Korean Short Stories
Jang Seoknam Winter Pond 겨울 연못 Translated by An Seonjae
Information This work was previously published in New Writing from Korea . Please contact the LTI Korea Library. library@klti.or.kr
About Jang Seoknam In the epilogue included in his first collection Defecting to a Flock of Birds (Sae ddedeul egero ui mangmyeong), he confesses that he dreams daily of fusing together his life with music. Literature, he suggests, is merely a code, a sign that cannot be understood by a blind man; while music can be understood by everyone. This certainly is a surprising claim for a poet. But Jang says “poetry is a beautiful raft I must take to get to music, to dance, to the blaze.” Most poets emphasize the absolute, transcendent qualities of language, but he does not mystify poetry or its medium, language, rather seeing it as a medium to reach something else that is absolute. Thus the poet boldly announces, “I lay down my head where the door to language is shut.” Jabbing at Descartes’ famous maxim “I think, therefore I am,” he says, “I exist completely as a poet only where language is absent.” Jang’s belief that ‘dance’ and ‘music’ are free from ‘language’ and ‘morality’ stems from his own individual ideas about language. Constantly absorbing worldly ideas and moral standards, language is impure and polluted. Yet language can never be abandoned because it serves as the basis for human thought and expression. Though it is impure, the poet tries attaining to expressions of ideal worlds such as ‘dance’ and ‘music.’ This worldview of the poet makes his poetry “musical,” not in the sense of rhythms and tones, but in the sense of aspiring to achieve the purity of music. He plays the instrument of silence called the world with language, and makes all things dance. This is the ideal aesthetic world that the poet seeks to create. LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/327
1
Winter Pond I walk across a frozen pond. Here is where the water-lilies were. Under here was the black rock where the catfish would hide. Occasionally a cracking sound as if it is splitting as love grows deeper. All the irises are bent over. My shoulders, knees, feet, that all summer long I saw reflected, sitting on this rock, have frozen like the irises. They too show no sign of having watched the reflection of something before this. Although the fourteenth-day moon comes in its course, icily all remain silent. Suppose someone comes along, loud steps treading on the pond, and addresses me anxiously, saying: "This is where I used to be." "This is where that star used to come."
Copyright 2008 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
2