5.12.24. The importance of stories about history..

5.12.24. MeaningstoriesAbout history...

The Nobel Literary Prize was honored in 2024 Han Kang, South Korean author (born 1970). The laudation reads that it was for “an intense poetic prose with historical traumas in the background and showing the fragility of human life.”

Han Kang's work (in Korean it is always the first name) is known in Poland thanks to Justyna Najbar-Miller's translations. Her bookshelves are full of works. 1 of them (White elegia) in part was created in Warsaw in 2014 erstwhile the author as a literary resident lived in our capital. In 2019, it was possible to see an extraordinary performance directed by Marcin Wierzchowski based on her fresh at the Old Theatre in Krakow Here comes the boy.. This year, the theatre proposes to return to that show on 11 December and to “show a walk in its footsteps in various theatre spaces with elements of first set design”. She was besides Han Kang hosted by the Conrad Festival in 2021. On this occasion, Najbar-Miller recorded with her a conversation available at any time online about the authorial intentions and transformations of characters included in her tracks, specified as:

• • Vegetarian (Trans. Justyna Najbar-Miller together with Choi Jeong In, I polish editions Warsaw 2021, II edition 2024),
  • My woman's fruit (see: Masters of Tales. From Virginia Woolf to Agnieszka Szpiła in the election of Justyna Czechowska, trans. Justyna Najbar-Miller, Warsaw 2023, pp. 395-421),
  • Here comes the boy. (interview Justyna Najbar-Miller Warszawa 2020),
  • White elegia (Trans. Justyna Najbar-Miller I Wyd. Warszawa 2022, II Wyd. 2024).

On the basis of this discussion, if we effort to concreteise the passage of the Nobel Laudation quoted above, it would should be added that Han Kang presents in his works stories which show, among another things, the cultural peculiarity of Korea. W Vegetarian and The Fruits of My Woman The heroine's metamorphosis will thus be mostly a consequence of the cultural position of men and women, but it is besides due to a more general reflection on human nature and the concept of humanity. For a reason, women created in these texts strive to transform into plants or trees...

Basically, however, the background of subsequent Han Kang novels seems significant, that is, their rooting in Korean history. Here comes the boy. It concerns the Kwangju massacre (Gwangju), a city from which Han Kang is from. quite a few people died then. Even children were shot, infants were murdered. However, the actual number of victims is inactive hidden by the authorities. The author first heard about this massacre as a 9 - year - old girl. She didn't forget. In the cover sheet of her novel, we read:

After demonstrations condemning the coup of military bullets, a young boy, Tong-ho, is killed, even though he left with his hands up and gave himself up. His tragic communicative is the beginning of a communicative about the 10 victims of a bloody massacre in South Korean Kwangju in May 1980.
Among them are a friend of a teenager whose destiny was similar, editor of a publishing home fighting for the publication of a censored book telling about the spring slaughter of citizens, a young worker of a union factory, a grieving parent of Tong-ho and others who first survived riots and then torture and imprisonment only to conflict with deep trauma for the remainder of their lives.
Here comes the boy. asks simple questions about the nature of man, about good and evil, about dealing with utmost situations. Hang Kang avoids unambiguous assessments, but does not release perpetrators from responsibility, drawing out an image of historical events whose echo inactive resounds.

Tong-ho tells his communicative from the border of life. He speaks, however, like individual surviving about another surviving person. He uses the pronoun ‘you’ in his account. He and his communicative proceed due to specified a story...

A fresh song by Han Kang late appeared – I'm not saying goodbye. (wrote Justyna Najbar-Miller, Warsaw 2024). In this case, the background is the past of genocide on the island of Cheju from 1948 to 1949. 1 Korean literary critic presents this fresh as follows:

I'm not saying goodbye. describes the long and silent conflict of a female who, after the genocide has stopped, is desperately trying to find a associate of her family. Mutilated by force and persecuted by fear, the heroine does not give up. He can't decide to divided up. Her struggles will be presented through her daughter – with her lips and from her perspective, as well as by a author who listens to this moving story.

From this, at least 1 can see that the thought that fuels Han Kang's work is to create, among another things, specified stories that make us remember the tragic moments of history, making their heroes inactive alive. Ones that form both individual and collective memory. 1 that leads to reflection on the essence and limits of humanity at the same time. Title I'm not saying goodbye. is essential. Equally crucial is the conviction we find at the end of the communicative in this book: “I felt that I would no longer be amazed what people could do to another people” (I'm not saying..., p. 371). A conviction that sounds like it was taken. Medalions Nalkowska. It's always the same, you'd like to say in a comment...

We know about modern Korea, as it seems, not very much, and even little peculiarly thorough is this knowledge, although it may seem that Korea is presently on top. Roman Husarski in volume of reports Country of restless morning. Memory and Rebellion in South Korea (Black Publishing, Beef 2021) writes even in the introduction to his book:

South Korea is trendy. Today, everyone can separate between Korea and this “good”. K-pop is listened to all over Poland, South Korean series are viewed, and even Korean cuisine with its celebrated kimchi is increasingly appearing on Polish tables. The cosmetics from the island of Cheju are of large interest, and taekwondo inactive finds fresh adepts. South Korea is besides an attractive destination for vacation trips. Not exotic adequate to intimidate, but oriental adequate to leave emotions and memories for years. Popularity, however, does not mean that South Korea is known to us. It would seem that North Korea is the secret. Meanwhile, many South Korea descriptions frequently close in a akin number of stereotypes and simplifications. [...]
Joseon, the name of the Korean kingdom that existed between 1392 and 1897 is usually translated loosely as “The Land of the Pacific Morning”. The name comes from a Chinese traveler's account delighted with the place he visited in the 2nd century before our era. Who knows, possibly Korea was indeed an oasis of peace at the time? surely not in the 20th century (Country..., p. 7-8).

Not in the 21st century either. Especially if you weigh that at the time erstwhile these were formed Entries (3.12.2024), president of the Korean Republic announced the introduction of martial law in the country, accusing the opposition of sympathizing with North Korea and paralyzing the government's work. It was already cancelled by the parliamentary majority. The linguistic game Hussarski utilized in the title of his collection of reports thus clearly shows that the name Korea as the "Round of the Peace of the Morning" is simply a substance of distant and in addition to an unverifiable past. What's to say erstwhile it comes to North Korea? Kim Jong-Un, her current autocratic ruler, tightens, as you can hear, the ties with Russia, sending Korean soldiers there to fight Ukraine...

It is worth noting, therefore, that, according to experts in interstate politics, "no state division in modern past had any specified astonishing genesis as Korea's division, no was so detached from the reality of the country and its moods, no was so incomprehensible."

You can read about this in the introduction to the book Long way home. Memories from North Korean Hellwhich was created in cooperation Kim Yonga and Kim Suk-Young (from Urban Markiewicz, Warsaw 2012).

Kim Yonga is simply a North Korean fugitive who went to America. Kim Suk-Young is simply a South Korean female who came to America to study. This full communicative is absolutely amazing. Her hero was born and raised in North Korea. He came from a “unrighteous” family. His father, whose boy had not even met, was accused of spying on the United States and executed. Kim Yong was so burdened with hereditary guilt – this is how specified relations are seen in North Korea. The mother, trying to save the baby, gave it to the orphanage under a fresh name. Everything was going well and as an adult, Kim Yong held a crucial social position. At any point, however, his actual origin was discovered and landed in a camp that had never been released alive. The descriptions of the work he did there and the experience of hunger that prevailed there in the 1990s are unimaginable. He got away.

Other escapes from the “Korean Paradise”, he writes Barbara Demick in the book The planet has nothing to envy. The average destiny of North Korea (Black Publishing, Beef 2011). However, the communicative of Kim Yong's escape seems peculiarly spectacular and rather simply knocks off his feet, and the life he was moving from could besides be described in the context of the expression in Han Kang's book about what “people are capable of doing to another people”...

If, as usual, at the end of these Entries, address the issue of education, it is worth mentioning in Kim Yong's memoirs the chapter under the title Growing up. It shows, as in a planet that acts as an incarnate tale of Orwell and is isolated from any external influence, children have given up from their early years “the teaching of life in the service of the large Leader.” In another words, how unimaginable is the washing of human brains. It ceases to surprise the extraordinary attachment of politicians of all authorship to the thought that their origin is the management of school programs in detail...