Baek Eun-sun (Poet)

The world is not smooth and even. Some events and phenomena are cleverly layered over, one after another; others are torn open, gaping hollowly. There are people who can see these gaps. I have long believed that writers are precisely such people—those who gaze at the fissures produced by this world. Within our language, too, there exist gaps like wounds. Nothing can completely fill them, but if literature is born from this gaze, and if within literature we once again, as others, come to experience a self we never knew—then what kind of features will be reflected in the mirror of literature?

If, in order to become oneself, one must instead leave one’s original self behind, then how does the rediscovery of existence, the entirely new creation of existence, penetrate a person? Shin Yu-jin seems to grasp the answer. If this can be called the secret of the world, she is the one who composes melodies for that secret.

This is a journey through the long tunnel of literature, ultimately returning to the self. Through “becoming oneself,” a rebirth is achieved. Is this not precisely the path she has been walking all along, through translation and writing?

★ A new work by Shin Yu-jin, the Korean translator who has translated the most works by Annie Ernaux: The author, Shin Yu-jin, is a writer and literary translator. She has translated numerous works by Annie Ernaux, including A Frozen Woman, A Man‘s Place, The Years, The Uses of Photography, and A Real Place. This book is a humanities essay that follows the words and lives of French writers such as Duras, Camus, Ernaux, and Perec, exploring “what a person can break and what they can rebuild in order to ultimately become themselves.”

★ Using the “crack” as a metaphor, writing the complete journey of self-deconstruction and reconstruction: The book is divided into four major sections—“Discovering the Crack,” “Deconstruction and Collapse,” “The Moment of Pause,” and “Reconstruction of the Self.” The author takes fragments drawn from the works and lives of French writers and mirrors them onto our own lives, guiding readers to perceive and dismantle everything that constitutes the self, to fall into unfamiliar perceptions, and ultimately to return to themselves. She proposes: “Life is not an accumulation of constantly filling and stacking things, but a process of shaving away the excess and gradually becoming transparent.”

★ Highly recommended by poet Baek Eun-sun, with a reader rating of 9.8, selected for the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun new literature columns.

Shin Yu-jin, author of the essay collection Café Mont, the novel Feinbe, and the Korean translator who has translated the most works by Annie Ernaux, presents her new work, Tearing the Self Apart. Following the words and lives of French writers such as Marguerite Duras, Albert Camus, Annie Ernaux, and Georges Perec, the author shows us that reading literature can allow us to re-perceive life and reconstruct the self. At the same time, she explores what a person can break and what they can rebuild in order to ultimately become themselves.

The author also discovered that beneath the foundation of each writer’s life and literature lies a powerful image and question unique to them. For Marguerite Duras, it is potato soup; for Annie Ernaux, the narrative of Odysseus; for Albert Camus, the outsider; for Georges Perec, places; for Agota Kristof, the foreign language; for Camille Laurens, the mirror. Following these seemingly small yet decisive clues, the author interprets how a person confronts the given circumstances of life and arrives at a deeper truth.

The book is divided into four major sections: Part One, “Discovering the Crack”; Part Two, “Deconstruction and Collapse”; Part Three, “The Moment of Pause”; and Part Four, “Reconstruction of the Self.” The author takes fragments drawn from the works and lives of French writers and mirrors them onto our own lives, guiding readers to perceive and dismantle everything that constitutes the self, to fall into unfamiliar perceptions, and ultimately to return to themselves. Each chapter ends with an appendix to help readers experience each writer‘s literary world from a new angle: Duras’s “Potato Soup Recipe,” Sagan‘s “How to Wear Solitude,” Perec’s “Body Translation Notes,” and other forms of appendices, allowing readers to experience the writers‘ inner worlds in three dimensions.

Shin Yu-jin

Writer and literary translator. Holds a Master’s degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Paris VIII.

Translations: Tiago Rodrigues‘s Sopro, Hervé Guibert’s Chronicle of Mercy, Patti Smith‘s Proust’s Madeleine, Annie Ernaux‘s A Frozen Woman, A Man’s Place, The Years, The Uses of Photography, A Real Place, and others; selected and translated The Sentences of Saint-Exupéry

Works: Play collection Nua, essay collections Hazy Outside the Window, Café Mont, Fifteen Days, Fifteen Nights

Preface

Part One: Discovering the Crack
When the Soup Boils, Marguerite Duras — Duras’s Potato Soup Recipe
The Land Where the Sun Never Sets, Albert Camus — Pilgrimage to the Land of the Sun
Wearing a Sweater, Françoise Sagan — How to Wear Sagan‘s Solitude
The Place Farthest from Me, Jean Grenier — Five Perspectives on Reading Jean Grenier

Part Two: Deconstruction and Collapse
Between a Foreign Language and a Mother Tongue, Agota Kristof — Agota Kristof’s The Illiterate
The Narratives of Odysseuses, Annie Ernaux and Édouard Louis — The Odysseus Logbook
The Body Is the Original, Life Is the Translation, Daniel Pennac — Pennac‘s Body Translation Notes
A Few Suggestions for Translators
…