ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study investigates Fyodor Dostoevsky’s influence and its creative transformations in Hwasando (lit. “Volcanic Island”), the multi-volume epic novel by the Zainichi Korean writer Kim Seok-bŏm. A rigorous literary interpretation of Hwasando can only be achieved through a concrete examination of its intertextual relationship with Dostoevsky’s major novels—The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, and Crime and Punishment. In Dostoevsky’s major novels, motifs and thematic concerns such as covert informing on comrades to the authorities and defection from revolutionary organizations, pistol suicide, critiques of revolutionary heroism and bravado, the complexity and doubleness of character psychology, as well as hatred and nihilism, stand out prominently. These elements are reorganized and creatively transformed in Kim Seok-bŏm’s Hwasando through his distinctive literary sensibility and the historical circumstances of the 1948 Jeju 4⋅3 Incident, taking shape as an original narrative configuration. Kim has repeatedly acknowledged in various records and literary conversations that Dostoevsky profoundly shaped both his life and his fiction. Dostoevsky is also invoked multiple times within Hwasando itself, underscoring the relevance of this inquiry. More fundamentally, Dostoevsky’s imprint can be traced in the novel’s governing motifs, narrative composition, and characterization. In particular, pistol suicide functions as a pivotal motif that generates thematic tension and narrative momentum in both Demons and Hwasando, while covert informing to the authorities and organizational defection significantly structure plot development and thematic articulation. Yet the aesthetic modalities through which these motifs are realized diverge, a divergence that becomes legible in relation to the conditions of historical violence and Kim’s narrative strategies. Moreover, the sustained critique of revolutionary adventurism, heroism, and doctrinal bravado—shared across Hwasando and Dostoevsky’s novels—offers a critical perspective that remains ethically and politically resonant today. Ultimately, this study argues that Hwasando possesses both literary universality within the framework of world literature and a distinctive depth of humanistic reflection. Comparative readings of shared thematic clusters—suicide, covert informing, revolution, defection, hatred, nihilism, and emotional doubleness—can deepen our understanding of human beings and society, thereby enriching humanistic understanding.

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