Im Hwa (1908-53?, Lim Hwa) was an influential poet and literary critic of proletarian literature in colonial Korea. He was active as the General Secretary of the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation (KAPF, Korean Artista Proleta Federacio) in colonia... Im Hwa (1908-53?, Lim Hwa) was an influential poet and literary critic of proletarian literature in colonial Korea. He was active as the General Secretary of the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation (KAPF, Korean Artista Proleta Federacio) in colonial Korea and produced numerous literary works spanning various genres. Im wrote many poems and s in relation to literary criticism, Korean literary history, and Korean film history. In this dissertation, I explore the representation of subjective in his writings, especially in relation to the political situation of ethnic Koreans in the Japanese empire. I explore the various transformations evident in his writings in his continued efforts to link his changing perspectives to the ongoing praxis of literary writing over a tumultuous lifetime. Chapter I examines Im Hwa’s writing surrounding the controversial debates on art popularization (yesul taejunghwa nonjaeng) in the late 1920s. These writings are examined in comparison to other similar contemporaneous controversies in USSR, Germany, China/Taiwan, and Japan. Kim Kijin proposed numerous specific prescriptions on mass culture for proletarian literary writings in this debate. However, Kim Tuyong and Im Hwa criticized Kim Kijin’s ideas for lacking sufficient political radicalism, and the controversy unraveled abruptly. There were similarities between these debates and the controversy between Kurahara Koreahito and Nakano Shigeharu in Japan. However, in contrast to the debates in Japan, the problem of reconstruction of the Communist Party of Korea (Chosŏn Kongsandang) within Korea had much more a direct impact on these debates. Another particularity of the controversy in colonial Korea is that it also substantially focused on Im Hwa’s narrative poem (‘tanpyŏn sŏsashi’) which was evaluated positively. Although there were some arguments for poetry writing in correspondent workers movements in Russia and Germany, nowhere was the focus turned to the particular works of an individual poet. Even though Nakano Shigeharu wrote many narrative poems as part of the debates within Japan, these poems were not the focus of the controversy itself. The centrality of Im’s poems in the Korean case can be seen as a distinguishing characteristic of the debates in Korea when compared to other similar controversies around the world. Chapter II explores Im Hwa’s narrative poem which was referenced in the controversy surrounding art popularization examined in Chapter I. Going beyond conventions, Im purposely avoided simple natural landscapes as the backdrop of his narrative poems. In them, he insistently emphasized the colonial aspects within the landscape. For example, along with the Hyonhaet’an strait dividing Korea and Japan, the crossroad at Chongno was an equally significant backdrop in Im’s works. He foregrounded this city junction where comrades met each other, encouraged each other, and shed their tears together. In this way, Im Hwa always emphasized the fields where revolutionary and colonial situations were foregrounded through the viewpoint of a young man, and uncovered and highlighted the locus of conflicts and contradictions. Chapter III deals with the content, purpose, dynamism, and motive of Im Hwa’s criticism on realist literature for Korean fiction in 1930’s. In his critical writing, he continuously emphasized fragmentation, conflict, integration, and aufheben. In his critical , ‘On the fiction of manners’ Set’ae sosŏl ron, 1938.4), Im refers to the tendency of the simultaneous emergence of contemporary fiction as a fiction of introspection and the fiction of manners. And he pointed out, the author of fiction could not integrate what to say and what to depict. This viewpoint has a homological relationship with Georg Lucács’s theory of totality of literary criticism. Lucács attempted to espouse the viewpoint of totality with which the proletariat and political vanguard could presumably reach a comprehensive view of social reality in order to resolve the antinomy within bourgeois culture. Im Hwa attempted to apply this viewpoint in his reading ofthe protagonist of the genre of conversion fiction (Chŏnhyang sosŏl). In his , ‘On protagonists of contemporary fictions’ (Hyŏndae sosŏl e juingong, 1939.9), Im pointed out that every protagonist did not have total characteristics, did not act, and became everyday people. At this point, it could be said that Im Hwa also aspired toward some sort of totality. Meanwhile, Im Hwa positively evaluated Yi Taejun’s short fiction ‘Farmers’ (Nonggun, 1939.7) on the grounds that Yi depicted the destiny of Korean farmers as martyred historical figures through the sentimental representations of epic poems set in the tremendous tragedy of reclamation in Manchuria. The background of this fiction is the Wangbaoshan incident of 1931 in Manchuria in which Korean farmers and Chinese farmers came into collision due to disputes over reclamation problems. At this point, Im Hwa’s criticism on realism internalized the logic of empire by ensuring ethnic subjectivity through the representation of the feelings of sadness and loss of the Korean people. Chapter IV explores the concept of ‘transplanted culture’ (Ishik munhwa ron) in Im Hwa’s , ‘The Method of Modern Literary History of Korea’ (Shin munhaksa e bangbŏp, 1940.1) which was published while he serialized his other long related to modern literary history of Korea (Kaesŏl shin munhaksa, 1939-41). Im Hwa argued in this that the modernity of Korean literature was built by importing (or transplanting) western modernity via Japan. After