[KS] KSR 2008-03: _Three Generations_, by Yom Sang-seop ( Yôm Sang-sôp ), and _Trees on a Slope_, by Hwang Sun-wôn
Stephen Epstein
Stephen.Epstein at vuw.ac.nz
Tue Aug 26 22:21:34 EDT 2008
_Three Generations_, by Yom Sang-seop (Yôm Sang-sôp). Translated by
Yu Young-nan. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books. 2005. 476 pages. ISBN
0-9749680-0-5. US $30.
_Trees on a Slope_, by Hwang Sun-wôn. Translated by Bruce and Ju-chan
Fulton. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. 197 pages. ISBN
0-8248-2767-8 (hardcover), 0-8248-2887-9 (pbk).
Reviewed by Brother Anthony/An Sonjae
Sogang University
ansonjae at sogang.ac.kr
The two novels being reviewed here probably have little in common
beyond the fact that both are works of Korean literature, and both
translations were published in 2005. However, something might be
gained by viewing them together. The first, Three Generations, is a
work that was first published in 1931, being serialized from January
through September in the Chosôn Ilbo daily newspaper. The work, like
many other lengthy novels serialized during the Japanese period, was
not published in book form until after 1945. Three Generations was
finally published as a book in November 1948, and the Afterword notes
that the author "revised the second half of the book, making the
ending more optimistic" (474).
The novel tells the story of a few months in the life (and for the
grandfather that includes death) of three generations of the Jo
family, but focuses mainly on Deok-gi, the grandson. Deok-gi, a
member of a new, pragmatic generation holds a philosophy of life
vastly different from the pre-modern outlook of his grandfather, or
his father, Jo Sang-hun, who once aspired to become a modern
intellectual but lives now in utter dissipation. The underground
activities of the socialists Jang-hun and Byeong-hwa in external
society propel the narrative action forward, as well as the amorous
pursuits of the main characters.
The book's brief (4-page) Afterword by Kim Chie-sou situates the
novel in the literary and social context of its time: "In 1924, with
the formation of the Korean Artist Proletarian Federation (KAPF),
proletarian literature became the mainstay of Korean literature. Yom
challenged this faction. In a critical article entitled 'Refuting Bak
Yeong-hui's View in Discussing Newly Emerging Literature,' he
supported the national literature movement, with its basic thrust of
'digging out what is Korean,' which was in opposition to the
proletarian literary movement, whose focus was the liberation of the
oppressed. While his commitment to this liberation was unwavering,
Yom insisted that the quest for Korean-ness should come first" (475).
Prior to this, the commentator has stressed that the novel's central
figures are representatives of the "Jungin" class, to which the
author himself belonged, "which played a pioneering role in the
history of Korea's enlightenment (late 19th century)." What is most
obvious throughout the novel is that the three generations of men in
question enjoy almost unlimited access to inherited, accumulated
wealth and have as yet none of the worries of those obliged to scrape
a living as best they can.
The main thrust of the novel, then, is dominated by considerations of
class and social morality, indeed of ideology. There is always a
danger when fiction is asked to serve to illustrate social theory. In
the present case, the risk is clear that the symbolic, social value
attached to each of the main male characters is going to dictate
their reactions to situations, at the expense of more subtle,
individual psychology. In particular, the identification of the
author with the hesitations and scruples of Deok-gi, the most modern
and most anxious of the three, might be felt to push him to adopt
attitudes that are not clearly motivated at the psychological level.
Female characters appear on almost every page and they play a central
role at every moment of the story. As the story develops, it becomes
clear that in this society, despite the changes it is undergoing, the
women always pay the price for the men's feckless irresponsibility.
The novel's main sensibility (as opposed to its main ideological
thrust) is for the suffering and the strength of the women who are
obliged to find real solutions to the real problems that arise in
daily life, while the men remain helpless or indifferent. If anyone
has to read this work, it will be for its portrayals of resolute
women, not for its self-centered, dogmatic, and infuriating men.
