Yi Sang: Selected Works

by Yi Sang, Don Mee Choi (Editor), Jack Saebyok Jung (Translator)

Formally audacious and remarkably compelling, Yi Sang’s works were uniquely situated amid the literary experiments of world literature in the early twentieth century and the political upheaval of 1930s Japanese occupied Korea. While his life ended prematurely at the age of twenty-seven, Yi Sang’s work endures as one of the great revolutionary legacies of modern Korean literature. Presenting the work of the influential Korean modernist master, this carefully curated selection assembles poems, essays, and stories that ricochet off convention in a visionary and daring response to personal and national trauma, reminding us that to write from the avant-garde is a form of civil disobedience.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Essays, Short Stories, Asian Literature, Classics

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2020

About the author

Kim Hae-Gyeong (hangul: 김해경, hanja: 金海卿, September 23, 1910 – April 17, 1937), also known as his pen name Yi Sang (hangul: 이상, hanja: 李箱) was a writer and poet who lived in Korea under Japanese rule.[1] He is well-known for his poems and novels, such as Crow's-Eye View (hangul: 오감도, hanja: 烏瞰圖) and Wings (hangul: 날개). He is considered as one of the most important and revolutionary writers of modern Korean literature.

Reviews

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘When the moonlight sits on the straw mat on my back my blood shaped like peppers trickles out from my shadow and my body’s water startled by moonlight turns into dewdrops in my arteries my raggedy heart swallows bricks and you peer into it and call it a fish bowl’ — from ‘Words for White Flower, 3’

Reading The Wings (Yi Sang’s prose/stories) first was a bit of a clumsy, biblio-mistake — a terrible intro to Yi Sang’s work/writing in my opinion. I was left quite indifferent to the writing; and I probably didn’t even finish reading any of the stories. But his poems are a whole new world, a whole other ball game, a completely different tier of literary genius/masterpiece — whatever term or phrase along those lines that one likes better. To repeat (paraphrase) what Joyelle McSweeney has written in the ‘Afterword’, one does not simply read Yi Sang, one catches him like a ‘disease’. Not sure if that’s a flattering comparison/analogy, certainly not, yet so annoyingly accurate.

INNARDS

My mouth is salty. My blood-soaked calligraphy brush must have rushed into my veins. Once, I took off my crumpled skin in repentance, but now it returns to me as blank paper, and a clot of blood has formed on its surface where the brush passed over. The torrential path of the brush is the indistinguishable combination of all my syneresis. Salutations fill my closed mouth, and they are dark. An impotent thought tries to force my mouth open and fails. No testimony can be made at my trial. My past drowned and came apart in love, its shape destroyed, and became a crime. I faint in my body forever.

9 October 1936

Not sure if this affects my reading experience (it does), but I happen to read these poems when I was very much under the weather (understatement) — throwing up my entire guts it felt like — lugging a bloated emptiness, a fleshy void. Very much like an uninvited and unwanted guest (which very thankfully have all fucked off now). So, Yi Sang’s poems? Strong resonance for sure, inevitably. Suited the mood and circumstance so perfectly. I think it might have been Anton Hur who had said in one of his recent interviews that certain books choose you at the right time (or something cringey and cute like that), and Yi Sang certainly ‘appeared’ to me (or at least I’d like to think so) in a rather timely manner. Can’t say that they brought me any form of comfort, but would say that regardless of that, I’m left a bit obsessed?

BUYING SPRING

My organ of memories begins to rot like a fish under the blazing sun. The following syphon effect happens to me. I can't make up my mind if I want three bananas at dawn and four at night, or vice versa. My mind is spent.

This exhaustion will be my fall, but I should not try to fight it. I should overcome it.

An out-of-body experience. Shoeless feet shed their legs in the vacant heaven.

8 October 1936

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very impressively assembled and beautifully presented selection of the works of the Korean modernist poet, Yi Sang (1910-1937) who lived and worked under Japanese colonial rule, but whose poems were influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism, edited by the award-winning* translator Don Mee Choi, and translated by Jack Jung, Joyelle McSweeney and Sawako Nakayasu.

(* the Griffin Poetry Prize Award for her translation of Autobiography of Death from the Korean written by Kim Hyesoon)

Yi Sang is now perhaps most famous for his series of Crow's Eye View poems - and the book includes copies of some of the originals showing how design, typography and mathematics was integral to his work, for example Poems 4 & 5:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/011...

