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Yeoyu - new voices Korea #6
Milena, Milena, Ecstatic
Yun's meticulously ordered life of reading books and drinking coffee receives a jolt when a mysterious cultural foundation unexpectedly agrees to fund his film proposal: a blend of fiction and documentary, a tone-poem constructed around a lyrical narrative, set around Scythian graves in the High Altai mountains. Desperate to be taken on as his assistant, the foundation's secretary follows him from their offices and begins a night of crossed wires, dislocation, and reality seen through glass, darkly. One of South Korea's most astonishingly sui generis authors, Bae Suah mixes the cerebral and the pungently physical, the mundane and the wildly surreal, in a characteristically potent blend.
From the Yeoyu collection, a selection of eight short stories translated from Korean, in collaboration with publisher-activist and translation trailblazer, Deborah Smith, and featuring writers such as Han Kang and Bae Suah, among others less familiar to an English-speaking audience.
여유, Yeoyu, means something like 'scope' and/or 'relaxed' in English; scope to be yourself, to follow your own interests. In some ways it means the opposite of being constrained by convention, more to be unbounded in such a way. In a sense, it means to be oneself but with enough 'left over' -- for others, maybe.
It is intended to capture the diverse range of themes and styles the series, and Korean literature far more widely, has to offer the curious reader and also to say something figurative and fun about the act and process of translation.
From the Yeoyu collection, a selection of eight short stories translated from Korean, in collaboration with publisher-activist and translation trailblazer, Deborah Smith, and featuring writers such as Han Kang and Bae Suah, among others less familiar to an English-speaking audience.
여유, Yeoyu, means something like 'scope' and/or 'relaxed' in English; scope to be yourself, to follow your own interests. In some ways it means the opposite of being constrained by convention, more to be unbounded in such a way. In a sense, it means to be oneself but with enough 'left over' -- for others, maybe.
It is intended to capture the diverse range of themes and styles the series, and Korean literature far more widely, has to offer the curious reader and also to say something figurative and fun about the act and process of translation.
36 pages, Paperback
Published June 17, 2019
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About the author
Bae Suah
16 books371 followersBae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 2, 2019
There is something about Bae Suah that really appeals to me. She has a talent to create an atmosphere I feel at home with.
“Milena, Milena, Ecstatic” is a short story about Hom Yun, a film director, very particular about his coffee drinking and reading habits, who gets an unexpected grant to make a 10-hour long semi-documentary about a girl searching for the mother who abandoned her as a child, set around the graves of the Scythians of the mountainous High Altai region. I felt the plot largely inconsequential, but that’s not a weakness. It’s the evocative ambiance of a café, in which the protagonist sits and thinks, his thoughts and impressions, or the certain association between “Letters to Milena” by Kafka that he reads and the grant foundation’s young assistant, begging him to take her with him on a journey to make his film that are of significance. The references to other works of art, be it plays by Beckett or the film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” by Resnais, are inextricably related to the story and the way reality is perceived by Hom Yun. I found myself in the story as I often see people who remind me of characters in the books I have read or hear fragments of conversations or see situations that seem to be as if taken straight from certain films I have watched. They are part of life, part of reality.
I read the story in one sitting and then immediately read it again. It’s a perfect book to read in a café, pausing at times to embrace everything around you and invite people you see to be part of the world created by Hom Yun created by Bae Suah’s. “Milena, Milena, Ecstatic” reminded me of the question Justine from Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet” once asked: “Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”. The final experience of time and sounds by Hom Yun are particularly telling, though inconclusive.
This beautiful story reads like a dream, from which one wakes up with a sense of melancholia, wanting to immediately get back to it.
