created 2025-03-16, & modified, =this.modified
Why I’m reading
Continuing to read Bae Suah after Milena, Milena, Ecstatic by Bae Suah
A distant voice from an unknown location says:
Don’t go far away, even for just one day, because Because… a day is long, and I will wait for you.
Mightn’t it be a sound shadow, left behind after the performance. A sound shadow? Like an unknown voice.
Ayami’s height was on paper, nothing unusual, yet she appeared taller than she really was, as though she floated a few inches above the ground…
In life - there are - wounds that - like leprosy - slowly - eat away - at the soul - in solitude.
She and her German Translator are reading Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat.
“I don’t grip the spoon too hard, but … I find it difficult not to be able to read your lips”. “You mean you generally lip read first, before listening?” “Well there are times when I can read someone’s lips without actually being able to see them Though I can’t understand how it happens.
Earth Poured on a Coffin
“Kim Cheol-sseok.” That can’t have been his real name, can it? I asked that and he said it was a pen name, something he’d made up. Did he explain what it’s supposed to mean? Apparently it is the sound of earth being poured on a coffin.
He also said.. that he’d never once managed to convince another person of anything. Whenever he spoke to anyone, their response amounted to nothing more than the world tossing another shovelful of earth on his grave. Which meant that by this point in his life, he was buried deep, very deep…
“Perhaps the ability to convince others, or the lack of it isn’t as meaningful as language itself.. the difference between someone who receives love and acknowledgment from others and someone who doesn’t it might be important in the world of words and concepts, but is it really decisive for ourselves, for our egos? After all - Yes? After all, as you said we aren’t poets. Using language to convince is not our calling. If someone wants to pour earth over our faces, we can just avert our gaze and keep on as we were.
My whole life, I’ve only ever walked well-trodden paths. I’ve been afraid of being alone. Thinking about it now, it’s not clear whether it is loneliness or meaninglessness that I’ve truly feared.
As you wrote in your letter, in the end you will leave me, won’t you?
That was the secret of night and day existing simultaneously.
Buha wanted to be a poet. It had been his dream for several years when he was in his 20s. But he had never written a single poem. In fact, he’d hardly even read any. To him, poetry was filled not with language or letters or rhythm, but the image of a particular woman. A woman who really was a poet. And who was beautiful.
It is Kim Ayami who he follows, the poet.
He finds records in the municipal library that the poet died of suicide, and was found within the walls. But he doubts this. Another article, months later, tells of an exhibition of the poet and she appears physically transformed.
We seek three caves.
- the first cave is a private space that draws us in; because we ourselves once came out of it.
- the second cave is the cave of illusions and apparitions, it takes us to a very distant land.
- the third cave is the place of a cult. A dark place of severe secrecy. In the heart of the secret is the most private, frightening and forbidden place of all. Our sleep flows into this cave.
By now - you - will have become aware - that - the third - cave - corresponds to - the third hole - of flesh - and blood - body - that belongs - to me - but the cave - also belons - to you - what if there - was - no communication - no exchange - through - the body.
Motifs:
- shadows
- dead bodies between rooms
- dreams
- poetry
- blackout/electricity
- photographs
- blindness
- ghosts
- nail in the head
Someone has slipped an exhibition notice into a pocket, like a reverse pickpocket. The exhibition Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? is of photographs taken not from professional photographers, but poets. The exhibition is in the space of the old blind theater.
In the past people were vaguely fearful of photographs, believing the camera’s exact reproduction of their own image would steal their souls. Not only did these images survive for much longer than their subjects, they also endowed with an aura of magic that the subjects lacked. A superstition but one whose traces can still be felt today. People sense that the photograph captures an uncanny moment in the interstices of reality, enhancing reality’s eeriness, the root of the unknown, and fixing that moment in place like a death mask.
What is photographed is a ghost moment. Each object has parts of itself that are invisible. This territory, which neither the photographer not the subject can govern, constitutes a secret kept by the object. Try to imagine our house one day when we ourselves are no more. Somewhere in that house is the ghost of us, which will pass alone in front of a blind mirror, revealing our own blurred image.
Whatever the intention or aim of the photographer…every photograph is a unique proof of identity. Simply declaring that human beings are ghosts.
Ayami whispered into Wolfi’s ear. “Hold on to my arm. The city’s hidden name is ‘secret’. People lose one another before they know it. Everything disappears as quickly as it’s put up. The same is true of memories. It can happen that you take ten steps out of your door and then turn and look, and the house you just left isn’t there any more. And then you’ll never find it again. It can happen with people, too. This city’s hidden name is ‘secret’. So hold on to my arm.”
rel:Survey of Being Lost
”Take me to another world” ”You’re the one who said that it’s impossible to go to the Yalu”. Ayami didn’t respond. Instead her hand brushed the back of Wolfi’s, and her middle finger touched the inside of his wrist. A brief gentle pressure, as if taking his pulse. In that moment Wolfi was struck with the thought that Ayami was inviting him along, in her own particular way.
Like you wrote in the letter, the director said, “take me to another world.” Ayami cradled the director’s head, resting it quietly on her lap. Even when he had finished vomiting she gently stroked his bloodied crown, from where the nail’s thick head protruded. Ayami stroked him like that for a long time, as though the repetitive gesture might conjure a shamanic power - the only way of keeping together, in the same place and time, two human beings in the process of disintegrating.
Translator’s note (Deborah Smith)
NOTE
I noticed the motif’s and the translator speaks of them here. I’ve heard Glass talk about repeating motifs in this manner in Four American Composers.
This translator’s note is actually fantastic, and I’m so glad it is included here.
Themes, motifs and individual words recur across books, accruing different connotations as they appear in different contexts. This too describes translation, which repeats the book in another language. Repetition not without change, but as a refrain. It comes after, reiterates, but also modulates. For the resonance.
The semantic difference between Korean and English means that not every instance can be carried over (some would just be distractingly awkward, though some awkwardness is Bae’s style.) But I also want to hint at the spectrum of resonance, so while unknown is the trail we follow here, the same word recurs once as undisclosed and in the title itself as untold.
Day and night are simultaneous at the scale of the planet.
Translation is always happening, though we don’t always notice it.
When is one book written by more than one person? When are two books both the same and different? In translation a mind-bending paradox, a run of the mill banality, or a joke that misses the mark? Perhaps all three - simultaneously.