[Cover Feature] Community of Memory scrap
by Jang Mi-do
Translated by Paige Aniyah Morris
March 7, 2023
Community of Disaster
The German philosopher Theodor Adorno said, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But isn’t a bad time for poetry1 exactly when poetry is needed most? The here and now, when literature’s existence as well as its role and possibilities are being called into question, needs literature more than any other era.
In recent years, Korea has had to contend with an unforgettable number of lost lives: 304 in the Sewol Ferry tragedy of 2014 and 158 in the Itaewon Halloween tragedy of 2022. All these deaths have become shared memories for the living. Memories of hearing false reports that all the passengers on the ferry had been rescued, memories of being unable to do anything but watch as people were dying, memories of feeling enraged and powerless in the face of the orders for passengers to remain still, and memories of feeling consumed by an untold, unbearable guilt have bonded us as a community. Both those who are gone and those who remain are the victims of these social disasters.
Speaking about sorrow is like endlessly performing a requiem for the dead. The dead have no words, and thus the burden of language falls to the living. Language fills the place of helpless silence and can also pierce through that quiet like a scream. When pondering over the sort of language needed to speak on behalf of those who cannot, the first language that comes to mind is silence. We wanted to write about our sorrow accurately but lost hope when we realized that it was impossible. Despite failure after failure, writers never stopped searching for that language. We wanted to speak, in a global language, to the pain and truths of those no longer in this world.
Following the Sewol ferry disaster, writers recreated the language of silence that had inevitably been lost, publishing literature of a testimonial nature and taking action through the 304 Recital. The 304 Recital is a reading series created by citizens and writers in memory of the 304 people who never returned from the Sewol ferry.2 The recital, which starts at 4:16 p.m. on the last Saturday of each month, was held in Gwanghwamun Square for the first time on September 20, 2014, and for the hundredth time on December 31, 2022. Much literature has been written commemorating that day, and the day itself has remained with us all this while. All those people gathered together went back in time to that day, to those earlier versions of themselves. Facing such large-scale loss, literature began to view these lost and missing subjects from a political and ethical perspective.
Mom, It’s Me, a collection of birthday poems written through the eyes and in the voices of Danwon High School students who perished in the Sewol ferry disaster, was published in 2015. Where the voices of the young victims and the poets coincide, the poets never stop trying to give testimony to their indescribable sorrow as witnesses and observers. Naming the victims, taking care to read aloud their names correctly, is a vow to face each of those particular, distinct names head on and to never forget them. A name is both a gift someone else has bestowed on us as well as the title of the history we write for ourselves. By calling their names, the living initiate a conversation with the dead.
Mom and Dad, thank you for loving me even more after that day
Mom and Dad, thank you for loving me as your own hearts ached
Mom and Dad, marching for me, starving for me, shouting and fighting for me
I am Ye-eun, the child of the two most earnest and honest parents in the world
I am Ye-eun, the child who will be loved by all forever, even after that day
Today is my birthday
— Jin Eun-young, “After That Day”
In “After That Day,” the poet Jin Eun-young becomes Ye-eun. Through the unusual form of a birthday poem, the poet speaks from inside the tragedy. The living carry on their backs the shame of having survived, and write while remembering and speaking of the dead. The living try to restore the morality of others. Only by taking up the voices of the deceased can the living become literary subjects. Because the only ones who can speak the truth are the dead. To willingly speak in the voice of someone now gone from this world—that is the start of mourning.
Community of Sorrow
With a kiss
We can be made human
Life, it seems,
Must be breathed into life.
We learn and so we do not know.
[· · ·]
We understand people through those means
Thus attaining life’s first shortcut.
— Kim Hyun, “Life Is”
In the above poem, the act of kissing is what makes us human. Lips are for breathing with the aim of sustaining life, for calling others by their names, and for making contact. Through that contact with the outside world, we can affirm a new hope. The poet Kim Hyun said, “While the language of literature is the last to be written, the people who create literature, the people who speak about these events, do so until the very end. They are the ones who never stop calling people’s names.”3 Believing that lies cannot prevail over the truth and that darkness cannot win out over light4, literature is endlessly calling out names, albeit rather slowly.
Opening one’s mouth to call someone by name not only creates an interpersonal relationship between the two—this act recognizes the named person as a social subject. The unique individual who bears that name can never be replaced by someone else. Naming our dead, verifying their faces, and drawing them into a shared memory. We call on the deceased when we are prepared to fully receive them. Saying their names aloud and reaffirming our own voices is a vow to never stop remembering them.
You ponder, What if from tomorrow the days without sunrise continue?
Then we’d be inside this black mirror twenty-four hours a day, and who’d dip a pen into the mirror-water to write about us?
Why is there is so much ink for writing?
[· · ·]
An emptiness walks into the mirror-water. She’s weeping, caressing, and calling your name.
[· · ·]
For the thousandth time you don’t reach the island.
You won’t be able to reach the island yet.
— Kim Hyesoon, “I Want to Go to the Island,” tr. Don Mee Choi
In Autobiography of Death, the poet Kim Hyesoon examines death’s social and ethical meanings. Using the Buddhist ritual of forty-nine days of mourning, the poet draws a connection between the dead and the living. While the forty-nine days of mourning are underway, the dead and the living bear a shared responsibility. You “get on the ferry, dragging along a small bag,” but cannot reach the island, and while the poem states the word “yet,” you may never be able to reach it. The “emptiness” approaching you where you wait inside the mirror, the one “calling your name” consoles those who have not been mourned. Writing as if calling out a name. Even if the person being called does not turn around, literature continues to call out to them. Literature exists in the places where we feel not sympathy or pity but shame.5
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor formerly imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp, is a kind of last will and testament for the author, written before he died by suspected suicide at his home in Turin. The book, a work of testimonial literature, is filled with the shame and despair—as well as the guilt—that comes from having survived. After Sewol, the shared sense of guilt among the survivors has been vividly felt. With this sentiment as a base, people formed a community of sorrow. Survivors took to the town squares to assert that such a disaster should never happen again. They thought of themselves as the saved, and even as they became more aware of their powerlessness, they managed to dredge up words from the pools of painful silence. Even if they were no longer near the site where disaster had struck, all of those who lived became survivors, the saved.
Survivors face an ethical dilemma as members of society. The same way that literature after Auschwitz is already being written about Auschwitz even as the place itself is not mentioned by name, these tragedies are already being written into Korean literature without the mention of any names at all. Not being able to write all the details is a way of remembering the pain of them. When the saved read literature that features the words ocean, boat, children, candles, and April, they immediately think of the Sewol ferry, the faces of the drowned rising to the surface. Literature ultimately starts a conversation via those who cannot speak. And because literature guarantees anonymity, even the voiceless can be themselves within it for a short while.
But then came October 29, 2022. Despite our earnest insistence that things had to be different than they had been prior to Sewol, another social disaster occurred. Cameras captured the unfiltered scenes in Itaewon. The sight of countless hands that could not be held, numerous shoes missing their owners, were imprinted on people’s minds as yet another instance of trauma. The scenes of the crowds swarming and surging, people trapped and unable to escape from the crowded alleyway, were shown on TV. We could not help but to think back to 2014, when that capsizing boat had been broadcast live. Thinking about what was happening in actual reality that went far beyond any shockingly horrific film scene was a process of thinking about others—of pulling up the truth that had been submerged, coming face to face with other people, and affirming their names. Mourning is both personal and shared work. For incidents that leave us with collective trauma, collective mourning is a necessity.
Community of Mourning
They say the living always gather around the dead
We are gathered without so much as sorrow
True mourning cannot begin without a body
All secrets are submerged below water
Undead hands rise up from the sea
We must grab hold of them and pull them out
— Lee Young ju, “We Cannot Start Our Sorrow”
Hannah Arendt, citing Isak Dinesen, wrote, “All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story.”6 Literature actively restores a space for mourning so that our personal sorrow is not cast aside as merely personal. As in the title of Lee Young ju’s poem, dredging up the drowned, calling their names, and studying their faces is the process of carrying out an impossible mourning. After a social disaster, literature moves forward, continuing to hold and share our sorrows.
We still cannot view the Sewol ferry disaster, and now the Itaewon disaster, as events of the past. At the same time, we can never return to a time before them. We are still in Gwangju in May, in a burning building in Yongsan, on the Sewol ferry, in Itaewon, and in countless other places. We cannot stop the vortex of sadness that starts up inside of us at the mere mention of these places. Our mourning has no end.
Literature is an extremely human endeavor. Peering into the human heart and attempting to approach it is a long struggle. When we recover the heart using language, we can see the shape of our sadness from the outside. Language cannot liberate us from pain. When faced with the horrible sights that we cannot bear to reimagine, the process of creating distance from the topics expressed through the medium of language forms something of a safe zone. Literature becomes a space where it is acceptable to mourn fully and freely. In this way, literature itself is the space where we can be together with those who are no longer in this world.
In the face of social disasters, literature can continue to create stories and continue to not forget. In these stories we have created, in this space called literature, we gladly work together. Literature will always be with us. Through stories, we can endure. So long as we believe in the power of community, we will not forget. We will remember always.
Translated by Paige Aniyah Morris
Jang Mi-do began her career as a poet by winning the New Writer’s Award from Literature and Society in 2020. In 2022, her first book was awarded a publication grant from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.
Korean Works Mentioned:
• “After That Day” I Love You Like an Old Road (Moonji, 2022)
「그날 이후」, 『나는 오래된 거리처럼 너를 사랑하고』 (문학과지성사, 2022)
• “Life Is,” When Lips Are Open (Changbi, 2018)
「생명은」, 『입술을 열면』 (창비, 2018)
• “I Want to Go to the Island,” Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018)
「그 섬에 가고 싶다」, 『죽음의 자서전』 (문학실험실, 2016)
• “We Cannot Start Our Sorrow” Let Us Leave No Record of Love (Moonji, 2019)
「슬픔을 시작할 수가 없다」, 『어떤 사랑도 기록하지 말기를』 (문학과지성사, 2019)
[1] Bertolt Brecht, “Bad Time for Poetry” (1938)
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