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