Korean Short Stories
Kim Sin Yong A Slug 민달팽이 Translated by Jeong Eungwi
Information This work was previously published in New Writing from Korea . Please contact the LTI Korea Library. library@klti.or.kr
About Kim Sin Yong Kim’s poems record what life is like at the bottom of the social heap. But his poems contain nothing of the all- consuming rage at society or hostile enmity that one might expect from a poet with his background. Kim does not place blame for his life on capitalist society, its oppression of workers, or the contradictions in the social structure. His labor poetry does not possess an organizational or ideological character. Instead it casts a sympathetic gaze on the difficult lives of those who have been thrown to the lowest place in society, and embraces them warmly. These labor poems have little in common with antagonistic strikers on the picket line. Rather, they exist as small voices offering up consolation in whispered tones that reflect the experiences of the workers themselves. Even though his poetic subjects live in a world of poverty, neglect and lack of compassion, the poems hold out hope that love—in the truest sense of the word—can help these individuals form a community that belongs to them alone. As one critic summarized his work, he "continues to feel imaginary pains even after the disappearance of a painful life but endures them with aesthetic sorrow." LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/67
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A Slug A slug is crawling Over a streamside stone. With no house on its back wrapped in protective colors, without any shell, its whole body shielded in a slippery secretion like saliva, naked, it is idly crawling along. With its tender, soft skin open, defenseless - a little finger of sunlight would reduce it to powder the slug seems to be enjoying a stroll or perhaps it hopes to enjoy a nap on a streamside stone bed, crawling along at so idle a pace, it seems to be walking in its sleep. Just like Diogenes emerging from a wine barrel, following the movement of water and clouds like a wandering monk, abandoning to the world the house on its back, roaming in robes that it seems barely to wear, It goes walking slowly, so slowly, with footsteps following cosmic laws. Feeling sorry at the sight of it, my wife covers its naked body with a cabbage leaf she has just washed in the brook. But the slug, after wavering for a moment, soon emerges from beneath the leaf as if finding it bothersome. Clear off, shade! Copyright 2008 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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