The book also includes Yi Sang's works written in Japanese, and discusses how he subverted the language of the colonisers in his writing. Some of these poems are even more mathematical, one featuring the formula for nPn (obviously = n!).

And the collection also includes selections of Yi Sang's essays (Ennui was a particular favourite for me) and short stories (again including interesting typographical elements) as well as essays by the translators, comments on the links to Kim Hyesoon's poemsm and even a moving poem of her own from Joyelle McSweeney in tribute to the author and to her own process of translation.

This interview with Jack Jung gives much more detail of Yi Sang's approach, his importance and how Jung approached the translation:

https://ampleroad.substack.com/p/desp...

A sketch by Yi Sang of Kubo from 소설가 구보씨의 일일 = A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist by his friend and fellow writer Pak Taewon



A book to read - and keep and re-read.

[Zach Linge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hope this translated "Selected" gets the attention it deserves.

Full disclosure: this is my first time reading Yi Sang's poetry, so nothing said here will dig that deep. What stands out to me first is the apparent influence surrealism and dadaism had on Sang's work: these images make a sense for themselves akin mainly to dreams. But beyond that, there's a wide reach to the poems. They're at times highly modern, invested in formal constructions/deconstructions, in mathematical and architectural play and composition, and built foremost of concept. But then there are poems which, had they been read in the West at the time they were written, would have put to shame any shock or awe in response to so-called "confessional" tropes. Suicidal ideation, for example, is a through-line. Direct addresses ("Words like these must never slip out no matter what.") foreground the speakers' psychologies.

This a fascinating and deeply inspiring "Selected," and one I'll continue to revisit whenever I need a trip back into the subconscious mind, into a collection that shows and reveals its own structuring of that strange and disorganized strata. "Because I am trying to open the unopenable gate because I am trying." Congratulations to editor Don Mee Choi and translators Jack Jung, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, and Joyelle McSweeney, with thanks for making possible this fabulous book.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

so I’m going to be blunt: the poetry of yi sang is interesting, especially from a historical perspective, but really not the kind of poetry I enjoy. but man, wave books really outdid themselves with providing excellent context throughout the entire book. and really I don’t think you can ask for much more than that.

yi sang was kind of this enfant terrible of Korean modernism, who mixed surrealism and Dadaism with a kind of experimental formalism that at times reminds me of the language school. I have no doubt at all that it was a massive culture shock, I just don’t particularly enjoy dreamlike surrealism unless it’s telling me more. the translators insist that it underpins his anxieties of Japan’s colonization of Korea, which I wish they highlighted a little more.

his essays were incredible, and the inclusions of his typography as facsimiles helped me understand what he was all about. for someone writing in the 1930s, his work felt surprisingly fresh - this may be the result of good translators.

aside from Han Kang, I know virtually nothing about Korean literature. Not mad that this was my first introduction to a major author!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ground was once the bottom of a primal lake. Salty. The pillars holding back the curtains become damp. Clouds do not come near me. My tonsils swell in the humorless air. There is a currency scandal—my hand, looking like a foot, shamelessly holds the crone's throbbing hand.

A rumor goes around about a tyrant's infiltration. Babies constantly turn into little grave mounds. The grown-ups' shoes hit other grown-ups' shoes. I never want to see them again, but where can I escape to? In a state of emergency, quarantined neighbors mingle. The distant cannon blasts and the blisters on our skins soothe us.

All I have here now is the stifling trash that came out of sweeping my vast room. Crows as big as suffocated doves once flew into my thunderbolt-infested room. The stronger crows tried to get out, but they caught the plague, and fell one by one. The room was purified, ready to explode. However, everything I have put down here is just my recent trash. [46]

[Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stunning collection of one of the most important poets in modern Korean literature. If you are interested in modernity, surrealism, dadaism, visual poetry, etc., read Yi Sang, because he is the most significant person in this realm.

Many times, people think surrealism poems aren't always making sense, but it is not the case here in Yi Sang. Yi Sang's poems contain the entangled past; portray an image without brushes; his poems include maths, architect designs, Japanese, Chinese characters, his eternal struggle with filial love, and so much more.

Translators and editor did a wonderful job for offering readers a thorough timeline and a comprehensive picture of Yi Sang's life, poetry, stories, as well as all the other relevant Korean writers in the same period.

The understanding of modernity, the experimental poetry and avant-garde style are amazing and mesmerising for a poetry lover like me to indulge in. Simple to feel the group of people's endeavour in the turn of the century to express their struggles and depict life.

