At Auschwitz,
when fleeing,
one had to leave behind
the present day.

“Live in the past,
and flee into the future
swifter than light.
Once again,
I will meet myself—
a younger self,
to whom at least
I ascend.”

This was the direction
Yi-Sang* revealed
in his Notes on the Line:
a fierce heart
burning forward.

The bundle closed its eyes
in the other fire.

The fleeing measure—
through the desecration of the universe—
desires nothing less
than the death and life
of the system itself.

And so,
the fisherman lifts only
a sorrowing mother’s voice:

“Despair,
yet I am born,
I am born!”

The trembling line
snaps forward,
gauging, oh! gauging,
the slanted shoulders
of the imprisoned.

• [Wikipedia] * Yi Sang (이상, 李箱), born Kim Haegyŏng (김해경, 金海卿) in 1910, is one of the most revolutionary and enigmatic figures in modern Korean literature. His brief but blazing career unfolded during Korea’s Japanese occupation, and his work continues to challenge and inspire readers today. Despite his lack of formal literary training, Yi Sang’s writing is known for its experimental structure, scientific symbolism, and surreal imagery. He often used wordplay, homonyms, and even visual elements in his texts, making his work notoriously difficult to interpret. “Crow’s Eye View” (오감도): A series of poems that stirred controversy for their abstract style. Some contemporaries dismissed it as “the sleep talk of a lunatic,” yet it’s now considered a cornerstone of Korean modernism.
• “The Wings” (날개): A short story that explores alienation and existential despair.
• “Street Outside Street”: A surreal poem that collapses bodily pain, urban decay, and colonial critique into a single, haunting montage.
• Yi Sang suffered from tuberculosis and was arrested by Japanese imperial police shortly before his death. His illness and isolation deeply shaped his writing, which often reflects themes of loneliness, guilt, and societal fragmentation.
• He’s now celebrated as a visionary modernist, whose fractured language and imagery mirrored the fractured world he lived in. His work speaks powerfully to themes of colonial trauma, identity, and the limits of expression.

— Wind Series, Part 9

© TaeHun Yoon, 1970