Korean Short Stories
Kim Sin Yong The Force of Vines 넝쿨의 힘 Translated by Jeong Eungwi
Information This work was previously published in New Writing from Korea . Please contact the LTI Korea Library. library@klti.or.kr
About Kim Sin Yong Kim’s poems record what life is like at the bottom of the social heap. But his poems contain nothing of the all- consuming rage at society or hostile enmity that one might expect from a poet with his background. Kim does not place blame for his life on capitalist society, its oppression of workers, or the contradictions in the social structure. His labor poetry does not possess an organizational or ideological character. Instead it casts a sympathetic gaze on the difficult lives of those who have been thrown to the lowest place in society, and embraces them warmly. These labor poems have little in common with antagonistic strikers on the picket line. Rather, they exist as small voices offering up consolation in whispered tones that reflect the experiences of the workers themselves. Even though his poetic subjects live in a world of poverty, neglect and lack of compassion, the poems hold out hope that love—in the truest sense of the word—can help these individuals form a community that belongs to them alone. As one critic summarized his work, he "continues to feel imaginary pains even after the disappearance of a painful life but endures them with aesthetic sorrow." LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/67
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The Force of Vines On the persimmon tree growing on a hillock in front of our house, a pumpkin grew. One shoot from the pumpkins we had planted on the bank of the field at the foot of the hillock had been climbing higher all summer long until it was hanging from a bough. It had not been visible while the foliage was thick, but once the leaves had fallen, the trail of the vine clinging tightly to the trunk as it climbed stood out clearly, like a vein. It must have had a hard time climbing up the trunk bearing its heavy burden. Seeing how the vine still hangs in the air even after the late fall frost, it must have carried sand and gravel and built a scaffold all summer long. If that pumpkin vine had crawled over the ground, it could have grown a pumpkin comfortably, could have laid it on the soft grass of the hillock, so why did it hang the pumpkin dangerously high on the bough on the steep hillock? Looking at that pumpkin vine, some may laugh, saying: It must have really wanted to build a sky garden . . . Looking at that house of cards hanging in the air, some may click their tongues, but the vine must have continued on its way since there was a road there. Whether it led to a precipice or pit, the vine must have continued on since there was a road. Just as footsteps crossing the desert where standstorms blew, where sand tombs rose and scattered, scattered and arose again, opened up the Silk Road and built Loulan, the vine must have gone stretching on, since there was a road, to hang its fruit in the open air. Though weakened like a dried straw rope by the coming fall weather, it must have crawled tenaciously to hang its round pumpkin, like the moon, on the height of impossibility. Today, cautiously climbing up a ladder, I will harvest that pumpkin,
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and place it in a clay dish in my room to gaze on for a long time, oh the power of such climbing things. Copyright 2008 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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