“Milena, Milena, Ecstatic” is a short story about Hom Yun, a film director, very particular about his coffee drinking and reading habits, who gets an unexpected grant to make a 10-hour long semi-documentary about a girl searching for the mother who abandoned her as a child, set around the graves of the Scythians of the mountainous High Altai region. I felt the plot largely inconsequential, but that’s not a weakness. It’s the evocative ambiance of a café, in which the protagonist sits and thinks, his thoughts and impressions, or the certain association between “Letters to Milena” by Kafka that he reads and the grant foundation’s young assistant, begging him to take her with him on a journey to make his film that are of significance. The references to other works of art, be it plays by Beckett or the film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” by Resnais, are inextricably related to the story and the way reality is perceived by Hom Yun. I found myself in the story as I often see people who remind me of characters in the books I have read or hear fragments of conversations or see situations that seem to be as if taken straight from certain films I have watched. They are part of life, part of reality.
I read the story in one sitting and then immediately read it again. It’s a perfect book to read in a café, pausing at times to embrace everything around you and invite people you see to be part of the world created by Hom Yun created by Bae Suah’s. “Milena, Milena, Ecstatic” reminded me of the question Justine from Lawrence Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet” once asked: “Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”. The final experience of time and sounds by Hom Yun are particularly telling, though inconclusive.
This beautiful story reads like a dream, from which one wakes up with a sense of melancholia, wanting to immediately get back to it.
June 24, 2019
Milena, Milena, Ecstatic is one of the Yeoyu (여유) series from Strangers Press, eight chapbooks, each with a short story of around 30 pages.
Strangers Press's self introduction is that the press:
The 8 (7 female, 1 male) authors chosen represent a range of the best writing from the current generation of Korean authors (although there are many exciting writers e.g. Kim Ae-rae and Kim Sagwa excluded due to lack of space - see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... for a similar collection including these authors). The 8 here range from the relevative superstars Han Kang and Bae Suah to authors with little work available in English (Cheon Heerahn and Kang Hwagil are I think previously untranslated altogether, and some others have one another short story available in Asia Publisher’s hard-to-find bilingual collection).
The 6 translators (5 female), with two doing double service, range from the MBI winning Deborah Smith, and well-known Sora Kim-Russell, to a Korean language debutant, and include both native Korean speakers, those who learned the language, and also translators who work in both directions, and all do an excellent job.
The complete list of books with links to Goodreads:
1. 다섯 게의 프렐류드, 그리고 푸가 by 천희란 (Cheon Heerahn) translated as Five Preludes & a Fugue by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. 퇴역 레스러 by 전성태 (Jeon Sungtae) translated as Old Wrestler by Sora Kim-Russell
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. 에우로파 by 한강 (Han Kang) translated as Europa by Deborah Smith (phonetically: 데보라 스미스)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. 이혼 by 김숨 (Kim Soom) translated as Divorce by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5. 양의 미래 by 황정은 (Hwang Jungeun) translated as Kong's Garden by Jeon Seung-Hee (전승희)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6. 밀레나 밀레나 황홀한 by 배수아 (Bae Suah) translated as Milena, Milena, Ecstatic by Deborah Smith (phonetically: 데보라 스미스)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7. 손 by 강 화길 (Kang Hwagil) translated as Demons by Mattho Mandersloot
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8. 왼쪽의오른쪽오른쪽의왼쪽 by 한유주 (Han Yujoo) translated as Left's Right, Right's Left by Janet Hong (자넷 홍)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
All of the translations with one exception are new - Kong’s Garden by Hwang Jungeun tr. Jean Seung-Hee was previously featured in the Asia Publishers series, and only lightly revised here. I was pleased to see (pet peeve avoided) that the titles stick closely to the originals, Kong's Garden the exception (the original is called Yang's Future), but that was the previous publisher's call and Strangers Press sensibly avoided confusion by not renaming it.
The physical books are stunningly designed, with, I was delighted to see, significant incorporation of Korean script (한글) including the original title and the original name of the author and often the Korean/Romanised translator’s name.
