Kim Seung-hee
Kim Seung-hee nació en Gwangju, Corea del Sur el 1 de marzo de 1952. Se graduó de la escuela secundaria para mujeres Chonnam y se especializó en literatura inglesa, después obtuvo el doctorado en literatura coreana en la Universidad Sogang. En 1973 hizo su debut oficial en la literatura cuando el poema "El agua de la pintura" fue escogido para ser publicado en la recopilación anual de jóvenes escritores del periódico Kyunghyang Shinmun. Actualmente trabaja como profesora en la Universidad Sogang.
Obra
Las primeras obras de Kim Seung-hee están marcadas por una inclinación al formalismo, el arte por el arte y el uso de un lenguaje descarnado y feroz. Su obra posterior cambió hacia la exploración de la realidad cotidiana y a la formulación de preguntas sobre la existencia eterna en libertad.
Premios
Premio Sowol de poesía (1991)
Obras en coreano (lista parcial)
Poesía
Taeyang misa / La misa del sol (1979)
Oensoneul wihan hyeopjugok / Concierto para mano izquierda (1983)
Miwanseongeul wihan yeonga / Canción por lo inacabado (1983)
Dalgyal sogui saeng / La vida dentro del huevo (1989)
Eotteoke bakkeuro nagalkka / ¿Cómo puedo salir? (1991)
Bitjaru-reul Tago Dallineun Useum / La risa que vuela sobre un palo de escoba (2002)
Ensayos
Sipsaminui ahaega wiheomhao / Biografía crítica de Yi Sang (1982)
Samsipsamseui pangse / Pensamientos de los 33 años (1985)
Godogui garikineun sigyebaneul / El reloj que señala la soledad (1986).
Novelas
Santape-ro Ganeuen Saram / El que va a Santa Fe (1997)
Oenjjok Nalgae-ga Yakkan Mugeoun Sae / Un pájaro con el ala izquierda ligeramente pesada (1999)
Sun Mass
La oscuridad precede al sol,
El sol destruye a la oscuridad.
La realidad se opone al sueño
Y entonces, los sueños destruyen la realidad.
El águila toma el sol en su paseo.
Ahora, detrás de una pared de nubes
Me arriesgo
A soñar
Que las corpusculares ondas misteriosas del sol
Están uniendo mi vida con la suya
Para evitar que mi existencia se convierta en cenizas
Para evitar que se convierta en una máscara de hielo.
Me atrevo a imaginar:
Mi fuego girando como el sol en su eterna órbita.
Para siempre, eternamente.
Uniendo
Mi vida y esa enorme vida.
¿Qué rueda giratoria
En el vacío de qué niebla
Es nuestro hilo que comienza a destejerse?
[traductora Indira Díaz]
Kim Seung-hee (1952)
Born in Kwangju (South Cholla Province) in 1952, graduated from the English Language and Literature Department of Sogang University (Seoul) before going on to take her Master's and Doctoral degrees in Korean Language and Literature at the same university. She began her career as a poet in 1973 but in 1994 she was also recognized as a writer of fiction when she received the Spring Literary Award for Fiction from the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. She has published a number of volumes of poetry including Talgyal sok ŭi saeng (Life in the egg, 1989) and a volume of fiction Santa Fe ro kanŭn saram (People going to Santa Fe, 1997) as well as a book-length study of the work of Yi Sang in 1998.
The hardest battle in the world
When I wake up in the morning, the world is there.
When I wake up in the morning, the right world is there.
The right world is rightly there.
The rightful world is rightfully there.
Why is the rightful world there?
Why, every day, rightfully, there?
As if that is where it rightfully ought to be?
The rightful world is there so rightfully
that no one can unpeel its thick skin.
It exists there quite rightfully.
So who made the rightful world?
Someone rightful rightfully made the rightful world, surely?
Someone capable of making it rightfully,
someone still rightful after having made it.
Therefore, the rightful world is obviously right
and since rightfulness is obviously always right,
anyone trying to peel the rightful world
gets smacked away by the hand of the obvious.
The rightful hand is an invisible hand
but why is it so rightfully obvious?
In the rightful world, I alone am not rightful.
Always a stranger to the rightful world, I
cannot believe what the obvious world says.
Likewise the obvious world
certainly does not think much of me.
The rightful world is taming the obvious world
and the obvious world is taming our world.
Let's file suits against the rightful world!
Let's file suits against the obvious world!
Sand's occupation forces are drawing nearer day by day,
the rightful world our feet sink into all day long.
Hobbling painfully on, my fate obscure,
I have discovered that the hardest battle in the world
Is the battle with that.
Suppose I grabbed hold of the obvious and rightful
and gobbled them both up first?
Before the sands of the obvious harden into concrete,
before the prison of the rightful devours the world entirely.
Institutions
All day long one child colors pictures in a book:
Butterflies, flowers, clouds, streams.
The child is afraid the colors may go over the lines.
Who taught her that fear?
How did she learn
it's wrong to go over the lines?
Those butterflies, flowers, clouds, and streams
are all imprisoned inside lines.
Mummy, Mummy, the crayons mustn's go
outside the lines, must they?
Fear overflows from the child's gentle eyes.