A highly recommend to read.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dadaism is weird.

[Veronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I force the folded razor into myself, and suppress my pain, when suddenly its blade opens and grazes me. I bleed internally. However, I have nothing to cut my flesh open; there is no way for my evil spirit to escape. My body gets heavier because of my imprisoned suicide.
(p. 52, "Drowning")
First of all I will begin by reviewing the poetry section. As with most modernist poetry it is at first hard to get into - the rhythm of it feels different than the rigid structure you might be used to and the themes and words are much more loosely distributed. Amusing yet sad is the reaction from his contemporary readers "Stop this madman's ravings" to which Yi Sang then responded in a justifiedly melodramatic letter. However these madman's ravings are incredibly compelling and well-written. Everything about his poems is very deliberate even as he uses word-play and formatting. The common themes in his poems that repeat all over again - sickness, suicide, mirror and legacy - all repeat in such a way that make a bigger picture when read together.

THINKING ABOUT THOSE LONELY FIELDS
THINKING ABOUT THAT LONELY DAY OF SNOW
I AM NOT THINKING ABOUT MY SKIN

I AM A RIGID BODY AGAINST MEMORY
(p. 90, "Fragment Scenery")
Yi Sang's Japanese poems then represent a more mathematical, experimental mode of poetry (which might in part be due to how it is stylized). A wonderful translation by Sawako Nakayasu helps facilitate as close of an experience as possible to reading the original.

My worrying is bigger than the world that erases me. When I open the floodgates, the tides of my worrying percolate through my ruined body. However, I have not yet pulled open my masochistic bottle cap. My worrying engulfs me, and, meanwhile, my body withers away as if the wind and the rain are whittling at it.
(p. 131, "A Journey Into the Mountain Village
If Yi Sang's poetry gives us a vague caricature of themes that are important to his life, his essays are the mirror upon which liquid silver is poured. In his essays you can recognize the themes of his poetry and vice versa. In 'A Journey Into the Mountain Village' we witness a depressing yet humorous look at Yi Sang's trip to the countryside. This is continued in 'Ennui' a summary of a boring day drenched in ennui. My favorite essay 'After Sickbed' uses third person to paint a feverish picture of Yi Sang during the days of his sickness. In 'Sad Story' Yi Sang poetically describes the circumstances of his plan to commit double suicide with his lover. (The circumstances of which are later explained upon in 'True Story - Lost Flower'.) 'A Letter to my Sister' betrays a very progressive attitude towards women's rights and emancipation while at the same time standing witness to Yi Sang's guilt as an unfilial son. And lastly in 'Tokyo' we get to discover the city through the eyes of Yi Sang.

(...) want to know why I haven't killed myself? Ha! It's my habit to recommend suicide only to others. I won't kill myself. I act as if I will sometime soon, but I betray everyone's expectations. Oh - but it's no use anymore.
(p. 216, "True Story - Lost Flower")
The last part of the book holds two translated short stories. The first one is Spider&SpiderMeetPigs where we can clearly see a parallel to Yi Sang's real life. In this chaotic piece of prose the protagonist lives his life hidden away in his house while his wife provides for him by working as a sex worker. He describes his wife as a spider; then in turn describes himself as a spider, acknowledging the complicated relationship he has with his wife. This woman who is being used not only by him (willingly) but by the 'pigs' is someone he wants to protect and abandon at the same time. It shows a strong disillusionment with the relationship. The second short story is True Story - Lost Flower in which short snippets of Yi Sang's life are presented next to each other. It offers a good closure to what all you've read so far.
Genuinely enjoyed my read, great translations and very interesting prefaces.

[Randy Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yi Sang lived from 1910 to 1937 as a Korean man born into the country’s occupation by the Japanese. He came of age during the late nineteen twenties and early thirties which were tumultuous years economically, socially and politically. In 1931 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis which took his life six years later.

This was a time when an artist like Yi Sang’s off-kilter sensibilities helped highlight and signify the off-putting nature of world in which he lived. He mostly wrote in Korean but also in Japanese and this volume is translated into English. It is the subject matter rather than any prose style that I can highlight here.

His most famous writing is a series of fifteen poems which contain numbers presented backwards, a description of a surgery, and a poem with lines repeated with slight variations ‘the first child says it’s scary.’ Other poems in this collection have a surrealist quality to them where people aren’t people, body parts and sense of sight, touch, smell aren’t consistent with accepted reality. He also wrote short pieces as well including one feature a married spider couple.