And as for the Yeoyu name, the press defines it as: meaning something like 'scope' and/or 'relaxed' in English; scope to be yourself, to follow your own interests. In some ways it means the opposite of being constrained by convention, more to be unbounded in such a way. In a sense, it means to be oneself but with enough 'left over' -- for others, maybe. There is a great illustration I found on Reddit: When usain bolt had the luxury to loom back at his competitors during that 100m run, he had 여유. When I have time leftover during an exam and double/triple check my answers, I have 여유.
Overall it's a fabulous series - the 5 stars reflects my view of both the series and this, perhaps the strongest of the individual titles.
As noted Milena, Milena Ecstatic has been translated by Deborah Smith from 밀레나 밀레나 황홀한 by 배수아 (Bae Suah), the 5th of the author's books I have read (and the 6th by the translator).
It takes its title from Kafka’s Letters to Milena (Bae Suah has herself translated Kafka into Korean) which, in this story, a coffee-drinking bachelor and avid reader, with a highly ordered life, discovers, to his surprise, in the shelf of books above his bath:
There has to be a book within reach in any part of the house ... reading Dante in the bathtub, a detective novel or history book in the bedroom; on the sofa, one or two pages at a time of an encyclopedia of ancient alchemy which he opens at random, and on the subway a poetry collection by Whitman or Eliot. When sitting in a cafe, he generally reads plays. Shakespeare, Pinter, Ionesco and Beckett.
This almost Murakamiesque set-up then morphs into a rather darker, tale when his ambitious proposal for a film project, to be filmed over two years, set around Scythian graves in the High Altai mountains unexpectedly wins a grant from a cultural foundation, and the secretary of the foundation begs him to take her on the trip as his assistant.
Bae Suah is in many respects I think stronger in the shorter form (albeit perhaps novellas are her forte - Nowhere to Be Found perhaps her best) - she has said “The most suitable way to not say something ... that’s what I think of as the aesthetic of my short fiction." and this is an excellent introduction to a great author, and I look forward to the next novella from this author/translator combination, Untold Night and Day, due in 2020.
Strangers Press's self introduction is that the press:
is focused on publishing literary translations and international writing in innovative or creative ways. We’re particularly interested in the idea of translation as a form of cultural exchange – that cultures might learn things about each other, in multiple ways, through the process – and seek to publish in a way that celebrates or foregrounds that, in collaboration with the British Centre for Literary Translation, University of East Anglia, and The National Centre for Writing.Following their earlier Keshiki series, focused on Japanese literature, the Yeoyu series presents the best of modern Korean writing.
We take our name from The Strangers of the 16th century: a group of economic migrants from the Spanish Netherlands invited to help boost the nation's textile industry. Our logo references a Flemish gable - in connection with their legacy - and suggests transition from one state to another.
We also see our philosophy as running counter to an encroaching parochialism in British society, post-referendum, and in this way it is political — the name obliquely references a speech from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More that rails against an atmosphere of hostility towards ‘Strangers’
The 8 (7 female, 1 male) authors chosen represent a range of the best writing from the current generation of Korean authors (although there are many exciting writers e.g. Kim Ae-rae and Kim Sagwa excluded due to lack of space - see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... for a similar collection including these authors). The 8 here range from the relevative superstars Han Kang and Bae Suah to authors with little work available in English (Cheon Heerahn and Kang Hwagil are I think previously untranslated altogether, and some others have one another short story available in Asia Publisher’s hard-to-find bilingual collection).
The 6 translators (5 female), with two doing double service, range from the MBI winning Deborah Smith, and well-known Sora Kim-Russell, to a Korean language debutant, and include both native Korean speakers, those who learned the language, and also translators who work in both directions, and all do an excellent job.
