Alteration of Dante's Comedy
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-literary-value-of-sin-chae-hos-dream-sky-a-marginal-alteration 31/31
Copyright of Acta Koreana is the property of Academia Koreana and its content may not be copied or emailed
to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However,
users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.