Korean Short Stories
Kim Sa-in The Depth of a Landscape 풍경의 깊이 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 Kim Sa-in Kim debuted in the journal Poetry and Economics (Shi wa gyeongje) in 1982, during the period of the military government’s oppressive rule. He chose to respond to the pain of the period rather than ignore it, as he made clear in the preface to his first poetry collection: “fragments of an ungoverned rage and pain tear at the heart. But by what other method could I have afforded food in the 70s and 80s?” He therefore tries to foreground “the human” in his poetry. His poems adopt a disciplined form, but the subjects described in them are people from the general walk of life, often deficient in character or even stupid-sounding. The poet thus confesses, “I feel the warmth of humanity more in naivete and clumsiness, rather than in perfection and smoothness.”. Kim defines writing poetry as ‘questioning things tirelessly’. But he emphasizes that the poet not only asks questions: he must also be one who finds answers and actively puts them into practice. By the same token, reading poetry means to participate in the poem with one’s whole being, to become a part of the poem. Kim’s poetics involves engagement with the poem, both by the poet who writes and the reader who reads. Poetry without full participation has no meaning. LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/53
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The Depth of a Landscape In gusting wind short-stemmed plants shudder and tremble yet no one pays attention. Because of the solitary trembling of one moment in the life of those slender things, one evening of the universe finally fades into night. Between this side and the other side of that trembling, in the gap between the start and end of that moment, a stillness of infinitely ancient former times, or maybe an infant stillness destined to belong to a time that has not yet come, is shallowly buried, visible yet not visible, while within the spring sunlight of that listless stillness I wearily long to fall asleep for a century or two, or three months and ten days at least. Then beside my infinity, bearing the name of three months or ten days, butterflies or bees, insects with nothing much to brag of, may heedlessly go brushing past; at that, as if in a dream, I think I shall recognize a familiar smell borne on those tiny creatures' feelers or wings or infant legs as your gaze that grew so deep in some other lifetime.
Copyright 2008 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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