Just thinking of the work involved in translating such a long work
(some 470 pages) leaves one with a headache, and full of admiration
for the way in which Yu Young-nan has managed to produce a text where
the reader never feels that the translator is not in perfect control
of the English style. One of the people providing quotations for the
back cover says that the book is "mellifluously translated" and that
seems an apt word. Other scholars have, I know, detected a few places
where the Korean is not "exactly" rendered, but mostly the cases they
quote show only a nit-picking determination to find fault at all
costs. This reviewer would say that the translator has been extremely
faithful to the original while striving to use English terms and
idioms that sound natural to a non-Korean reader. The smoothness of
the English does, certainly, suggest a very sensible preference for
readability over precise verbal correspondence.
The translator does not provide any glossary of unfamiliar cultural
terms or customs. She makes Yom's story available in English exactly
as it was published in Korean, without explanatory apparatus or
commentary. The work is offered, then, above all as a document from
the past, as an example of early Korean fiction. The Afterword tells
us "it was only in the 1960s, however, that critics began to consider
Three Generations a masterpiece of Korean fiction in the 20th
century.Their consensus is that through this work, Yom instills
pride into the generation of citizens who did not receive a Japanese
colonial education" (476). Now, that is a very strange reason for
calling a novel a "masterpiece," one having a lot to do with
nationalist, anti-Japanese ideology, perhaps, but meaning nothing to
non-Korean readers, for whom "masterpiece" implies high literary
quality: a really well-constructed, well-told, thought-provoking
novel.
For this reviewer, what is most striking about this work is the way
in which he found himself wanting to stop reading and shut the book
after only a few pages. In the end, total boredom won. I think I have
never tried to read so utterly tedious, uninteresting a work of
fiction. The "action" develops at a snail's pace. There is no
suspense and no refinement of psychological perception. The male
characters remain undeveloped, being mainly seen in stereotyped terms
of their social positions and options. There are no vivid
descriptions of places, the urban setting being assumed to be
familiar to readers. The problems facing Korea as it moved into the
modern era were certainly a source of intense conflicts, and those
conflicts are the material of the story told here. But they fail to
come alive in an interesting manner.
The essential difficulty is that Yom does not write narrative in such
a way as to carry a reader's interest. It is hard to explain the need
for so much of what is written, while dialogues, too, are mostly
desultory exchanges without any clear direction or conclusion. Surely
people did not talk to one another like this? The narrative employs
what can best be called a "flip-flop, zig-zag" manner of writing.
Each statement is qualified by at least one "but" or its equivalent.
The narratives are never simple when they can turn three times around
the bush before getting anywhere. The novel cannot, I think, be read
with aesthetic or literary pleasure, nor can it provoke admiration
for the quality of the fiction being written in Korea at that time.
It is striking that the Afterword says nothing about what works
served as models for Yom, or about the origins of the stylistic
features just mentioned. What was the influence of Japanese writing,
one wonders. There is mention of the Japanese novel The Makioka
Sisters by Tanizaki, but no developed exploration of the similarities.
Hwang Sun-wôn's Trees on a Slope is a very different work in terms of
length (190 pages) and readability. Published in 1960, it, too, is
constructed around a group of three men, the friends Hyôn-t'ae,
Yun-gu and Tong-ho. They are, of course, caught up in the processes
of Korean history and social evolution as those in Three Generations
were. The novel is divided into two parts of equal length. The first
part takes place during the later stages of the Korean War and during
the months following the armistice, the second part begins in 1957.
During the first part, the three are comrades in the same army unit
on the battlefront, then waiting to be discharged. Tong-ho kills
himself just before the first part ends, after shooting a prostitute
together with her client.
In the second part, the two survivors are back in civilian life, and
Yun-gu is building up a successful chicken farm, thanks to help from
Hyôn-t'ae, whose father is wealthy. Tong-ho has been replaced by
Sôk-ki, a former boxer who was obliged to stop boxing by an eye
injury. Like Hyôn-t'ae, Sôk-ki is a drunkard. A number of women come
into the story, including Sugi, Tong-ho's former girlfriend, and
Kye-hyang, an orphan bar-girl. Hyôn-t'ae is about to leave for
studies in the US when he casually gives Kye-hyang his knife and
allows her to kill herself when she tells him she wants to die. He is
imprisoned for having virtually caused her death. The story ends with
Yun-gu refusing to help Sugi, who is pregnant after being raped by
Hyôn-t'ae. Earlier in the second part of the story, Yun-gu's
girlfriend Mi-ran dies after an abortion he arranged for her.
