Korean Short Stories
SHIN YONG-MOK The Wind's Grave 바람의 무덤 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 SHIN YONG-MOK Shin was influenced by older-generation activist poets, so-called "poets of the masses" (minjung shiin), such as Kim Nam-ju and Shin Kyeong-nim, and genuinely anguished over the problem of the path literature should take in society and history. The quintessential "new poet", Shin's poems avoid overt ideology. Shin's clearly spells out messages of love for the community in soft, easy lyricism, and this is based in his own firm belief in the value of "co-existence with one's fellow man" over "self-happiness.". Even amid the wave of neoliberalism in which competition among writers is considered a necessary evil, Shin sees meaning in even the smallest of hopes, in order to protect the dignity and liberty of the human being. As in the lines "Every hour given me / I take my flashlight and go check the reins / to see if there is any damage" (selected passage from "Jeong of the Guard"), he places himself in the position of a "guard" responsible for "positivity". Shin's work argues that the value and importance of the spirit will never fade, even in the materialism of capitalist society.
LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/204
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The Wind's Grave Dried leaves and crumpled paper and torn envelopes all were running in one direction. Rain impaled them at an angle like the tip of a hunter's spear. The boy sold his eyes at a dike, exchanged them one by one for crimson cheeks! Every tumble was the depth of a precipice, swept away, no knowing where, darkness all around. The sound of trains adding to the dark disgorged by slanting lines of silver lightsuch rain falls in Paju. When the soft skin of a discarded face reddens like a faraway corner streetlamp, bodies aflame with intoxication all become lamps, advance to hurl bright hunger, like the tip of a spear that ends in the back of a runner. Because the clouds' direction is the steepest slope in the world, in the end we shall collapse toward the place we were gazing at. The dike scoops up the evening and pours it over the river, the sound of trains pierces the ear of each streak of rain. As dried leaves
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and crumpled paper and torn envelopes are swept away, we who are blind, all headed in that direction, leave the dike, impaled on the boy's back. Copyright 2009 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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