The complete list of books with links to Goodreads:
1. 다섯 게의 프렐류드, 그리고 푸가 by 천희란 (Cheon Heerahn) translated as Five Preludes & a Fugue by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. 퇴역 레스러 by 전성태 (Jeon Sungtae) translated as Old Wrestler by Sora Kim-Russell
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. 에우로파 by 한강 (Han Kang) translated as Europa by Deborah Smith (phonetically: 데보라 스미스)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. 이혼 by 김숨 (Kim Soom) translated as Divorce by Emily Yae Won (이 예원)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5. 양의 미래 by 황정은 (Hwang Jungeun) translated as Kong's Garden by Jeon Seung-Hee (전승희)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6. 밀레나 밀레나 황홀한 by 배수아 (Bae Suah) translated as Milena, Milena, Ecstatic by Deborah Smith (phonetically: 데보라 스미스)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
7. 손 by 강 화길 (Kang Hwagil) translated as Demons by Mattho Mandersloot
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
8. 왼쪽의오른쪽오른쪽의왼쪽 by 한유주 (Han Yujoo) translated as Left's Right, Right's Left by Janet Hong (자넷 홍)
my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
All of the translations with one exception are new - Kong’s Garden by Hwang Jungeun tr. Jean Seung-Hee was previously featured in the Asia Publishers series, and only lightly revised here. I was pleased to see (pet peeve avoided) that the titles stick closely to the originals, Kong's Garden the exception (the original is called Yang's Future), but that was the previous publisher's call and Strangers Press sensibly avoided confusion by not renaming it.
The physical books are stunningly designed, with, I was delighted to see, significant incorporation of Korean script (한글) including the original title and the original name of the author and often the Korean/Romanised translator’s name.
And as for the Yeoyu name, the press defines it as: meaning something like 'scope' and/or 'relaxed' in English; scope to be yourself, to follow your own interests. In some ways it means the opposite of being constrained by convention, more to be unbounded in such a way. In a sense, it means to be oneself but with enough 'left over' -- for others, maybe. There is a great illustration I found on Reddit: When usain bolt had the luxury to loom back at his competitors during that 100m run, he had 여유. When I have time leftover during an exam and double/triple check my answers, I have 여유.
Overall it's a fabulous series - the 5 stars reflects my view of both the series and this, perhaps the strongest of the individual titles.
As noted Milena, Milena Ecstatic has been translated by Deborah Smith from 밀레나 밀레나 황홀한 by 배수아 (Bae Suah), the 5th of the author's books I have read (and the 6th by the translator).
It takes its title from Kafka’s Letters to Milena (Bae Suah has herself translated Kafka into Korean) which, in this story, a coffee-drinking bachelor and avid reader, with a highly ordered life, discovers, to his surprise, in the shelf of books above his bath:
There has to be a book within reach in any part of the house ... reading Dante in the bathtub, a detective novel or history book in the bedroom; on the sofa, one or two pages at a time of an encyclopedia of ancient alchemy which he opens at random, and on the subway a poetry collection by Whitman or Eliot. When sitting in a cafe, he generally reads plays. Shakespeare, Pinter, Ionesco and Beckett.
This almost Murakamiesque set-up then morphs into a rather darker, tale when his ambitious proposal for a film project, to be filmed over two years, set around Scythian graves in the High Altai mountains unexpectedly wins a grant from a cultural foundation, and the secretary of the foundation begs him to take her on the trip as his assistant.
Bae Suah is in many respects I think stronger in the shorter form (albeit perhaps novellas are her forte - Nowhere to Be Found perhaps her best) - she has said “The most suitable way to not say something ... that’s what I think of as the aesthetic of my short fiction." and this is an excellent introduction to a great author, and I look forward to the next novella from this author/translator combination, Untold Night and Day, due in 2020.
May 24, 2023
I'm currently working my way through the eight-chapbook Yeoyu set, the new voices of Korea Series from Strangers Press.
I read Bae Suah's Untold Night and Day last year & I think her writing has a dream-like quality. Loved this short story. I'm becoming a Bae Suah fan.
I read Bae Suah's Untold Night and Day last year & I think her writing has a dream-like quality. Loved this short story. I'm becoming a Bae Suah fan.
April 30, 2022
Another extremely bookish and intertextual piece of short fiction from the Yeoyu series. I would have read a whole book about this guy and his filmmaking journey. You could certainly feel the nod to Kafka in the surrealist atmosphere.
