Soon after learning that Han Kang from South Korea was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I searched her works. I selected
Greek Lessons, a story about the bond between a woman who has lost her voice and
a man who is gradually losing his eyesight. He will become totally blind due to
an inherited condition.
Imagine for a moment the relationship between
two people in this situation. He is almost blind and she is mute. How do they
communicate?
The narrative is unconventional and unique in many ways. It is classified as a novel, but I think it belongs to the poetry genre. The plot of the novel is elusive. The author uses the interplay of metaphors, personifications, flashbacks, philosophical ideas and lyrical writing to explore the background of the two main characters in depth.
The chapters about the lady are narrated in third-person and the ones about the man are written in first-person. I think
this was done on purpose. It conveys a message about the female character.
“Even when she could talk, she’d always been
soft spoken. It wasn’t an issue of vocal cords or lung capacity. She just
didn’t like taking up space. Everyone occupies a certain amount of physical
space according to their body mass, but voice travels far beyond that. She had
no wish to disseminate her self.”
The female character is a poet and a former teacher, but
now she cannot teach anymore due to her condition. She has lost her voice and
also the custody of her son.
She
meets the visually impaired man when she joins the Greek lessons that he offers
at an institute in Seoul. During his childhood and youth, the man lived in
Germany as an expat, and the study of Greek had been a refuge for him, a
territory that other students found gruesome.
Now the Greek lessons offer the setting that
brings them together. Their vulnerabilities and fragility are naked, and their
bond sprouts unexpectedly beyond the realm of words.
Amid the grim circumstances of grief, two
alienated human souls find each other.
“Deep-sea
Forest”
We were
lying side by side in the woods under the sea then.
In a place
that had neither light nor sound.
You were not
visible.
And I was
not visible.
You did not
make a sound.
And I did
not make a sound.
Until you
made a very small sound,
Until a
tiny, frail bubble emerged
From between
your lips,
We lay
there.”
There are
allusions to Jorge Luis Borges’s metaphors and life several times. Jorge
Luis Borges was an Argentinian author who also lost his eyesight. I appreciate how some of her metaphors echo Borges’s reflections.
You can
watch this video to learn more about the author:
