YOUR FACE IN MOONLIGHT
Yi Sang: Selected Works by Yi Sang, edited by Don Mee Choi; translated by Jack Jung, Don Mee Choi, Sawako Nakayasu and Joyelle McSweeney
Wave BooksSeptember 2020Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Yi Sang (1910–1937) was a poet, fiction writer, architect and painter during the Japanese occupation of Korea, and his modernist writing displays a wonderful disobedience towards authority, be it colonial or literary. In this sweeping collection of Yi Sang’s work, translated by Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi and Joyelle McSweeney, readers can not only enjoy an abundance of Yi Sang’s experimentation with form, but also learn about the context in which he wrote and his struggles with colonialism and Japanese ideology (he was imprisoned for thought crimes in Tokyo). His work has often been labelled as surrealist, Dadaist and avant-garde, but far from being “challenging” or enigmatic as that might suggest, its trauma, playfulness and defiance are extremely accessible, and a key reason why he is today considered a Korean national treasure. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Crow’s Eye View: Poem No. 1
13 children speed toward the way.
(For the road a blocked alley is appropriate.)
The 1st child says it is scary.
The 2nd child says it is scary.
The 3rd child says it is scary.
The 4th child says it is scary.
The 5th child says it is scary.
The 6th child says it is scary.
The 7th child says it is scary.
The 8th child says it is scary.
The 9th child says it is scary.
The 10th child says it is scary.
The 11th child says it is scary.
The 12th child says it is scary.
The 13th child says it is scary.
Among 13 children there are scary children and scared children and they are all they are. (It is better that there is no other excuse)
Of those it is fine to say that 1 child is scary.
Of those it is fine to say that 2 children are scary.
Of those it is fine to say that 2 children are scared.
Of those it is fine to say that 1 child is scared.
(For the road an opened one is appropriate.)
It does not matter if 13 children do not speed toward the way.
24 July 1934
Crow’s Eye View: Poem No. 11
The white porcelain cup looks very similar to my skull. When I hold the cup tightly, a strange arm suddenly sprouts from my arm like a tree, and the hand dangling on this new arm quickly picks up the porcelain cup and throws it down over my shoulder. But my arm is guarding the porcelain cup, which means that the shattered thing is in fact my skull. If my arm moves just as the tree arm slithers back into it, the white paper that was holding back the flood will be torn asunder. But my arm is still guarding the porcelain cup.
4 August 1934
* Words * For * White * Flower *
1
My face becomes a strip of skin before your face in moonlight
my words of praise for you are left unsaid but like a sigh they
tickle open a sliding paper door and creep into your hair smelling
like camellia fields and transplant seedlings of my sorrow
2
Wandering in a muddy field your high heels made holes
it rained and the holes filled with water and your lies and jokes
deepened my sorrow which I had prepared as a cup
of wine and a song for heaven which was ruined by your steps
3
When the moonlight sits on the straw mat on my back my blood
shaped like peppers trickles out from my shadow and my body’s water
startled by moonlight turns into dewdrops in my arteries my raggedy
heart swallows bricks and you peer into it and call it a fish bowl
September 1934 ◉
Suffering from tuberculosis for much of his life, Yi Sang recasts images of illness and pain as deeper anxieties about the human condition. Thrown in jail by Japan’s imperial police in 1936, Yi Sang’s condition became fatal, dying at the age of 26.