>From time to time in both parts the main characters meet An and
>Sônu. An is a devout Christian, acting as "his brother's keeper" in
>an attempt to keep Sônu from destroying himself. An explains that
>Sônu, who once killed a man, is obsessed by guilt. In the first
>part, when both are soldiers, this leads to violent drinking and
>strange behavior. In the second part, when Hyôn-t'ae meets An by
>chance, he learns that Sônu had accepted An's help, started to go
>with him to church but then began to act strangely and had been
>hospitalized. He goes with An to the hospital where they find that
>Sônu, who seemed to be improving, has gone completely crazy.
>Hyôn-t'ae seems to be aware of a parallel between Sônu and himself,
>for near the start of the novel he killed a helpless woman, whom
>they found in an otherwise deserted village, in order to prevent her
>telling the enemy about their presence.
The novel, then, inevitably, is full of violence, whether that of the
war or that of brutalized postwar society, where Sôk-ki loses the use
of one hand after being beaten and stabbed by drunken gangsters. It
stresses the powerlessness of people to overcome the consequences of
this self-perpetuating, destructive violence. The Christian An might
be thought to represent the author, since Hwang was himself a
Christian. An is ultimately powerless, his faith and practice unable
to prevent Sônu from sliding into madness, where he takes himself for
a second Jeremiah, ranting in solitude. This book, too, has a short,
5-page Afterword in which the translators survey briefly the novel's
place in Hwang's work and try to identify its main themes. They
suggest that duality and ambivalence are the two words best suited to
characterize the way in which the novel approaches the harsh reality
it describes.
Since this review is already overdue, I cannot now take time to
compare the translation with the original, and see no need to do so.
As is usual with the translation work of the Fultons, readability is
clearly the overriding option. Korean literalists will undoubtedly be
troubled by the use of expressions such as "cut the crap", "shut the
fuck up," "that's a pretty far stretch," or "what if we call it
quits?" But if we are to translate the colloquial speech of Korean
soldiers, or ex-soldiers, how else is it to be done? While reading,
there is never a feeling of incongruity.
In their Afterword, the translators stress one interesting fact:
after the end of the war, Korean writers by and large did not take
the events of the war as a subject for fiction. Above all we do not,
they say, find accounts of outstanding heroism. Certainly, although
this novel includes scenes of battle, it too is mainly concerned with
other events and incidents. In particular, we need to remember that
Hwang did not see military action, he had no firsthand experience of
battle. His knowledge comes from what others told him. Could he have
written this book if he had been a soldier?
It might also be said that this novel has another, very different,
unifying theme, with the troubled sexual relationships of almost all
the men and women calling attention to the more troubled (and
troubling) regions of the human psyche. In the first part, Sugi is
only present as a secret memory for Tong-ho. The first evocation of
what she means to him comes when the other two go off to spend time
with prostitutes and we learn that Tong-ho never goes with them. He
recalls the last night before he left for the army, two years
previously, which they had spent together in a hotel by Haeundae
Beach-at Sugi's suggestion, it is stressed. His memory focuses on the
delicate fuzz he noticed on her face. Almost immediately after, on
another such occasion, he recalls that night in much greater detail,
making it very clear that they had held back from direct sexual
contact, with only very limited kissing and touching: "by controlling
his desire, he was able to preserve Sugi's dream" (35). In this much
longer evocation, it is plain that both are inclined to yield, but
"in the end, he thought only of how precious everything about Sugi
was, and that she would forever be his" (37) Another, contrary memory
strikes him at this point, of something Hyôn-t'ae said, "that you
could never make a woman yours till you had conquered her." His inner
response is: "But one thing you'll never know, my friend, is the
purity and the beauty of having the feel of Sugi on my lips, face,
and hands." Both he and Sugi seem to be radical Platonic idealists,
unwilling to come to terms with their physicality.
