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Dying Words
Yi Sang was one of Korea’s most innovative writers of modern literature, enough to deem him Korea’s finest modernist. He died at the early age of 27, but despite his short literary career, he produced surreal and highly experimental pieces that were avant-garde and far ahead of their time. “Dying Words” is a confessional story, narrated by a character named Yi Sang. This story is one of three, along with “Wings” and “Child’s Bone,” that takes the relationship between man and woman as its subject. This particular story, which is about a man who loves an unfaithful woman, juxtaposes the past and present to build the narrator’s inner world. As suggested in the title, this work foretells Yi Sang’s own imminent death.
18 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1937
26 people want to read
About the author
Yi Sang
20 books54 followersKim 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.
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January 12, 2022
Of course I end up fainting right there. I die. I wander the afterlife. In the underworld, the moon is bright. I shut my eyes again. From the sky, a voice asks, How old are you? I am twenty-five years and eleven months. An early death, I see. No, sir, it is a late death.
Dying Words is a late prose of Yi Sang which has a strongly self-deprecating, ironic sense of humor. In it, the main character called Yi Sang is preparing his own last words, his last work before death. His concern with aesthecism and appearances satirizes his own prose and sense of beauty. The character is confronted with his lover Jeonghui who despises his pretentious and artistic tendencies and ruins his carefully prepared speeches by not reacting in the way he wishes. Jeonghui, who has been constructed to be like a romantic heroine from the works of French authors destroys Yi Sang's perceptions of her and turns out to be still cheating on him.
Dying Words is a late prose of Yi Sang which has a strongly self-deprecating, ironic sense of humor. In it, the main character called Yi Sang is preparing his own last words, his last work before death. His concern with aesthecism and appearances satirizes his own prose and sense of beauty. The character is confronted with his lover Jeonghui who despises his pretentious and artistic tendencies and ruins his carefully prepared speeches by not reacting in the way he wishes. Jeonghui, who has been constructed to be like a romantic heroine from the works of French authors destroys Yi Sang's perceptions of her and turns out to be still cheating on him.
Displaying 1 of 1 review