All day long, docile and neat, my child is carefully
coloring inside the lines as the instructions say.
If I were not Mummy,
I would tell her: Go on, dear.
Sribble over the lines. Paint outside the lines.
Butterflies, streams, clouds, and flowers
are all things that explode.
They are all alive, dear.
Things that blossom, surging and scrambling over the lines
Things that trespass, that break the law, dear.
I used to hate every kind of institution
but being Mummy is an institution too.
I'll bind you with the ropes that once bound me!
I am that woman and the governor-general.
Kill Mummy, then, dear!
I'm laughing
My laughter was ancient, a very ancient
Laugh.
From the time there was chaos in the beginning
my laughter blended happily with the chaos.
It started when the universe divided with its first wound
I was pushed to the edge of the world
and hung dangling there,
a laugh that would overwhelm the abyss,
laughing in all the nights of the world, perhaps.
As long as the wind was blowing, my laugh
was the bitter resentment of shaking leaves
then at rising tide, it came slipping out,
the runaway laugh of all the world's ebbing tides, perhaps.
At New York's 7th Avenue subway station
as I was waiting for a train
the woman beside me began to laugh,
a hawking sound as if her throat was full of phlegm,
her laughter was like a fit of coughing.
It seemed a hopeless fugue of gloom
mingled with the ponderous predestination
filling the underground cavern's night
kneaded with sobs weary of life.
As her shoulders heaved, through the fingers covering her face
the passionate rapture of an evil spirit overflowed.
Then the train arrived, casting grim light.
She hurled herself down, fell,
she died laughing still on the subway tracks.
The weight of the train put an end to her life
all that was left was blood,
a packet of bones, a bleached scarf,
a little bloodstained hair tangled in the scarf.
She had laughed to the end, made the cavern ring
With her low damp laughter.
Out of the blue, I recalled mothers with bleached scarves
on the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,
May 1980 in Kwangju, nameless tombs and missing persons,
the countless mourners following
dead student Lee Han-yol's coffin,
a vast crowd that seemed to groan as if urging
those who still lived to follow behind!
Africa's black tears like diamonds sobbing,
mothers in Chechenia pleading: Don't shoot my son!
standing naked in front of the invaders's tanks
Chechenia's mothers.
Suddenly laughter came bursting out
unstoppable, making my lungs and ribs resound,
breathtaking laughter bursting out,
immobilizing arms, legs, shoulders and back.
Was the laugh that rang through New York's subway
my own dark answer, my tribute to humanity's night?
My laughter reaches far and wide
across a vast and ancient region.
When hope to breathe is scarce, when sad comedy
and preposterous tragedy are daily occurences,
I laugh on recalling what loss, deprivation, disappearance
are contained in every wave of the tide.
Passing ex-presidents's houses,
flitting past the National Assembly,
passing press magnates' offices,
I laugh.
I laugh.
Dark laughter, coughing a Grand Canal dark as crows wings,
a slurry of coal-black despair,
with our generation's lungs, full of miners's disease,
I laugh
beside old hero Yi Sun-shin's grubby statue
in the middle of Seoul.
To get out of the cavern
To get out of the cavern, I am looking for slippery words.
Apart from slippery words, is anything else slippery
prescribed or needed to get out of the cavern?
To get out of the cavern:
Mozart, airmail postcards, swings,
Falling into revolution
Well, then, so....
To get out of the cavern
power is needed, of course,
a love stronger than the cavern's power
a fascination stronger than the cavern's power.
The unknown, unknown, unknown
the unknown of that fascination like a woman's name
has to draw you more strongly than the cavern's power.
Your-eye-imprisoned-in-a-picture-tube-you-just-sit-there-watching-TV-
(Koreans-say-they-get-their-news-from-KBS-so-the-ABC-ad-saying-that-
most-Americans-get-their-news-from-ABC-is-obviously-copied-isn't?)-
locked-in-a-little-square-in-a-square-in-a-square-in-a-square-how-can-I-
rescue-you?
There-will-be-wall-paintings-painted-in-every-cavern-adults-wearing-doll's
-masks-watching-cartoons-the-mousse-clan-too-who-love-automobile-ad
-models-slim-as-the-little-mermaid-and-girls-who-love-Vicman-virtual-reality
-spraying-a-foam-of-happiness-making-me-thirstier-and-thirstier-as-I-go-on
-until-finally-I-crawl-towards-a-fridge-decorated-with-a-camel-and-collapse-
there-craving-craving-craving-and-craving-ohohohoh
To get out of the cavern, I laugh
laughter bright as white heroin
so-called ether laughter
borne on laughter excessively black
spreading ridiculously far
capable of defeating the laughter like white heroin
that defies the cavern's laughter
that defies oblivion's laughter to get out
Springing up
Struggling
Struggling
Struggling
Struggling
Struggling
Am I dead?
This time I? really dead
As I said that
I
Came
Springing
Up
Morning
Sun
Seen alone
At the earth's ultimate edge
S
I
L
E
N
T
L
Y
Like the white whale's solemn breath
Quietly raising a waterdrop fountain
As it raises its head
Above the surface
As if receiving a gift from the god of pain
Even deprived of the bliss of sinking
Oh, I'm alive again
Springing up
As if trying to say Whew ?
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