"In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice
"In the spring, when I decided to write about white things the first thing I did was to make a list.
Swaddling bands. Newborn gown. Salt. Snow. Ice. Moon. Rice. Waves. Yulan. White bird. “Laughing Whitely”. Blank paper. White dog. White hair. Shroud.
With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and that the process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound …… I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written.
Han Kang is a genius. I could give her a noble prize. This book sits somewhere in the subset between a novel and the act of writing it and a collection of prose-poems and between truth and imagination. The fragments are themed on white objects as the author is inspired by sight of Warsaw (a city that had to rebuild itself back from complete destruction after second world war) to imagine the life of his mother's first daughter who lived only for two hours. If this sister had survived, Han would never have been born:
“This life only needed one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces."
There are readers who would only read with their brains - and are always hungry for ideas like 'The Vegetarian'. They won't be too impressed by this one. It is a very autobiographic, very personal book. There are so many times when she reminded me of Woolf in the way she could turn simple everyday thoughts into philosophical truths without ever losing lyricality:
Sugar Cubes She was around ten years old at the time. Her first outing to a coffee shop, accompanied by her aunt, was also the first time she set eyes on sugar cubes. Those squares wrapped in white paper possessed an almost unerring perfection, surely too perfect for her. She peeled the paper carefully off and brushed a finger over that granular surface. She crumbled a corner, touched it to her tongue, nibbled at that dizzying sweetness, then eventually placed it in a cup of water and sighed as she watched it melt away. She isn’t really partial to sweet things anymore, but the sight of a dish of wrapped sugar cubes still evokes the sense of witnessing something precious. There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.
It is books like these that make living worthwhile.
More Quotes (I could quote the entire book)
“White hair. She remembers one of her bosses, a middle-aged man who used to say how he longed to see a former lover again in old age, when her hair would be feather-white. When we’re really old... when every single strand of our hair has gone white, I want to see her then, absolutely. If there was a time when he would want to see her again, it would certainly be then. When both young and flesh would have fallen away. When there would be no time left for desire. When only one thing would remain to be done once that meeting was over: to separate. To part from their own bodies, and thus to part forever.”
“Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.”
"Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is, in fact, illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.”
“Breath-cloud. On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies’ warmth. Cold air rushes into dark lungs, soaks up the heat of our body and is exhaled as perceptible form, white flecked with grey. Our lives’ miraculous diffusion, out into the empty air.”
“Sand And she frequently forgot, That her body (all our bodies) is a house of sand. That it had shattered and is shattering still. Slipping stubbornly through fingers.”
*Now a deserving Nobel Laureate. This is one of best books I have read.*
"We were mutating. We didn’t know what our new shape would be."
I love the *Now a deserving Nobel Laureate. This is one of best books I have read.*
"We were mutating. We didn’t know what our new shape would be."
I love the International Booker Prize's new version. They always have at least a couple of gems in their long list. And this book is such a gem. You could start introducing it by saying that it is an autobiography, however, it isn't just biography of a single person, rather it is a biography of a whole French generation born around 1940. Since the industrial revolution, generational differences have widened exponentially. And a single person can live to see the world change many times in his or her life and that is the case with the generation the author talks about. The generation which is the protagonist of the novel (the pronoun used is 'we') was raised in a peasant conservative family and grew up through second world war, cold war, death of philosophers (philosophers are to French what babas are to Indians and authors are to Russians) liberalization of economy, metro, consumerisation of society, television, sexual revolution, computers, mobiles, 9/11 attacks etc. And it is the story of the author or people her age (she was born in 1940) went through those changes.
One of the motivations behind writing the book seems to be fear of being forgotten. The book starts talking about images will be forgotten.