That moment of memory is interrupted by the first, lengthy encounter
with Sônu. An evening of drinking with bar girls that culminates with
"And then she took him" (60). His friends are jubilant, while he
cannot stop retching. "He told himself that part of his body was
soiled." The following day, "remorse gnawed at his heart" (61), but
he then tries to persuade himself that his love for Sugi is "as pure
as ever" (62). Returning to the bar a few days later, he demands to
meet the same girl, Ok-ju, and learns that she is with the local head
of the Youth Corps and he has to wait.
After this, his memories of Sugi become complex, he burns her
previous letters, refuses to read a newly arrived one. He starts to
ask Ok-ju personal questions, "I wanted to know a little more about
you" (71). The next time he visits her, he pays for a whole night and
tries to repeat the restricted lovemaking of his last night with
Sugi, with no great success. Ok-ju understands: "You're looking for
the one you love in me. Well, it's not going to work" (79). Then she
tells her secret, of having been married and pregnant, but the news
of her husband's death in action kills the baby and all she has is
the scar of the operation. All her memories have lost their power:
"There's nothing as heartless as the flesh. Sometime it scares me"
(81). And she draws him to her more gently than before. He finds a
"peaceful emptiness" in which he feels neither guilty nor apologetic
toward Sugi. Yet one month later, after hearing her come to sexual
climax with someone else, he kills her in a burst of rage, then kills
himself.
The novel is in fact constructed as a diptych, the second part
bringing Sugi into the action as, after several years of silence, she
tries to learn why Tong-ho killed himself. Neither of his friends
will tell her. She finally ends up, for no very clear reason, in a
hotel room outside of Inch'ôn with a drunken Hyôn-t'ae. He tells her:
"I see now he could never escape that worthless dreamworld of
yours-it stifled him till the end and now he's dead" (146). And he
rapes her. She meets him once more, and simply says: "The lot of
youTong-ho, yourself, you're beyond salvation" (164). The novel ends
with her leaving Yun-gu after he refuses to allow her to stay at his
farm until her child is born.
More than any other element, it is this complex story of paradise
lost that structures the novel. If the innocence of the night at
Haeundae figures the dream represented by prewar Korea in memory, the
rape in the hotel in Songdo (Inch'ôn) reveals present-day realities.
For Tong-ho, the failure to keep the impossible demand of sexual
purity represents a primal fall, where Ok-ju is a kind of Eve. The
descent into depravity, all values lost, that follows that fall he
blames on her, and at the same time he sees in her promiscuity a
reflection of his own betrayal of Sugi's idealistic trust. Yet it is
true that Sugi also bears responsibility for what happened; her
sentimental idealism placed a responsibility on Tong-ho that he
should not have been asked to shoulder.
So Hwang's novel provokes reflection in ways that Yom's fails to do,
touching as it does on archetypal themes of sin and fall, guilt and
damnation, body and soul. It offers little in the way of redemption,
unless it can be found in the rather uncertain resolution of Sugi to
bear the child. That seems at least closer to redemption than raising
chickens, which is the only goal Yun-gu has left to live for.
Is this a novel worth reading? Surely. Does it have limitations?
Certainly. Perhaps, in the end, the greatest limitation Hwang was
faced with was the insoluble problem facing a novelist's would-be
omniscient narrator who is obliged to give an account of people who
are profoundly unable to give a coherent account of themselves, who
do not know who they are, what they feel, or what they want. All of
the characters in the novel are, in the end, victims of their lack of
self-awareness. Not knowing what it is they desire, they cannot set
themselves any goal, make any clear choices. Their actions then
become incoherent, fragmented. In the war, one goal was clear:
survival. In peacetime, too, the end of the novel seems to say, that
emerges finally as the only goal, though it might mean a life spent
staring at the behinds of chickens, trying to determine their sex,
unwilling to hear the voice that says: "You're beyond salvation."
Citation:
Brother Anthony/An Sonjae, 2008
Review of _Three Generations_, by Yom Sang-seop (Yôm Sang-sôp), tr.
by Yu Young-nan, and _Trees on a Slope_, by Hwang Sun-wôn, tr. by
Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton
_Korean Studies Review_ 2008, no. 3
Electronic file: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr08-03.htm
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