Why does any of this work resonant with me? I can’t explain why but perhaps it is something about our times and the devastating deterioration of norms, institutions, notions of truth and justice that dissolve before my eyes which makes Yi Sang’s physical, emotional and mental struggles as expressed in his writing feel like a difficult and honest take on his situation.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yi Sang's high modernist poetry shows a lot of French and German surrealist and Dadaist influences but remains uniquely Korean. Most of this work was written during the occupation of Korea by Japan in the early 20th century. There is a consistent dreamlike quality to the imaginary and use of analogous form which characterized early 20th-century French experimental poetry. These concerns from French formalism pull from mathetics, architecture, typography are not lost on the poems here in English. They may remind American readers of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and New York school poetry which had similar modernist influences. The translations are fresh which is difficult from poetry influenced by high modernism and in a non-Indo-European language. The essays and prose-poems are really something else here. Highly recommended.

[CrystaltheCool · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of various poems and other writings by Yi Sang. It's super varied in style. Some poems feel stiff like a scientific study, but many of them are endlessly flowing like a rushing river. Holy run-on sentence batman. There are a few poems that feel like, well... you know how some smartphones have this feature where above your keyboard it gives you three words as you're typing to guess what you're gonna say next? And how people make these predictive memes like "women are [insert middle word]"? They're fun but if you let it go on long enough the predictions get very circular and kinda nonsensical. Some of his poems feel kinda like that but not really - there's deliberate intent with how he uses repetition and circularity. Algorithms don't have that. Anyway I think the poem about fathers would do numbers on Twitter.

But in all seriousness, the piece that stood out most to me was actually a letter he wrote to his sister. You see, she was planning on crossing the border with her lover, and claimed to plan on having Yi Sang walk her to the station that night, which he agreed to. However, much to his shock, his sister and her lover left that morning. You'd think he'd be peeved (and to be fair, he seems a bit sad about it), but the letter was a message of unconditional love and support. IDK it really warmed my heart. In some ways Yi Sang was kind of a product of his time (most men, even the most progressive of all, are men of their time), but I think he was a really cool guy overall. And despite all our shortcomings, whether we can move past them or if they're baked into our era, I think humanity has limitless capacity for kindness, across time and geography.

Good book.

[ainee · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extensive collection of an extremely important Korean modernist poet’s work. I’d never encountered a Korean poet so clearly influenced by Dadaism in this way before, but something about Yi Sang’s work also feels distinctly Korean, and it’s impressive that I could sense that through the English translation.

The poetry is wonderful, which goes without saying, but I also really enjoyed Yi Sang’s often nihilist essays and surrealist short stories (maybe even a little more than the poetry 🫢). The timeline by which I read this book might have had some sort of effect/affect here too, because I made my way through the poetry little by little last year and finished out the essays and stories this year—so the sprawling collection indeed “sprawled” for me and took on an interesting progression of movement.

Add that to the “tensions” of being born into/living through Japanese colonization having some presence throughout Yi Sang’s writing, as if there’s something incessantly haunting his work. European Dadaism did begin in reaction to WWI, so there is a point to be made about how the avant-garde emerges when the world feels even harder to make sense of than it already does, when humanity feels even more impossible or purposeless. Perhaps the haunting felt more accessible in his prose—which still isn’t “straight” prose—but in his Dada-esque poetry of cryptic code and rebellion against the conventions of language, the haunting is certainly there too.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a monumental work. It would be difficult to summarize the range/scope within a short review here. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in or accustomed to modern and contemporary Korean poetry. Inspired by Dada, Yi's work is also delightfully absurd and industrial. The poetry opens the book and the prose closes it, and the works are interwoven with personal narratives from the translators/editors. Overall this is a format for a book I'd love to see more often--encompassing and monumental. It honors the poet thoroughly.

[Tom Mobley · Rating 4 out of 5]

After my trip to Korea last summer I decided to take a crack at reading some works of the biggest authors from Korea. I have read books on their history and culture, so I decided to start with poetry.

I hard place to start, one because I am not a big fan of poetry and two poetry translated can be even more confusing.

[LV55 · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time reading his work, this collection is dreamlike yet impactful. Finished reading it wanting more from him and his peers. And considering the current times, so much from him feels as relevant now as it must've been a century ago.

[Ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

dnf

[Bon Thorgard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invigorating and inspiring. Feeling seen in the words of a Korean man from nearly 100 years ago breaths hope into my life. A must read for all poets.

[Marina Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm officially smitten and will be returning to it frequently.