오스트레일리아와 러시아를 통해서 본 J. M. 쿳시의 공간서사-『슬로우 맨』과 『페테르부르크의 대가』 를 중심으로

This paper is concerned with Coetzee's intention of experimenting with new subjects through the movement of his spatial background, centering on the novels The Master of Petersburg and Slow Man. These novels are based in Russia and Australia, in contrast to South Africa where Coetzee placed his past novels. The Master of Petersburg treats the subtle tension between a revolutionist devoting his attentions to history, and a writer criticizing “blind revolution”. Following this course, Coetzee raises the question whether Dostoyevsky's reproach of a revolutionist can be indeed justified in a complex way. Coetzee, that is, confuses the reader by not giving Dostoyevsky moral legitimacy. The Dostoyevsky Coetzee creates is obsessed with a desire for writing and eventually comes to betray everyone around him, including his dead son, using them as materials for his writing. But Coetzee does not blame Dostoyevsky, as most writers inevitably use people around them for inspiration. Slow Man characterizes the individual's self-conscious life, regardless of political or historical aspects, as in The Master of Petersburg. The main character, Paul Rayment, is an immigrant from France who has been disabled in a bicycle accident in his old age. This circumstance stresses his strangeness and Otherness as a “slow man”, the title of the novel. His situation of being disabled, however, incites him to come to accept the Other. Based on these novels’ characters, this present work analyses how the main subjects of these texts have changed as the backgrounds of these texts have shifted from South Africa to Russia and Australia. This is because it is important that the changes reflected on the new spaces have shown the author’s recreated view with his own immigration. In this context, this paper emphasizes that The Master of Petersburg and Slow Man are creative narratives which need to be extended to readings related to movement of background, to Russia and Australia, far from Coetzee’s homeland of South Africa.