문학과 지성사

Insinuating others’ misfortunes, a word that is not a word, echo.
The portrait of a being that returns at last without ever reaching.

The Portrait of Echo is a tour de force of Kim Haengsook, the paragon of Korean poetry whose complete divorce from the lyrical “I” of the bygone era and novel poetic experimentation brought about the new wave in the early 2000s. The poet’s thematic and aesthetic approaches might have shifted over time, yet her focus has remained rooted in the different “Is” within herself while branching out to understand others. As the title suggests, The Portrait of Echo lies in the extension of accepting Echo’s fate, of always repeating the last word of someone else without revealing her true self, as the portrait of her poetic self. Through the experience of allowing the external voices to resonate and become the body, language, and thought of the self, the speaker immolates herself, embracing others’ problems as her own. Reaching the edge of existence, on the brink of joining the other, she then chastises herself for being unable to help but return only to and as herself. Within this community of extreme sorrow, one that we can’t avoid no matter how hard we try, we are to discover yet another time, another possibility for a different relationship.