유만주(兪晩柱)의 마지막 일기와 이상적 공간의 기획

Yu Man-ju s Last Diary and Planning of an Ideal Space

18세기 후반 서울에 거주한 사대부 지식인 유만주(1755～1788)는 1775년 1월 1일부터 일기를 썼다. 12년간 정성스레 일기를 이어 오던 그는 1787년 5월 장남의 죽음에 충격을 받아 일기쓰기를 중단했다. 다만 죽은 아들의 애도 기간으로 규정된 7개월간 아들을 기억하기 위한 일기를 더 쓰고 완전히 그만두기로 스스로 약속했다. 그는 약속대로 1787년 12월 14일에 “달 그림(月畵)을 제어해 끊고 마음의 붉은 눈송이(丹雪: 연지분)가 그치도록”이라는 모호한 문장을 써 일기를 맺었다. 본고에서는 그가 절필을 앞둔 1787년 12월 1일에 작성한 ‘원서(園墅) 제편(題楄)’을 분석해 이 마지막 문장의 의미를 읽어내고자 했다. ‘원서 제편’은 ‘임화동천’(臨華洞天)이라는 공간을 구성하는 21가지 건축물과 조경시설, 자연환경의 범주와, 각각의 범주에 속한 개별 항목의 이름 213개로 구성된 목록이다. 유만주가 사랑하고 꿈꾼 풍경과 공간을 수렴한 이 목록은 1775년부터 그가 지속적으로 시도한 ‘임화동천’이라는 이상향의 기획을 계승하여 결산한 것이었으며, 심미적 몽상가이자 소설의 작가로 나아가던 유만주의 자아를 그려낸 마음 속 그림이자 일종의 자기서사다.

In the late 18th century, Seoul s intellectual Yu Man-ju(1755～1788) started writing his diary Heumyeong on January 1st, 1775. After keeping a diary for 12 years, he was shocked by the death of his eldest son in May 1787 and stopped writing the diary. He promised himself that he would write more diaries in memory of his son during the seven months defined as a period of mourning for his deceased son, after which he would quit completely. As promised, on December 14, 1787, he wrote the ambiguous sentence: Take control of the drawing of the moon and stop it, and let the red snowflakes of your heart cease , and thus ended the diary. In this paper, I tried to read the meaning of this last sentence by analyzing the Plaques of Garden written on December 1st, 1787, just before he quit his diary. Plaques of Garden is a list consisting of 21 categories of buildings, landscaping facilities and natural environments, and 213 names of individual items in each category. These names constitute a space called The Ideal Land of Imhwa . This list, which converges the landscapes and places that Yu Man-ju loved and dreamed of, succeeded and settled the utopia project called The Ideal Land of Imhwa , which he has continuously attempted since 1775. Also, this list is a mental picture and a kind of self-narrative depicting the self of Yu Man-ju, who was an aesthetic dreamer and on the way to becoming novelist. On the other hand, while writing a diary for his son s mourning, Yu Man-ju, who deviated from writing focused on his own aesthetic taste, felt deeply guilty and ashamed of himself. So, he wrote the last sentence with the intention that he would no longer indulge in dreams and beauty and write decorative articles. I think that the ‘moon drawing’ refers to the landscape drawn by his dream, and the ‘red snowflake of the heart’ refers to the act of adorning a beautiful imaginary world. In the end, the last sentence of Yu Man-ju s diary was a denial of his aesthetic taste and lifelong dream that he had kept until the end. This statement is problematic in that it implies serious self-denial. Through this last sentence, it can be seen that Yu Man-ju no longer allows himself to write and live. This coincides with the death of Yu Man-ju on January 29, 1788, less than a month after the diary ended.