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Child's Bone

by Yi Sang November 9, 2016

Child's Bone

Literature Translation Institute of Korea
2013
9788993360295

LTIKorea · [20th Century Korean Literature] Child's Bone by Yi Sang

Yi Sang

Yi Sang (1910-1937) is a well-known author of the Japanese occupation period. He was active in every genre, writing poetry, fiction, and essays. His poems and stories, in particular, exhibit the characteristics of modernism in the 1930s. In his poems, he showed us the desolate landscape of the modern human mind, and with the use of anti-realist techniques in works such as “Crow’s Eye View, Poem No.I,” he gave us a stark view of his subject matter: pure anxiety and horror. In his stories, as well, he deconstructed the formal conventions of fiction and laid bare the modern condition. For example, in the short story “Wings,” he used stream-of-consciousness to express the alienation of modern human beings, who are fragmented, commodified, and unable to function in their daily lives. All 80 or so of his works are compiled together in the collected works by Yi Sang.

► Visit https://issuu.com/ltilibrary/docs/child_s_bone to read the full story.

Yi Sang was one of Korea’s most innovative writers of modern literature, enough to deem him Korea’s finest modernist. He died at the early age of 27, but despite his short literary career, he produced surreal and highly experimental pieces that were avant-garde and far ahead of their time. His short story “Child’s Bone”, which is written in the stream of consciousness narrative style, skillfully depicts the love and affection between a woman named “Yim” and the two men in her life—Yun and the narrator. The story is composed of six natural scenes, like that from a play, from which the narrator’s inner thoughts and feelings flow out.

These e-books were translated as part of LTI Korea’s e-book project, “20th Century Korean Literature.” Forty more e-books are available for free at LTI Korea’s E-Library (http://library.klti.or.kr/taxonomy/term/25410) or by searching for “20th Century Korean Literature” in Google Play.

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