Bits and pieces about Korean literature and translation philosophy.
Who points his finger at me, calling me stubborn
Just look at this rivalry of barons
Just look at this warI lapse into a deep sleep right in the middle of the heat of their conflict.
These boring days pass, and once I open my eyes
Even after the corpse disappears, I imagine the silent moonlight.Dear domesticated dogs of the pure and humble village, do not bark
My temperature is just about right
My hope is nice and sweet.
— Yi Sang, from “Empty Stomach”, translated by Grace Jung.
But again, it is not the lists or the numbers that matter per se; it is what they represent, and the questions they raise. Where are the women in translation? Why aren’t more women getting into print in English, particularly when one bears in mind that the proportions are reversed when the gender of the translator is in question? Two-thirds of the translators nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize along with their authors are women, shortlist and longlist alike. Why aren’t women translators promoting more women authors?
We continue our tenth anniversary celebration with writing from North Korea. In compiling our September 2003 issue, we discovered North Korean writers can publish only propaganda, and are restricted to official outlets. As this opaque nation…
Sky Nest is not a work in Korean, but it is very much a Korean work. Jongyoll Choi lived in the United States for fewer than two years and published just this slender volume of poetry in English. Choi has also published a Korean collection entitled A Bullfighter Leans on the Morning Sunshine, and has translated several Korean works into English. But Sky Nest is a landmark work. Interesting as verse it is also intriguing as an opportunity to see poetry that is only “partly translated” from Korean to English.
My diary is in two parts — resistance and obedience.
One is an open heart on top of my office desk
and the other is shoved inside a throat,
a cold sweat gathers inside.
— Yi Yon-ju, from “The Dictator”, translated by Don Mee Choi.
Georgia Scott, “The Place Where You Live”.
“Yi Yon-ju is not as widely known as Choe Sung-ja and Kim Hyesoon; however, her work has been critically acknowledged by scholars and poets, including the renowned feminist critic Kim Chong-nan. According to Kim, Yi’s poetry has a seminal place in the feminist poetry of the 1980s. Her poetry depicts women who live on the fringes of South Korean society, marginalized by the rapid industrialization of the 1970s and 80s, which, in part, was made possible by the exploitation of young women from poor rural areas.
Not much is known about Yi. According to her brother, Yi Yong-ju, the night Yi committed suicide she had asked him to reveal nothing about her life except for her date and place of birth. Yi was born in 1953, in Kunsan in the Northern Cholla province. She worked in Seoul and various parts of South Korea, including Uijongbu, a U.S. military camp town north of Seoul where women and children live trapped under devastating conditions of military prostitution, environmental pollution, and poverty. She also worked for three years in Saudi Arabia. Yi received an undergraduate degree in Korean literature. She excelled in various arts and was widely known outside of literary circles by painters, filmmakers, singers and dancers. Yi painted a great deal and was working on a collaborative video art project before she ended her life.”
— from Yi Yon-ju’s introduction, from Anxiety of Words, Don Mee Choi.
That’s your path not mine…… I am getting up from the chair…… I am skin you are heart a pocket that doesn’t want to hold anything, the heart that beats bam bam it boils up from inside the skin as well how do I get inside?…… That’s your path not mine…… I am getting up from the chair the two chairs under a window in a room with drawn blinds, all day long I take turns sitting in those chairs inside the room with drawn blinds all my blood-paths rush into it, but the heart is filled up with knotted paths that hold nothing
— Kim Hyesoon, from “A Room with Drawn Blinds”, translated by Don Mee Choi.
Did you see? My flat figure, hanging drapes of nameplates on an arrow?” “It’s funny.” “How do you intend to hang a nameplate onto a laugh?” “This is a pillow, this is darkness, this is Mother. Can’t sleep. By tomorrow names and such will vanish without a trace. We’re in trouble. Besides, names get swapped so easily.” “They say it’s insomnia.” “Insomnia? How could you pound a nail in and hang a nameplate on it?” “Can’t sleep.” “Can’t hang a nameplate on a nameplate.
— Kim Hyesoon, from “Categories of Insomnia”, translated by Don Mee Choi.