"Yes. They’ll forget us. Such is our fate, there is no help for it. What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten or will seem unimportant. And it’s curious that we can’t possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem petty and ridiculous [. . .]. And it may be that our present life, which we accept so readily, will in time seem strange, inconvenient, stupid, not clean enough, perhaps even sinful . . ." —Anton Chekhov (one of the epigraphs
I think people feel this fear far more than they did earlier. It could be one of the reasons behind the click-happy culture that is developing the world over. The author regularly goes back to look back at her old pictures and talk about her memories of those times.
The next generations will just take for granted the very things they had to fight for. There are people who are jealous of their earlier generation who supposedly lived in 'simpler' times, I myself am jealous of future generations who will be born taking such things like internet and free books for granted and will have so much more to explore (provided global warming or Trump don't destroy the world of course):
"The moon, when we looked up at night, shone fixedly on billions of people, a world whose vastness and teeming activity we could feel inside. Consciousness stretched across the total space of the planet toward other galaxies. The infinite ceased to be imaginary. That is why it seemed inconceivable that one day we would die."
The book goes from the time of the birth of author to the moment till she has found her inspiration. In the last parts she is already thinking of writing the book:
"She would like to assemble these multiple images of herself, separate and discordant, thread them together with the story of her existence, starting with her birth during World War II up until the present day. Therefore, an existence that is singular but also merged with the movements of a generation. Each time she begins, she meets the same obstacles: how to represent the passage of historical time, the changing of things, ideas, and manners, and the private life of this woman? How to make the fresco of forty-five years coincide with the search for a self outside of History, the self of suspended moments transformed into the poems she wrote at twenty (“Solitude,” etc.)? Her main concern is the choice between “I” and “she.” There is something too permanent about “I,” something shrunken and stifling, whereas “she” is too exterior and remote. The image she has of her book in its nonexistent form, of the impression it should leave, is the one she retained from Gone with the Wind, read at the age of twelve, and later from Remembrance of Things Past, and more recently from Life and Fate: an image of light and shadow streaming over faces. But she hasn’t yet discovered how to do this. She awaits if not a revelation then a sign, a happenstance, as the madeleine dipped in tea was for Marcel Proust."
Most of the book is quotable but here are a few: Change of Values over time
"Some sentiments fell out of use, ones we no longer felt and found absurd, such as patriotism and honor, reserved for inferior times and abused populations. Shame, invoked at every turn, was a shadow of its former self—a passing aggravation, a short-lived wound to the ego. “Respect,” first and foremost, was the demand of that same ego for the recognition of others. One no longer heard the words “goodness” or “good people.” Pride in what one did was substituted for pride in what one was—female, gay, provincial, Jewish, Arab, etc."
"They pinned a button on their backpacks, the image of a black suitcase and the slogan Who’s next? They tucked it in a drawer at home as a memento. They signed petitions and forgot the cause, forgot they’d even signed them—who was Abu-Jamal, again? Then, overnight, their energy flagged. Effusion alternated with anomie, protest with consent. The word “struggle” was discredited as a throwback to Marxism, become an object of ridicule. As for “defending rights,” the first that came to mind were those of the consumer."
Development of language
"We lived in a profusion of everything, objects, information, and “expert opinions.” No sooner had an event occurred than someone issued a reflection, whatever the subject: manners of conduct, the body, orgasm, and euthanasia. Everything was discussed and decrypted. Between “addiction,” “resilience,” and “grief work,” there were countless ways of transposing life and emotions into words. Depression, alcoholism, frigidity, anorexia, unhappy childhoods, nothing was lived in vain anymore. The communication of experience and fantasies was pleasing to the conscience. Collective introspection provided models for putting the self into words. The repertoire of shared knowledge grew. The mind grew more agile, children learned at a younger age, and the slowness of school drove young people to distraction. They texted on their mobiles full tilt."
