불교·현대·문학이라는 사건의 충돌 - 만해는 왜 『님의 침묵 』을 썼는가? -

초록

The Collision of Buddhism, Modernity, and Literature as Events: Why Did Manhae Write The Silence of the Beloved? This paper reinterprets the process through which Buddhism, modernity, and literature collided and intersected, centering on the question of why Manhae ‘Han Yong-un’ had to write The ‘Silence of the Beloved’ (Nim-ui Chimmuk). Whereas previous studies have often understood ‘Han Yong-un’ through the three separate categories of Buddhist monk, poet, and independence activist, this paper argues that these three dimensions were not discrete activities but the result of a single historical trajectory in which Buddhist reform, the doctrine of mind-only, national independence, and the formation of modern Korean literature interacted with one another. The ‘Silence of the Beloved’ constitutes a literary-historical event in that it absorbed the achievements of early 1920s Korean poetry, Kim Eok’s translated poetic style, the reception of Tagore, and the second-person address characteristic of romantic poetry, while transforming these elements beyond mere formal influence into a discourse of Buddhist seeking and love. In particular, after the founding of ‘Yusim’ in 1918, Han’s participation in the March First Movement, his imprisonment, and the rapidly changing literary field after his release—marked by new sensibilities of love, freedom, and art—formed the decisive background through which “mind” (sim) came to be embodied as “the beloved” (nim). This paper also discusses how Han Yong-un’s Treatise on the Reformation of Korean Buddhism, situated amid the discursive power of social Darwinism and imperialist “survival of the fittest,” sought to respond to the violent order of modernity through Buddhist ideas of compassion, equality, and coexistence. By examining the urban cultural movement of modern Buddhism that developed around ‘Susong-dong’ and ‘Insa-dong’ after the lifting of the ban on monks and nuns entering the capital, the publication of Buddhist journals, and Buddhism’s contact with the New Literature movement, this paper does not reduce the emergence of The ‘Silence of the Beloved’ to individual genius or to a short period of composition. This paper further interprets the “silence” in The Silence of the Beloved not simply as absence or loss, but as a process through which Buddhist thought moves beyond the discriminating consciousness of the five aggregates—form, sensation, perception, volitional formation, and consciousness—and reaches the wisdom of non-discrimination. In poems such as “The Silence of the Beloved,” “Obedience,” and “I Do Not Know,” the “beloved” appears not only as an object of love but also as a projection of mind, a manifestation of truth, and a spiritual figure that dissolves the boundary between the self and all beings. Thus, although The Silence of the Beloved is written in the language of romantic love, at a deeper level it constitutes a poetic response that penetrates the sensibilities of modernity and the reality of colonial Korea through Buddhist paradox and the epistemology of practice. It may therefore be regarded as a crucial literary-historical turning point through which modern Korean poetry acquired its own form by way of Buddhist thought. In particular, given that the 1920s were an age of love and romance, The Silence of the Beloved represents an event in which the central affect of the time—romantic love—was sublimated into poetic language and art through Buddhist thought, marking a significant leap in literary history.

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