독재자
내 일기책은 두 권 -- 반항과 복종
열린 마음인 양 한 권은 사무실 책상 위에
숨통에 꾸려 감춘 다른 한 권에서는
도둑질 같은 땀이 귄다
반항과 복종이라는 두 명이
나는 어른이 되었네
이스트를 넣어 부풀린 삶 속에서
밀 덩어리를 반족하듯 -- 일기책
반항적 남성은 복종이 기쁨인 여성을 지배한다
흐르는 강물과 사계절은
지하실 남골당의 뚜껑 깨진 푸른 단지
두 갈래 습관의 혓바닥이 쓰네
노동의 참신한 내 하루
도둑질 같은 땀을 훔치며
도망치는 보상없는 내 하루
두 명의 나를 길러 끌고가는 나는
집단심리를 제대로 쓰는 재벌 아닌가?
어느새 나는 민중이라는, 내,
독재자가 되어 있다.
The Dictator
My diary is in two parts -- resistance and obedience.
One is an open heart on top of my office desk
and the other is shoved inside a throat,
a cold sweat gathers inside.
Now I'm a grown-up
with a yeast-bloated existence
as if working dough.
The diary of two things -- resistance and obedience.
A dominant male subdues a female
who finds happiness in obedience.
A flowing river and the four seasons
are a blue jar with a broken lid in a crypt.
The tongue of divided habit tastes bitter.
My new day of labor, a day of loss,
running away in a cold sweat.
I drag along the two of me I've raised.
Could I be the corporate class
proficient in manipulating group psychology?
Already I've become the populace,
the dictator of myself.
They fucked up the second stanza real bad, this time. This is a word for word translation:
resistance and obedience the two beings'
now I'm a grown-up
a yeast-bloated existence
as if working dough -- diary
I'm pretty sure that diary is meant to be read as a possession of the two beings. I have no idea what the clearest/best way to translate this is, but I don't like the way they switched around the word(s) following the hyphen in the English translation.
"Crypt" in the third stanza is also inaccurate; "underground room" or "basement" is more likely.
There are probably loads of things I don't understand about the original poem and how it was translated, but I like it, especially the line "I drag along the two of me I've raised." And I relate to the resistance/obedience conflict, I think.
The new secretary at my school found me in the subway on Friday, and we sat next to each other on the blue line going north for a while. She's a kind woman who has never been anything but sweet to me, and I didn't mind her company at all until she asked me what church I go to.
It's not so unusual here, the assumption that because I am American, I am also Christian. I am always carefully polite when I say I have no religion, far more polite than I would be in Michigan if someone made the same assumption about me. Should I feel the need to be this polite? The people who ask me these things have, after all, made a somewhat racist assumption about me, somewhere along the lines of: "she's white! she speaks English! she must believe in God!"
But Christian missionaries from the U.S. are a strong presence in Korea, and may have been an even stronger presence in the past. Maybe the association of American<-->Christian is not so unreasonable.
I feel as though the religious pressure on me is increasing these days. It wasn't so long ago that Park Mi-Ran wanted to introduce me to a famous singer who attends her church, wanted me to come to church with her. She knows I'm not a Christian, and I told her that I would probably feel uncomfortable going to her church because of this. She accepted my feelings, and told me to think about it. She told me that I am young, and I don't know what may happen to me or what I may believe in in the future.
Park Mi-Ran is a reasonable woman; she's not going to put undue pressure on me to do something she knows I am uncomfortable with. She's essentially just left the door open for me; she's not going to pressure me, but if I wanted to, she would be happy for me to bring the subject up again.
I won't bring the subject up again, but neither am I angry over this interaction with Mi-Ran. It's true that I don't know what will happen in my future. Having been a Christian as a child and having long since decided that God is not something I believe in, I doubt that Christianity is in my future - but I won't deny that it is a possibility. Mi-Ran was not disrespectful of me, I was not disrespectful of her, and we are going together to eat (Korean-version?) Argentinian food and watch a tango show this Tuesday.
My reaction to the kind-hearted and well-meaning secretary lady was just as polite, but I seethed for hours afterwards, maybe I'm still seething. After I told her I had no religion she proceeded to tell me that she wants me to believe in God, and that she thinks in 10 years I will be a Christian. I was never so happy to get off the subway.
It's acceptable for elders to interfere in the lives of younger people in Korea, I keep telling myself. It's acceptable for them to give un-asked for advice in all kinds of situations. I am a young person; she is my elder. It doesn't mean I have to follow her advice, but it does mean I should accept her input without anger.