My favourite short stories are those that somehow manage to pack a whole novel's worth of action into one short piece without it feeling overdone. Will definitely look into reading more from her.
Part of Strangers Press beautiful Yeoyu chapbook series focused on Korea. Each series has a unique art style and highlights new and unknown voices. I hope they continue with this project. https://www.strangers.press/
My favourite short stories are those that somehow manage to pack a whole novel's worth of action into one short piece without it feeling overdone. Will definitely look into reading more from her.
Part of Strangers Press beautiful Yeoyu chapbook series focused on Korea. Each series has a unique art style and highlights new and unknown voices. I hope they continue with this project. https://www.strangers.press/
January 19, 2020
Through a glass, darkly.. The narrator absorbs his own fictional world, abandoning his solitude and art in search of some kind of understanding companionship.. The last few pages are among the most understatedly descriptive I've ever read. This story is so descriptive it feels like a short film. "I would be ecstatic": searching for the fulfillment of some unknown promise
May 15, 2024
Milena, Milena, Ecstatic is an evocative work of nightly fiction, set in a sleeping city, which is a scenery I have always admired within Asian literature.
I first encountered Bae Suah's work when I found her book Untold Night and Day on a display table of "New Asian Fiction" in a bookshop in Germany and I am glad to have read this one as well. This sort of sensory feeling of absent-mindedly strolling along a sleeping city and just going about one's mundane routine is something that has always invoked a strong sense of mystery and wonder in me, and simultaneously created a pull towards books that have this, such as this one. In this chapbook, which is part of the Yeoyu series, we follow Hom Yun's thoughts and idiosyncrasies in a relatively nondescript city, in which he encounters many characters in passing. Ultimately, despite being somewhat of a hermit, he decides to spend some more time with a certain woman, whom he believes to be Milena. Overall, it is a very short and easy read, that is fun for people who enjoy a certain type of Asian fiction, like myself.
I first encountered Bae Suah's work when I found her book Untold Night and Day on a display table of "New Asian Fiction" in a bookshop in Germany and I am glad to have read this one as well. This sort of sensory feeling of absent-mindedly strolling along a sleeping city and just going about one's mundane routine is something that has always invoked a strong sense of mystery and wonder in me, and simultaneously created a pull towards books that have this, such as this one. In this chapbook, which is part of the Yeoyu series, we follow Hom Yun's thoughts and idiosyncrasies in a relatively nondescript city, in which he encounters many characters in passing. Ultimately, despite being somewhat of a hermit, he decides to spend some more time with a certain woman, whom he believes to be Milena. Overall, it is a very short and easy read, that is fun for people who enjoy a certain type of Asian fiction, like myself.
April 10, 2024
3.75* i read this story twice before writing this review, and i found that i resonated with it more after the second time. i think for me, the plot of milena, milena, ecstatic took a sort of secondary role while the writing took centre stage. this story had a muted quality; it was slow, evocative, and offbeat, and it left me pondering.
i was very taken by the prose, especially at the beginning, when hom yum started his day and when he was at the cafe. those two scenes were so meticulously crafted and vivid that they drew me in completely—even without factoring in the personal bias that hom yum seemed to live my ideal life (slow mornings and reading and people-watching in cafes) into the equation.
perhaps because this story had a fairly mundane plotline for the most part, the last few pages felt like a swell; they left me a little frustrated as now i need to know more. i have questions, and i want answers. maybe this was what the author intended, but still, i would gladly read a full-length novel with this plot and prose.
i was very taken by the prose, especially at the beginning, when hom yum started his day and when he was at the cafe. those two scenes were so meticulously crafted and vivid that they drew me in completely—even without factoring in the personal bias that hom yum seemed to live my ideal life (slow mornings and reading and people-watching in cafes) into the equation.
perhaps because this story had a fairly mundane plotline for the most part, the last few pages felt like a swell; they left me a little frustrated as now i need to know more. i have questions, and i want answers. maybe this was what the author intended, but still, i would gladly read a full-length novel with this plot and prose.
