Come Down to the Lowest Place - Yi Cheong-jun

Come Down to the Lowest Place

Author

Yi Cheong-jun written by

Publisher

Munhakgwa Jiseongsa | Published 2013-09-09

Category

Fiction

Book description

Literature as a study of humanity dreaming of salvation in everyday life from the lowest place...

Author's rating

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Through the title Come Down to the Lowest Place, I felt nothing at all. I just picked up the book with the very 'postmodern' thought that this is merely one volume of Yi Cheong-jun's collected literary works. Before I could even think about and feel what meaning this title gives me, I had already opened the book, and at some point I passed the halfway mark and finished reading it in a little over a day. In the end the book concluded with content entirely different from what I'd first thought, but even so I didn't feel any regret at all. Rather, perhaps because I understood Yi Cheong-jun's distinctive fictional world, I want to say I tasted Korean literature for the first time in a while.

This book is a novel Yi Cheong-jun wrote with a strong 'religious' coloring. Centering on the protagonist 'Yohan' (John), it depicts the events unfolding around him while portraying well, mainly through individual psychological description, the process by which Yohan carries out the 'calling of God' that his father had thought about from the start. But what I paid the greatest attention to in this novel was, after all, the transformation of the individual. Namely, the transformation of an individual through 'religion.' As was the case in 'Your Heaven (Dangsindeurui Cheonguk),' which I read before, and in 'Snowy Road (Nungil)' too, Yi Cheong-jun was always an author who narrated the 'transformation' of a particular protagonist. If in Your Heaven it was Colonel Jo Baek-heon, and in Snowy Road it was the protagonist 'I,' then in this book it was, again, An Yohan ('I') who was at the center. Because Yi Cheong-jun was always an author who expresses what he wants to say through this method, it was, if anything, easy to immerse myself while reading.

From the fact that the father gave only 'Yohan' a baptismal name rather than a generational character (dollimja), I had somewhat anticipated that the character Yohan himself would become a protagonist different from others. Assuming children generally fall into two types, Yohan was the case of one who didn't listen well in childhood but came to listen well as he grew into an adult. In the early part of the novel, it shows by contrast a situation where Yohan is a troublemaker within the household (through the church) but is counted among the top students at school. The author indirectly shows that worldly success or growth is somewhat distant from religious reflection and inner introspection, and then, beginning with An Yohan's eyes hurting, starts to portray his 'turning to religion' and An Yohan as someone who knows how to give.

Due to an unexplained illness called uveitis, the protagonist gradually loses his eyesight, and even while losing it he wanted to cure his eyes as much as possible and even goes to work as a French teacher pretending his eyes don't hurt, but soon, as the sight in both eyes gives out, he visits an acupuncturist to find a way to cure his eyes. That acupuncturist, upon seeing Yohan, draws blood from here and there, but following his eyesight Yohan also loses hearing in one ear, experiencing a severance from the world, and at that moment he receives the calling of 'Joshua' and realizes that God has not yet abandoned him.

Meeting Jin-yong at Seoul Station and Bang-ul at Noryangjin, Yohan begins to gain small realizations in everyday life. In particular, what Yohan felt when he went to Jin-yong's house was as follows.

And yet until now I had been living without even knowing such a simple truth of human life. I had never once tried to carry my own burden. It was only natural that a person who has not properly carried his own burden would find it difficult to think of another's burden. I had never truly given thought even to my parents, my wife, or my children. The fact that I tried not to be a burden to those people was likewise because I, too, had no intention of carrying anyone else's burden in their stead. I had always lived only thinking of the burden of myself alone, meanly closing off my heart. When I saw that poor and unfortunate Jin-yong shouldering his own burden in silence without blaming it as heavy, and even then bestowing warmer love and kindness than anyone, and when I saw my own narrow-minded selfishness that was ashamed only of becoming a burden to him in return for that love and kindness, I truly could not help but feel ashamed.

The emotion Yohan felt going to Jin-yong's house was an emotion that ordinary people like me could feel too. Even I still live by the principle of not causing harm to others. In fact, that statement also means I don't want to be harmed by others either, and the question of whether I should apply this rule to my own family too is a very novel implication. It feels clear that one shouldn't apply it at least to family. How could I have lived so meanly, thinking only of 'my own life'? Even when another person is placed in a hard environment to live in all day long, why did I try not to overcome it together with them and tried to leave it as a life of my own alone? I had seen content that makes me reflect on myself.

This book oddly brought Your Heaven to mind. If Your Heaven depicted the process by which the world changes little by little through Jo Baek-heon's realization, then this book begins with An Yohan's realization. The difference is just that one realized almost at the very end, while in the other case the 'realization' was the very beginning.

Even though I bought five of Yi Cheong-jun's novels, I've only managed to read three so far, and it's a shame that Bihwa Milgyo (Esoteric Buddhism of Secret Tales) and Somun-ui Byeok (The Wall of Rumors) still remain set aside, abandoned mid-read. But just as when reading For Whom the Bell Tolls, it's a given that if you concentrate well from the start the pace picks up, yet strangely it's hard to do that these days. Should I say it feels like my concentration has dropped. No, maybe it's not just a feeling—maybe it's really true. As my professor said to read a lot of books, I should read more diverse books. In addition, let me choose one second foreign language to go along with English study and start quickly. There's still a long way to go.