But it makes me so angry. I have been working hard this whole time to accept the people who are in my life in Seoul, and to understand where they are coming from without judgment. It makes me (unjustly, I know) angry that they do not always return me the same favor.
Anyway, resistance vs. obedience. Most of the time I contain my resisting impulses and choose obedience - and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
**update: in retrospect, "rebellion" seems to be a more accurate translation of "반항" than "resistance".
5 comments:
When a person says that they "want you to believe," it makes me think that they know on some level that that belief is, to the skeptic, not a matter of logic or evidence, but rather an act of will. In hindsight, I notice that during the period when I considered myself a Christian (13-14) the question of proof never entered my mind. Though I didn't realize it at the time, it was all about social pressure and holding myself to a standard which would (I thought) make me "fit in," but in reality only served to make me miserable. But that is neither here nor there.
As to whether you have just cause to be angry, I don't need to remind you that Americans are largely a religious population. Depending on which poll you read, somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of those polled claimed religious belief. Don't most people in America, if not in your own social circle, assume that you have some kind of belief? Would not the average American assume that an immigrant from Iran is a Muslim? You want the people that you meet in Korea to accept you as you accept them, but people like you are few and far between and presumption in any other culture is still bullshit.
Oh, here's my point, in case that wasn't clear. (I suspect it may not have been.) You shouldn't assume that others will grant you the same courtesy that you give to them, but neither should you excuse them for projecting their stereotypes on you.
I hope this isn't an asshat thing to ask, but could you post the name of this poet in romanized letters?
Anyway re: Christianity
I have never really figured out how to maintain meaningful friendships with people who are very deeply religious. I keep thinking about some of the super religious people I was friendly with (but not necessarily friends with) in high school. I think we never became friends because their zeal for their religion was so genuine and so deeply ingrained that it was just impossible for them to imagine why anyone *wouldn't* believe in God or why anyone would want to express their spirituality differently.
It doesn't make them bad people, but it does make it hard to communicate with them since they're either not willing to look at life outside of the veil of their beliefs, or (perhaps more likely), they don't really know how. A lot of religion gets so deeply inculcated in people as a "natural" state of affairs that I think it becomes difficult for some practitioners to look at things from a different angle. I try to keep this in mind when talking to people who express their faith in this way--doing as you do, and choosing obedience over vocal resistance. But god, I would be lying if I didn't get the urge to become really vulgar and blasphemous when put in this situation. I'm getting the sense that you feel the same way I do--namely resentment for being labeled as a "good girl," a good candidate for indoctrination in the Christian faith based on a rudimentary judgment of your appearance.
Um, so I guess I'm rambling, but what I mean to say is, girrrrl, I sympathize with you. It also sounds like the religion situation in Korea is almost more intense than it was in West Michigan, maybe because the pressure is coming from people with a culture that you didn't grow up in. I think it's a lot easier to handle this sort of shit when it comes from your own culture because somehow, it being your own culture justifies the anger you feel.
Ok, end ramble here.
Jane: That's exactly the problem. When confronted with this kind of pressure, I get the urge to become inappropriate and to blow these people's assumptions about me out of the water - the same urge I would get in Michigan when confronted with the Diag preachers or anyone else trying to convert me.
Which is not to say that I have the urge to get vulgar and blasphemous with everyone I interact with who is religious -- just the ones who are exerting pressure on me.
The important distinction is, I think, that when confronted with presumptuous and obnoxious religious pressure in Michigan, I felt comfortable being obnoxious (in my vulgarity) right back. I don't feel comfortable with that in Korea, and the reason might be that if I was open and blunt about how unrealistic it is to expect me to be a devout person, I would feel like I was disrespecting Korean culture in much the same way the most of the Americans who come here do.
My urge to "take Korean culture seriously" might be partially a reaction against all the Americans here who /don't/ take Korean culture seriously, and maybe it's this urge that makes it impossible to dismiss this religious pressure as easily as I would dismiss it in Michigan.
also, I posted the poet's romanized name(s) in the post's title. It's not an asshat thing to ask, I don't expect you to learn the Korean alphabet. The reason I sometimes feel the urge to write names only in Korean is probably just that the system for converting Korean--> roman characters is so jumbled and inaccurate, and it makes the pronunciation of the romanized name ambiguous and sometimes just plain /wrong/.
In this case, the family name is neither Yi nor Lee, though those are the two most common romanizations. 이 is simply the vowel sound "ee" without any consonants. "yeon"/"yun" should rhyme with "run", and "joo" is, I think, straightforward.
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