December 5, 2019
In this little chapbook, the atmosphere and the story are dreamlike and will leave you with a peculiar feeling.
https://elifthereader.com/books/milen...
https://elifthereader.com/books/milen...
November 13, 2019
"Intriguing but weird." That was my short summary to a family member when they asked me how I liked this.
I found this and bought it on impulse recently in what I must say was one of the best literature-in-translation sections I've ever seen in a bookstore (Malaprop's - Asheville, NC).
The volumes in this series are beautifully produced, and I couldn't resist the notion of a short story / novella about a man who spends pretty much all day drinking coffee and reading books.
In some respects, that sounds like my ideal life, though I can't say I enjoy being isolated from the rest of humanity quite as much as the protagonist does here. I love the descriptions of his home and of his routine(s).
The "weird" part comes in later in the story. I'm not going to spoil it, but basically this ends up reading like some sort of bizarre dream that someone would have after . . . too much soju?
Either way, I'm still glad I read it. At only 35 pages, give or take, it's a quick read with some wild but compelling prose.
Did I mention the books and the coffee?
I found this and bought it on impulse recently in what I must say was one of the best literature-in-translation sections I've ever seen in a bookstore (Malaprop's - Asheville, NC).
The volumes in this series are beautifully produced, and I couldn't resist the notion of a short story / novella about a man who spends pretty much all day drinking coffee and reading books.
In some respects, that sounds like my ideal life, though I can't say I enjoy being isolated from the rest of humanity quite as much as the protagonist does here. I love the descriptions of his home and of his routine(s).
The "weird" part comes in later in the story. I'm not going to spoil it, but basically this ends up reading like some sort of bizarre dream that someone would have after . . . too much soju?
Either way, I'm still glad I read it. At only 35 pages, give or take, it's a quick read with some wild but compelling prose.
Did I mention the books and the coffee?
Read
February 6, 2024Gotta love some bitesized Bae Suah weirdness. It has everything you'd expect from her longer form work, from surreal street-wandering to Kafka references, basically the pure concentrated essence of her style. Lovely work published as a beautiful chapbook. I'm also just a sucker for literature about making movies.
Now I'm curious about the rest of this Yeoyu chapbook series. I don't think I've read from any of the other authors.
Now I'm curious about the rest of this Yeoyu chapbook series. I don't think I've read from any of the other authors.
July 28, 2024
I enjoyed Untold Night & Day, so I was interested in this one. I did mostly like it. It’s probably about a 3.5 read. The ending was too open for my liking, though (which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise with this author). I just wasn’t sure what the story was trying to say. I did enjoy the minute details of Hom’s life. Who doesn’t love a coffee and to wonder about other people.
Read
July 17, 2019I think familiarity with Letters to Milena by Kafka or Kafka's work will help in appreciating this work. Since I have neither I'll refrain from a star rating as I suspect I've missed quite a bit.
August 20, 2019
Oddly inconclusive and inconsequential short work about a film-maker haunted by Kafka's love letters and a would-be assistant; not as bracingly wintry as Suah's usual work.
November 13, 2019
Extremely strange...
December 10, 2019
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars
October 10, 2020
Like a daydream!
May 16, 2022
2.75 stars.
May 24, 2023
(i read this all today. only read one page on the 4th of may lol)
Read
September 11, 2023Excellent appetizer of Bae Suah's ephemeral writing.
March 21, 2025
mundane routine to insanity pipeline
May 7, 2025
Well it's a little like getting lost in a fever dream at a Berlin art house party—gorgeous, confusing, and a little too proud of its own mystery.
December 21, 2025
ì get it but i don’t like it so yeah vorrei che il mondo finisse domani nel mentre potremmo aiutarci moltissimo or whatever kafka said
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews