“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Walter Pater is suggesting here that music is the only art form that is free from the dichotomy of form and content. In other words, music is pure art, free from the burden of representing or recreating the real world. The fact that the poet Hwang Tong-gyu originally wanted to be a composer is well known; and knowing about his interest in music might help us to better understand his poetic world. For poetry, unlike music, is a verbal art and cannot be free from the demands of representation or recreation, so naturally visual motifs or images provide the creative impetus for the majority of poets. In Hwang’s poetic world, however, there exist many examples of poems with aural motifs, images that are inspired by sound. Perhaps this unusual aspect of Hwang’s poetic world hints at his desire not only to be free from the prison house of language but also from the tyranny of eyes, and reach the state of music—in other words, pure sound. Neologisms such as hol-lo-um (whose meaning is roughly equivalent to “radiant solitude”) are an especially striking part of Hwang’s oeuvre, and their presence might also relate to this desire.

A poem from his recent collection that is especially notable when viewed in this context is “Wind Burial 27.” The speaker in the poem says that he’ll take everything with him when he leaves the world, but he’d “rather leave [his] ears.” What does this line mean? Although many interpretations are possible, it would suggest, among other things, that hearing will be the sole remaining pathway between the “I” of the present world and the “I” after death. If our souls are allowed consciousness and/ or unconsciousness after death, when perception of the present world becomes impossible, wouldn’t this dimension approximate that of music? Possibly it did for the survivor in Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw,” who lived his life in a state of unconsciousness, but nevertheless became lucid for the seconds when the chorus was singing. That is to say, perhaps Hwang has here stated his impression that the conscious and/or unconscious world after death corresponds to the dimension of music as pure art that transcends form, content, language, and reality. Also, the line, “When I leave this world... I’d rather leave my ears,” might indicate the following prolepsis: even if he loses the function in his sensory organs at the moment of death, he hopes that his hearing remains to form a bridge between “him” and the living world. Indeed, it would be impossible to find music as beautiful as “the sound of late night rain” that the poet might hear when he leaves this world. And, to rephrase a rhetorical question Hwang poses in another poem, how on earth can music exist in music only?

His original question was, “How on earth can literature exist in literature only?” In the poem “Canzone Napoletana,” it is music itself that leads Hwang to this awakening. “The Canzone Napoletana sung by the old Tenor Stefano” becomes the motif of poetic enlightenment. This song reminds the poet of “The azure-blue waves lapping against the Napoli seashore” thirty years ago. The memory of these waves, electrifies his body and “Slowly my eyes are closed and black-out.” In a state of such ecstasy, it is no wonder that he asks, “where am I?” The poet recognizes that he is somewhere other than the Neapolitan coast, and this leads him on to a great epiphany: “How can Napoli exist only in Napoli?” Just as the Neapolitan coast is everywhere, literature can be everywhere as well. Music allows the poet to overcome space and time, and it also leads him to a realization that transcends space and time: literature may exist anywhere, even outside of literature.

Music (or, in other words, sound) was Hwang’s creative motivation for writing “Listening to ‘A Survivor from Warsaw’ by Schoenberg,” a poem about Schoenberg’s afore-mentioned work, “A Survivor from Warsaw,” a musical piece that presents the hypothetical memories of a Jewish man who survived being confined in the Warsaw ghetto throughout World War II. In this piece, the man delivers a soliloquy followed by a male chorus as the orchestra plays in the background. Having lost even his ability to remember, the man lived in an unconscious state during the war, but there is one thing he recalls vividly—the moment the Jews sang the prayer Shema Yisroel as they were being driven to the gas chambers. The moment of memory highlighted by Schoenberg is auditory, and, just as the composer leads Hwang to an auditory response through music, Hwang in turn leads us through poetry to another kind of auditory response, one that is totally new to us: “Those not destroyed in the face of death are beautiful” “Almost collapsing, still flowing, it never overflows,/ This elaborate twelve-tone piece.” The ending of the poem, “We become bright lights,” is suggestive, awakening us to the transcendental world of light that cannot be represented or recreated, a world that exists beyond death—just as Schoenberg, through the Shema Yisroel, awakens us to the existence of “the one eternal God, who is invisible, who forbids imitation” (Letter to Kurt List, 1948).

“New York Diary 3” is also a poem in which an aural stimulus or memory provides creative inspiration. What does it mean that the sound of an unknown person sobbing comes unsolicited through the receiver to the poet, who is himself a stranger in New York City at the time? The last line of the poem reads, “It was a snow-thawing night/ after a long cold spell,” suggesting that the poet does not dismiss the call as simply a wrong number. Somehow it is possible that the frozen heart of the world bared itself for a moment, and a message came through to the poet.

And this isn’t all. Wherever you look, sounds are important motifs in Hwang’s unfolding poetic world. In “Winter, 5 Minutes Past Midnight,” there is the low but firm voice of the woman who says, “Now I’ll just up and die.” In “As If Walking Without Feet,” there are the shouts of “One dollar, one dollar!” from the man selling photo albums in Ephesus, who limps just perceptibly enough for bystanders to notice. And if soundless speech can be classified as sound, then there is the sign language of the young couple in the same poem. Even one of Hwang’s youthful works, “Song of Peace,” written in ironic tones and critical of the contemporary era, can be added to the list. An aural motif was important in stimulating its composition: the poem begins with the line “I’m told,” (mal deuleoboni, with the direct translation being “Now that I’ve heard”). Furthermore, a story Hwang heard about a friend of his friend in the years while he was a college student was the inspiration for “A Small Love Song,” so the creative stimulus for that work was aural as well.

Perhaps the poems “Blossoms” and “Taste of Life” will prove to be the exceptions in our discussion so far. But lines such as “I cannot think” and “then this morning suddenly,/ seeping into the inner chambers of my alveoli is the dazzling sign of spring” hint that Hwang’s motivation for writing poetry is not just limited to visual images in the way it is for other poets. Hwang’s poetic world seems to have some distinguishing characteristics: poetry is an art of representation or recreation, and yet, while visual elements can’t be eliminated from his poems, neither do they dominate.

Since poetry is a verbal art, language can’t be avoided, and yet Hwang Tong-gyu’s poems aren’t bound to language. Nevertheless, just as the white swan floats leisurely, gracefully on the water, its strenuous paddling invisible beneath the surface, the inner turmoil and mental exertion he may experience in his efforts to be free from the tyranny of eyes and the prison house of language are rarely visible. Just because they are invisible, however, it does not mean they do not exist. If we don’t see “the sound of late night rain,” it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and in the same way, if we don’t hear it, it doesn’t mean it’s not there, either.