that, South Korean critics in the 1960s criticized this concept in terms of the existence of the autonomous modernity in Yŏngjŏng era of 19th century Korea. However, Im Hwa’s idea about ‘transplanted culture’ was a methodology and viewpoint with a broad-based spectrum found in his criticism related to Korean literary history. For example, this concept enabled Chinese language literature in Korean literary history to be incorporated into the general literary history of Korea. It could be said that this concept was based on Im’s unique perspectives about ethnicity and language. Chapter V examines issues in Im Hwa’s s related to the question of language. Im’s arguments about language were not only the premise about past historical writings about Korean literary history, but also relevant to his political project about the contemporary problem of imperial language policies in colonial Korea. Im Hwa referred to many arguments and policies about language and linguistics in contemporary USSR, and emphasized the various circumstances in which the Korean language had been catgorized as an ethnic language. At the same time, he linked the historical reinstatement of the Korean language from the modern period to the emergence of vernacularism in modern European literatures, and in turn explored specifically the content and the history of the broader sense of the Korean language as an ethnic language. Chapter VI explores principles on writing within Im Hwa’s arguments about Korean literary history itself. His , ‘Introduction to Korean modern literature’ (Kaesŏl shin munhaksa, 1939-41) was called the first historical writing of Korean modern literature. In this , he uniquely explored the subjectivity of Koreanness within Korean literature, and emphasized the tendency of anti-restoration and commoner class literature in the evaluation to Korean premodern literature from the viewpoint of historical dialectics. Moreover, Im showed how Korean ethnic literature was formed in the process of division, conflict, and aufheben, and assessed positively literary works published in the magazine, ‘White Tide’ (Baekjo), from which many writers and poets of proletarian literature later emerged. Through the works of this literary history writing, Im Hwa evaluated Korean traditional fixed verse (shijo, kasa), drama (changgok), and fiction (sosŏl) written in Korean language as classical works of Korean literary history. Im regarded dual language usage of both Chinese and Korean languages in medieval Korea as the contradiction between thesis and antithesis, and also regarded the rise of modern Korean literature as a form of synthesis. Chapter VII explores the colonial acceptance of Hippolyte Taine’s theory about literary history writing, and compared similar cases of Im Hwa in colonial Korea and Hwang Deshi in colonial Taiwan. Taine was a French thinker, and was deeply involved in research on English literary history. His concept, ‘milieu’ (circumstances) was an important key term he proposed in understanding English literature. Even though this concept was once overcome by reflective understanding of European literature in early 20th century, when critics of imperial Japan tried to write the history of Japanophone literature, and did not manage to recognize the existence of colonial native literature, this concept was called again to the academic sphere by colonial intellectuals such as Im Hwa and Hwang Deshi. It could be said that the concept, ‘milieu’ became the critical method again to criticize Japanese imperial literature in early 20th century East Asia. Chapter VIII examines Im Hwa’s related to contemporary Korean films. In his film criticism, he also emphasized the subjectivity of ethnic Koreans in filmmaking in Korean film history just as he assessed it in his realism criticism and his writing of Korean literary history. Im Hwa pointed out that the literary contents played the supporting role for film-making in Korean film history even though Korean capital could not support film-making properly at that time. However, when Im Hwa evaluated the film, ‘Miles Away from Happiness’ (Pokji manli, 1941), he showed ambiguity in his criticism just as when he positively assessed Yi Taejun’s short fiction ‘Farmers’ (Nonggun, 1939.7). The content of this film that some Korean young workers moved around Korea, Japan, and Manchuria, and collaborate with Chinese workers in Manchuria fully embodied some ideological ‘ideal’ of Imperial Japan and Manchukuo, that is, ‘five races harmony’ (gozoku kyōwa, ojok hyŏp’hwa). Im Hwa referred to the achievement of this film as a work of epic poem. He tried to emphasize that this film would have grasped the Korean diaspora just like epic poem. In late colonial period, Im Hwa tried to discover not one individual destiny but the destiny of one community or ethnic group in the life of Korean workers moving around Korea, Japan, and Manchuria. It seems ironic that he reached the end of his criticism by finding Koreanness as subjectivity. Im Hwa wrote many literary works and s including criticsm of proletarian poetry and proletarian realism, Korean literary history, and film criticism. He figured subjectivity in various ways within his works, and the style of comprehending subjectivity made up the transition. Basically, he regarded some situations as contradiction, and the history that progressed by resolving and ‘aufheben’ing the contradiction or contradictory relationship. At times, Im regarded such subjectivity as representing a revolutionary vanguard and, at other times, as a people who turned history on its head. However, when the image of subjectivity was submitted as the Korean people who embodied many internal contradictions, Im Hwa’s writing ironically appears to have internalized the logic of empire simultaneously.
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