I put dinner in the drawer - Han Kang's poetry collection

Description

Just by looking at the titles of the poems in the series “Sketch of the Evening,” “Songs Heard at Dawn,” “Blood-Flowing Eyes,” and “Winter on the Other Side of the Mirror,” the sentiment can be sufficiently sensed in “I Put the Evening in the Drawer,” which is full of voices that transparently confront existence and language that become clearer in darkness and silence. Here is a moment of joy and wonder as one embraces the fate of “cohabiting with words” and discovers “the awakened language-soul that sparkles in the gaze of pain and despair” (literary critic Jo Yeon-jeong).

All the vivid things I have
Things that will crumble

Crumbling tongue and lips,
Warm two fists

With two clear, crumbling eyes

One particularly large snowflake
I watch it sink into the black ice of the pool

Something
It sparkles
- Part of "Evening Sketch 4"

The irony that life is born from death, and light is born from darkness

The poet, who is mostly awake in the time between late afternoon and midnight (evening) and again in the time and space between midnight and dawn (dawn), says, “If permitted, I would like to talk about pain with my ‘broken lips//tongue in the dark’” (“Bleeding Eyes 3”).

Open this twilight evening
If you go behind the world
Everything
Turn your back

The backs of people quietly turning their backs
It's bearable for me
- Part "Bleeding Eyes 4"

Before specific and special misfortunes occur in human life, the poet wants to reveal the origin of pain and the identity of the truth in “a dot/where the heart does not beat yet/and does not know language/and does not know light/and does not know tears/in the crimson womb” and “between death and life,/the gaping chasm” (“Mark Rothko and I”). To this end, he does not hesitate to put his own bleeding body as collateral by “pulling his shoulders in/and folding his waist/and bending his knees and pulling his ankles together with all his might” (“The Thing Called the Heart”).

If someone had tapped me on the body, I would have been surprised.
If anyone had listened, they would have been surprised
Because the sound of black water would have been heard
Because the sound of deep water would have resonated
roundly
More rounded
Because the ripples would have spread
- "When tears come, my body becomes an empty jar"

Things that were clear and collected in the body
The days of drying out in the scorching sun are passing by
Sticky stuff
Even the sad things
A day that becomes light and dry together
- Part of "Anatomy Theater 2"

The body, which is drying up and becoming empty, is an inseparable comrade of the soul, so in the end the soul also breaks, and an irreversible sense of loss and cracks inevitably comes.

any
Late at night I
From rice in white air
I was watching the steam rise
That's when I realized
Something has gone forever
Now and forever
I'm passing by

I have to eat

I ate rice
-「One late evening I」

However, the poet is not overwhelmed by this sense of loss and sadness, but rather confronts the pain head-on. His voice, filled with hot passion as if he is reassuring himself, is more resolute than ever. I guess it is possible because he has gone through the days of intense breathing, hot blood, passionate love, and fresh youth, which can be seen in the poems in Part 5 of the poetry collection ('The House of Dark Light'), most of which were written in the poet's twenties.

Roll your feet while looking straight ahead

If your ankle is shaking or breaking,
The rhythm is scattered or broken

The face should face forward.
Both eyes will be glaring

Look straight at something you can't see
So the sun or death,
fear or sadness

If only I could beat it
Put air in your heart
to slip, to slant
-Excerpt from “Winter Beyond the Mirror 9 - Flamenco at the Tango Theater”

Everywhere the light falls
Pieces, pieces, trying to shine

Ah, the first dawn,
I washed it all night and it's frozen now
The sadness that is always there,
Dedicated to my sorrow
Vivid blood vessels, pulsating sound
- "First Dawn" section

The fiery pain that permeates life, the origin of the heartbreaking language of the Han River

Now, when “the quiet evening flows through the ice paper” (“Evening Sketch 3”), in the dream of crossing in the darkness, at noon on the other side of the mirror or at the dark midnight outside the mirror, using the tongue that “steps back in a circle” (“The Thing Called the Heart”), what the poet wants to reach are pure language, the essence of life, and scenes of urgency and recovery beyond pain and despair.

When you cry inside me
What should I do?
As if looking into the face of a crying child
Towards the salty, foamy tears
are you okay

Why is that, not
are you okay.
It's okay now.
-The "It's okay" part

now
What is the business of living?

When I lay down and asked
On the face
The sun came down

Until the light passes
I had my eyes closed
Still
-Full text of "Song of Recovery"

In the poetry collection, “I Put Dinner in the Drawer,” there are bleeding words that come close to the picture of silence. And there is a poet who gazes passionately into the heart of bleeding words and tries to confirm human beings as beings of the soul. He wants to reach the first language that brought up the shining truth from the world of silence and darkness. This poetry collection will serve as a cornerstone that will take us one step closer to a certain intimate origin-sanctuary beyond the strong images and sensuous sentences that have been mentioned first when discussing Han Kang’s literature.

■ Back cover text

Subway Line 4,
Between Seonbawi Station and Namtaeryeong Station
There are sections where the power supply is cut off.
I counted the numbers to tell time.
Twelve or thirteen seconds.
Meanwhile, the light on the ceiling of the guest room went out.
There are a few low-light lights here and there.
It turns out to be an emergency power.
It's too dark to continue reading the book.
I raise my head.
The faces of the people crouching across from me suddenly look pale.
A young man leaning against a door with a sign saying "Do Not Lean" looks precarious.
dark.
Were we always this dark?
If you listen closely to the rattling sound
The speed of the once fierce train is gradually decreasing.
It's just gliding along the rails with acceleration alone.
The moment I felt it had clearly slowed down,
The lights come on all at once, and there is a violent rattling again. Suddenly, no one is there.
It doesn't look like Paris.
what
Did I cross over?