On arrival of television
"Only facts presented on TV achieved the status of reality. Everyone had a color set. The elderly turned it on at noon when the broadcast day began and fell asleep at night in front of the test pattern. In winter, the pious had only to watch The Lord’s Day to attend Mass at home. Housewives ironed while watching the soap operas on channel 1, or Madame Today on 2. Mothers kept children quiet with Les visiteurs du mercredi and The Wonderful World of Disney. For everyone, TV spelled the availability of immediate, low-cost distraction and peace of mind for wives, who were able to keep their husbands home on Sundays with the televised sports. It surrounded us with a constant and impalpable solicitude that bobbed along on the unanimously smiling and understanding faces of the show hosts (Jacques Martin and Stéphane Collaro), their easy affability (Bernard Pivot, Alain Decaux). We were increasingly united by the same curiosities, fears, and satisfaction."
On the arrival of Walkman (my favorite quote)
"With the Walkman, for the first time music entered the body. We could live inside music, walled off from the world."
On arrival of Internet
"The quick jump-click of the mouse on the screen was the measure of time. In less than two minutes, one could locate classmates from Camille Jullian high school in Bordeaux, second C2 class, 1980 to 1981, a song by Marie-Josée Neuville, an article from 1988 in L’Humanité. The web was the royal road for the remembrance of things past. Archives and all the old things that we’d never even imagined being able to find again arrived with no delay. Memory became inexhaustible, but the depth of time, its sensation conveyed through the odor and yellowing of paper, bent-back pages, paragraphs underscored in an unknown hand, had disappeared. Here we dwelled in the infinite present."
On click-happy culture
"We never stopped wanting to click on “save” and keep all the photos and films, viewable on the spot. Hundreds of images were scattered to the four winds of friendship, new social use of photos. They were transferred and filed in seldom-opened folders on the computer. What mattered most was the taking of the photos, existence captured and duplicated, recorded as we were living it—cherry trees in bloom, a hotel room in Strasbourg, a baby minutes after birth, places, events, scenes, objects, the complete conservation of life. With digital technology, we drained reality dry."
Commercialisation
"Commercial time invaded calendar time with renewed vigor. Christmas already, people sighed as toys and chocolate besieged the hypermarkets, just after All Saints’ weekend. They were depressed, already feeling the vise-grip of the holiday season, which forced one to think of oneself, one’s loneliness and purchasing power as compared to the rest of society—as if Christmas night were the crowning moment and end of all existence. It was a vision that made us want to go to sleep in November and wake up in the new year. We entered the most grueling period of desire and hatred of things, the peak of the consumer year. With loathing we stood in overheated lines, and performed the consumer act like a sacrifice, a duty of spending offered up to who-knows-what god in the name of who-knows-what salvation. Resigned to “doing something for Christmas,” we bought decorations for the tree and planned the menu for the holiday meal."
"In the middle of that first decade of the twenty-first century, which we never referred to as “the noughties,” at the table where we’d gathered the children, now getting on forty (though with their jeans and Converse sneakers they still looked like teens), and their partners—the same for several years now—and the grandchildren, and also a man who’d graduated from transitional secret lover to stable companion, eligible for family gatherings, conversation began with a swarm of back-and-forth questions about work, insecure or threatened by downsizing as a result of new ownership, modes of transport, schedules, holidays, how many cigarettes a day and quitting, leisure activities, photo and music downloads, recent purchases of new objects, the latest version of Windows, the latest model of mobile phone, 3G, attitudes toward consumption and time management, everything that helped them refresh their knowledge of one another, assess the other’s lifestyle while privately confirming the excellence of their own."
Still true for Indians
You could argue that most of East still lags behind by a couple of generation from the west. And Indians will find the following quotes relatable:
"For girls, shame lay in wait at every turn. The verdict of too loomed large over their clothing and makeup: too short, long, low-cut, tight, flashy, etc. The height of their heels, whom they saw, what time they went out and came in, the crotch of their underwear, month after month, were subject to all-pervasive surveillance by society."
"At every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think—no less by books or ads in the Métro than by funny stories—are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. Thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things. Then the silence breaks, little by little, or suddenly one day, and words burst forth, recognized at last, while underneath other silences start to form."
