Yi Sang’s Discussions with Death

Born Kim Hae-gyong in Seoul in 1910, Yi Sang was trained as an architect yet he left his occupation, became a writer and launched into a disorderly life. His previous work in architecture influenced his later depiction of poetic scenes with visual ideograms, and highly idiosyncratic experimental poems. Yi Sang made strides in short fiction, experiencing much greater acclaim than in his poetry, in particular with the vividly disturbing, but insightful “Wings”. In the fall of 1936, he journeyed to Tokyo, where he was later imprisoned by the Japanese for suspected sedition. His long and painful battle with tuberculosis ended in his untimely death at a Tokyo hospital in 1937.

While Yi Sang is considered one of the leaders in Korean typographic experiments in poetry, much of his poetic work follows a playful impulse that lacks both in beauty and depth while relying on shock value for its success. The problem of his poetry, it would seem is one of a combination of inexperience, excessive experimentation and youth marked by the enduring pain of his malady. Despite his inexperienced hand, Yi Sang made an impression on modernism in Korean poetry with his experiments in poetic form and in particular, his meditations on spiritual isolation, self deception, psychological anxiety and death.

Yi Sang’s struggle with his self-identity is evident in much of his work, which is replete with references to his contemplation of suicide, an unnerving distaste for and blasé acceptance of his life of consumption and the toil of self-determination. While many of his poems of experimental "visual" features lack in maturity, the poems “Formality” and “Precipice” related some insight into the poet’s fixation on death and his own impending mortality.

As he forms the structure of “Formality IV”, Yi Sang eliminates text spacing and punctuation, while disregarding sentence structure to leave the reader with a sense of confused and frustrated ramblings. If we take the two players’ interaction as a metaphor for the divided self, then the essential goal is to know thyself. “Who are you” he asks as he tries to enter the locked door of the soul. The mind and the soul are unbalanced as the man without attempts to discover the man inside.

The internal self’s inability to unlock the door’s outer latch relates the author’s dissatisfaction with his own ability to understand his place and meaning in this world. This can also be seen on the level of his relationship with others, especially his estranged wife or with the outside world in general. He hesitates to reveal his true self to the unknown entity outside his protective space as he relates; “you are not of one mind to seek me”, yet nor is he sure of who seeks him; “even though I too have no knowledge of you”. We see, however, that he hopes for a union of the two as he proposes; “if I for all the world could let it be so that the door would open…”

But here we may also look at the poem as a play with death at the door. In Yi Sang’s constant battle with tuberculosis, he often played with the idea of taking his own life… the unlocking of the door represents his willingness to see the man outside, yet he is unsure of when he will enter. The universal truth arrives at the final realization that “who are you to be intentionally born in front of a locked door”. In the end he believes that all the world is locked away and doomed to be separated not only from others but also from the understanding of one’s self while in constant fear of the loss of safety in emotional, spiritual and even spatial seclusion.

The Precipice is another poem that contends with the closeness of death…

Standing at the precipice, Yi Sang considers his fall. His choice of flowers as the unknown force drawing him near and taking him at times away from his work is both unusual and intriguing. “The flowers are unseen. The flowers smell sweet.” They draw him to the place of his death…”The aroma blooms. I dig a grave there.” At his grave, he cannot see the flowers themselves. Like his disease, the insidious process permeates his body like a smell from an unknown source. The choice of a sweet smell as his doom, relates his desire to give in to its attraction. “I sit inside the unseen grave. I lie down.” The grave too is unseen and as he digs from within, he is bound by it so that he cannot see that it is a grave. His thoughts of suicide, while he chooses not to extinguish his own life make its coming a welcome event. “Ahhh.” He can finally rest.

At times, the digging seems to refer to his life’s work, presumably that of his writing. “I forget and again dig the grave there.” The smell of death distracts him again and again from his endeavors. He lays down, ready to accept the coming of death, but even in the end, he still cannot see its origin. “I enter the unseen grave as I suddenly forget the flowers.” The flowers were to come soon, the sweet smell of death overtook him in his grave only months later. His fixation on death made his writing dark and riddled with despair. Ready for the coming…

The flowers I cannot even see—the flowers I cannot even see.

Alternative renderings