폴 오스터의 『유리의 도시』에 나타난 언어 형이상학과 실존적 삶의 태도 연구

초록

This paper aims to analyze Paul Auster‘s City of Glass written in light of metaphysics of language and existential ethics. Though City of Glass has been acclaimed as a postmodern masterpiece, this paper first of all focuses on metaphysical aspects of the novel focusing on its staging characters’ debates on the origin and the fall of language and thing. As theoretical scaffolding, the paper utilizes Walter Benjamin’s metaphysics of language mainly. In the novel, the protagonist, Daniel Quinn who has immersed himself in the pit of melancholy after the death of his son and wife encounters various mirrored characters who also suffer from loss of their family members. The paper investigates meanings of Peter Stillman Sr.’s quest for restoration of broken things and languages comparing it to Walter Benjamin’s metaphysics of language. After confused over a conundrum of Humpty Dumpty which also represents the fall of humanity and broken language after the fall of Babel, Quinn goes through existential stages of ‘becomings’: becoming a flaneur, becoming a listener to poetic language, becoming a hunger artist, becoming desubjectified writer, and finally becoming ‘nothing.’ Quinn’s stages of becomings leave ‘writing’ and existential ethics behind, which also helps the readers think over the meaning of being and language.

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