소설 삽화의 얼굴과 정치적 상상력 - 『삼대』의 ‘피혁’의 모델로서 독립운동가 ‘안창호’의 가능성- = The Face in Novel Illustrations and Political Imagination : Pihyeok(피혁) in the Three Generations(『삼대』) and the image of Ahn Chang-ho(안창호)

국문 초록 (Abstract)

공성수, 2026, 소설 삽화의 얼굴과 정치적 상상력, 어문연구, 209 : 83~120 본고는 식민지 검열이라는 특수한 정치적 압력에 대한 1930~40년대 문학예술의 전략적 우회로서 소설 삽화의 역할에 주목한다. 검열이 일상화된 세계에서 소설만으로는 도저히 말할 수 없는 진실을 드러내기 위해, 소설과 삽화가 일종의 정치적 공모를 시도했을 가능성을 탐구하려는 것이다. 이러한 맥락에서 본고는, 『삼대』의 비밀스러운 인물 ‘피혁’의 삽화 속 얼굴 묘사가 당대 독립운동가들의 이미지를 참고했을 가능성에 대해 논하고자 한다. 소설에서 초점화된 인물이 당대 세계의 구조적 모순을 집약적으로 반영하는 사회적 전형이자, 작가의 관찰과 대중의 염원을 바탕으로 구성된 존재라고 할 때, 피혁이라는 인물의 실제 모델(들)을 확인함으로써 『삼대』의 정치적 상상력에 보다 가까이 접근할 수 있기 때문이다.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study focuses on the role ofnovel illustrationsas a form ofstrategic detouremployed by literary and artistic practices in the 1930s and 1940s under the specific political pressure of colonial censorship. In a world where censorship had become an everyday condition, novels alone were often unable to articulate certain political truths. This paper therefore explores the possibility that fiction and illustration engaged in a kind ofpolitical complicity, collaborating to disclose what could not be stated directly in words.
At the core of this argument lies the premise that therepresentational ambiguity of pictorial imagesenabled novel illustrations to exploit the gaps within the censorship regime. Unlike verbal description, visual representation makes it difficult to establish a clear equivalence between image and referent, thereby preventing the face depicted in an illustration from being conclusively identified as a specific individual. In other words, when a novel illustration presents a prohibited “face” in visual form, it creates room to evade the censor’s gaze. Rather than directly naming the subject in the text and inviting censorship, illustrations offer scattered visual clues that prompt readers to infer the identity of the figure for themselves.
From the reader’s perspective, this process is equally significant. Illustrations that resemble real-life models naturally evoke the memory of those figures, blurring the boundary between fictional narrative and historical reality and encouraging readers to continually refer beyond the text. In this sense, the illustrated face functions as a mediating site where fiction and reality intersect.
Based on these premises, this article examines the secretive character, ‘Pihyeok(피혁)’ in the Three Generations(삼대), proposing Ahn Chang-ho(안창호) as his possible real-life model. By analyzing iconographic similarities in the novel’s illustrations alongside narrative traces left within the text, this study seeks to substantiate that possibility. If we understand focalized characters in fiction as problematic figures who condense the structural contradictions of their historical moment—social types formed through the convergence of the author’s observation and the public’s collective aspirations—then reading Pihyeok through the lens of Ahn Chang-ho allows for a renewed interpretation of the political imagination embedded in the Three Generations.