There are lots of beautiful ones. I will share only one.
The courtesy of the Blind The poet reads his lines to the blind. He hadn’t guessed that it wouldThere are lots of beautiful ones. I will share only one.
The courtesy of the Blind The poet reads his lines to the blind. He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard. His voice trembles. His hands shake. He senses that every sentence is put to the test of darkness. He must muddle through alone, without colors or lights. A treacherous endeavor for his poems’ stars, dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon, for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky. He reads—since it’s too late to stop now— about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field, red roofs that can be counted in the valley, the restless numbers on soccer players’ shirts, and the naked stranger standing in a half-shut door. He’d like to skip—although it can’t be done— all the saints on that cathedral ceiling, the parting wave from a train, the microscope lens, the ring casting a glow, the movie screens, the mirrors, the photo albums. But great is the courtesy of the blind, great is their forbearance, their largesse. They listen, smile, and applaud. One of them even comes up with a book turned wrongside out asking for an unseen autograph....more
“I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly,
“I still remember the moment when my gaze fell upon the mutilated face of a young woman, her features slashed through with a bayonet. Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't realised was there.”
A semi-fictional account of unnecessarily violent supression of a student uprising in Han Kang's home town, Gwangju, South Korea in 1980 through point of view of inter-related characters. I guess it would have been brutal to expect another 'The Vegetarian' from her but this is beautiful in its own way - showing what it means having to live through such incidences - how it changes the way one sees the world:
“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
what it means to lose someone dear to illogical brutalities of psychopaths that seem to be getting hold of power everywhere - that is, to lose them so entirely both body and soul taken away from you (there must be something soothing for a grieving person in the acts of last rites, something that helps them to come to terms with their loss - and several mothers were deprived of that 'something'):
“After you died I could not hold a funeral, And so my life became a funeral.”
“After you were lost to us, all our hours declined into evening. Evening are our streets and our houses. In this half-light that no longer darkens nor lightens, we eat, and walk, and sleep.”
and how survival in such cases is just a relative term - how you come out of such things different, broken irreparably (remember Headth Ledger's 'Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stranger.")
“I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.”
“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.”
*****
“Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away. Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. That what we really were was humans made of glass.”
“And it’s not because I’m tortured Or by some delirium swayed That I conjure up misfortune: It is just my trade.”
And she is really good at it. A bri “And it’s not because I’m tortured Or by some delirium swayed That I conjure up misfortune: It is just my trade.”
And she is really good at it. A brief review would be - Akhmatova rocks but here are a few of my favorite poems (a few, there are several more I copied):
"In closeness, there’s a sacred line That love and passion cannot cross, - Let lips in silence merge sublime And hearts explode from passion’s force.
Both friendship’s powerless and years Of fiery bliss without rancor, When spirit’s free and never nears Dull sensuality’s slow languor.
The ones who seek it - gaze awry, The ones who’ve found it - lament… By now, you’ve guessed the reason why My heart won’t beat under your hand."
****** "The evening sky is gold and vast. I’m soothed by April’s cool caress. You’re late. Too many years have passed, - I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.
Come closer, sit here by my side, Be gentle with me, treat me kind: This old blue notebook – look inside – I wrote these poems as a child.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you."
*** "I was born neither early nor late, This only blessed time was fleeting. Only God did not grant, I’m afraid, My heart to live without cheating.
Hence the parlor is all dark inside, And the friends that I’ve always held close, As though sorrowful birds of the night, Sing of love that, alas, never was."
And this one is my favorite: "Like a white stone at the bottom of the well, One recollection lies inside of me. I can’t and do not want to fight its spell: For me it’s both – my joy and agony.
It seems to me that anyone will sense it While gazing at my eyes with disbelief And instantly become more sad and pensive, While harking to the tale full of grief.
I’ve heard about gods who would endeavor To turn men into objects with a mind, To make these wondrous sorrows last forever. You’ve turned into this memory of mine."...more
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