The Art of the Late Yi Sang, Choi Jae-seo, <Literature and Intellect>, 'Inmunsa,' 1938

I greatly love Yi Sang's fiction. Therefore, talking with friends or writing about his fiction is also a joyful thing for me. But that I have come to speak about it here at this memorial gathering is at once utterly unexpected and a very awkward and sad thing.

With a few clumsy words I wish to express my respect and affection for, and my remembrance of, the deceased.

I read his fiction before I knew Yi Sang. And I thought it was a kind of experimental fiction. Astonished as I was by this fiction so very far removed from the conventional wisdom of the literary world, I harbored some doubt as to how far I should trust its artistic experiment. That is — did this writer have some pressing inevitability such that he could not express his inner life without using such bizarre techniques, or was it merely a simple bit of hand-play to draw the reader's curiosity? — I was not without some doubt on these points.

Then, on the day of the publication celebration for Mr. Kim Ki-rim's , after the gathering ended, I had my first chance to meet this writer. I believe that the pleasant memory of sharing beer at the Yeongbo Grill that day still lives in the hearts of Yi Heon-gu, Jeong Ji-yong, Kim Ki-rim, Kim Gwang-seop, Chi Jeong-hui, and Oh Hui-byeong.

At the bohemian-type appearance of Yi Sang, whom I was seeing for the first time, his cynical laughter, and his witty, lively speech, I could not help but be astonished once more. I could tell that none of this was an artificial pose. I could not enter any further into that man's past and present inner life, but at any rate, while talking with him, I was able to discern such things as: that he had long since graduated from our mild and gentle (溫良) way of life, that he was consequently weary of common sense, and that even amid a life that by no means looked smooth, he had not lost his literary esprit. The mere fact of his experiences across the Jongno area after two in the morning was astonishing to me, and on top of that, his cynical laughter was something to make one's eyes go round.

In the end I was able to conclude, with peace of mind, that Yi Sang's depicting of bizarre characters through experimental technique was not a simple intellectual game or an impure bid for popularity, but rather an inevitable (必至) product welling up from his highly developed intellectual life — and that, accordingly, his artistic experiment was the result of an effort to explore the form of expression that his extraordinary life would equip itself with and step forth in. So in what respects is Yi Sang's fiction experimental? Let me briefly state my impressions. First, (1) his fiction does not possess the traditional elements of fiction. His fiction utterly lacks such things as the characterization or plot we customarily demand of fiction. If the protagonist of has any distinctive trait, it would be characterlessness, and the fiction has no story material to carry the reader's interest along. What he tried to write in , in , or in was not external action and life, but the dynamics of an individual's psychology. Extraordinary objects and events do appear in his fiction, but they amount to no more than ciphers or incantations to indicate the character's psychology, and unlike in traditional fiction, the meaning and interest do not lie in the object or event itself.

(2) Second, this would then raise the question of whether his fiction is too subjective — and indeed it is so. He is not only subjective; there are in fact many places where he does not distinguish between the subjective and the objective. To give an example: the owl-like life of the protagonist of , or the illogical notion of time in — all of this can only be seen as a confusion of dream and reality. In he made the following astonishing confession.

I am a man of hallucination (幻覺) who, having wandered all day through a dense forest (森林), in the end could not steal away even the impression (印象) of a single tree. Since the countless posts of expression look all the same to me, like a communal cemetery (共同墓地), how shall I, with dignity, seek out this bustling impatience (焦燥) from afar?

(3) However, if on this account one were to say that Yi Sang lacked the ability to discern reality from dream, that would be a laughable matter. It was not that he failed to perceive reality; rather, because he perceived it all too keenly, he did not regard its value as significant, at least in his art. Seeing how, in , he satirized money, common sense, and morality almost to the point of denouncing them, one can surmise where (那邊) the motif of his art lies. When we speak of Yi Sang's art, we cannot speak of it apart from this motif, and accordingly, if one does not keep this fundamental spirit in mind, his fiction will at last sound like nothing more than a child's wordplay, or else the ravings of a madman.

As for how he understood surrealism (쉬르레알리슴) and to what degree he consciously applied it, I, not knowing, cannot pronounce anything definite.

(4) Finally, the question of whether it is acceptable to grant his works the name 'fiction' will naturally be raised. And the questioner will surely point out that his fiction is, rather than fiction, closer to poetry. In fact, that he combined poetry and fiction is the most singular point of Yi Sang's fiction, and I think it the most important point among his experiments. As we read his fiction, it is not merely that we occasionally discover a few lines of poetry. The very esprit that created the work is already poetic rather than prosaic. And his literary esprit constantly shows a posture of escaping the trivial (些末) bonds of reality and flying off into a world of freedom. There is a passage like the following in .

To speak frankly, I do not even hope for such a thing as affection. So suppose that, the day after I married, I went out (外出) with my bride (新婦) and, fortunately, lost that bride on the street. Would I then lose sleep at night searching for her?
At such a time, I secretly hope that some such tremendous letter would come flying in.
'This humble one (小生), having picked up on the street on such-and-such day the young one (少生) who seems certainly to be Your Honor's (貴下) bride (新婦), hereby notifies you, so please come and fetch her.'
Even so, I stubbornly refuse to go. If there is a field, she'll come, I think, and in my mind (念頭) there is only a vast and boundless (汪洋) freedom (自由).

'In my mind there is only a vast and boundless freedom.' How many writers in the current literary world could spit out this one line of poetry without any hesitation? I want to ask. Not in regard to its anachronistic idea, but in regard to its utterly unrestrained boldness.

In this way, it would not be amiss to say that his fiction is not fiction but poetry. But in this modern age, where fiction breaks traditional forms and piles up all manner of experiments, I think it not hard to find reasons for refusing to deny Yi Sang's works the name of fiction.

Yi Sang's art is unfinished. This 'unfinished' has two meanings. That is, there are two meanings: that his art is by its very nature unfinished, and that he abandoned the work midway (中) and departed from this world.

He was not a traditional writer who tries to fit his own claims into some completed form, but a writer who, gathering up fragment by fragment the shards of individuality shattered (破壤) by modern civilization and ordinarily quite impossible to salvage, tried his best to give them reality and so attempted various experiments in technique. Even if his works were to be completed to a certain degree as this type of fiction, viewed through the concept of traditional fiction they would always look unfinished and immature. And even at that, he departed this world without being able to develop the experiment further and without sufficient outside criticism. That his art is unfinished is, from any point of view, a fate that could not be avoided (避).

But that does not mean we can overlook the value in the work he left behind. That he gave expression to the collapse (崩壤) of the individuality of an intellectual who suffers the era's blame and derision is valuable not only as one record of an era; I think that, in this chaotic era, the suggestion and lesson it gives — indirect though it may be — about the way for the intellectual to live on is also not small.

Second, that he aroused intellectual interest in our literary world, which tends to easily fall into common sense and low tone (低調) — even if in a distorted form — is, I think, yet another of the great achievements he left behind. It is true that his fiction does not give the reader a savory interest, but we do not demand interest alone from literature.

The writer Yi Sang, whom we revered and longed for, departed this world lonely, far away in a foreign land (客裡). Small though it may be in quantity, I think it is properly our task to elucidate the true intent (眞意) of the art he left behind and to keep its spirit alive. In connection with this point, I earnestly long (切望) that his bereaved family and the various people of the literary world who were close to him will show us, as soon as possible, the record of his eventful life.

Finally, I pray for the eternal repose of the late (故人) Yi Sang.

References

- Inmunsa, 1938

The word 'esprit' came up quite a lot; 'literary esprit' is usually interpreted as the literary spirit, literary self-consciousness. The word is originally French.

'Surrealism (쉬르레알리슴),' in other words surréalisme, refers to '초현실주의 (surrealism).' It is well known that Yi Sang's works strongly take on a surrealist character.