Contemporary society holds speed, clarity, and rationality as traits of indisputable value. We’ve grown increasingly impatient and rapidly consume easy-to-digest novels and TV storylines. When approaching Bae Su-ah’s novel Uru Is Going To Be Late, however, the reader is immediately intercepted by the text. The chronology and characters are ambiguous; the story chaotic, with episodic fragments of memory scattered throughout; and the metaphors sometimes border on the absurd. Despite the vagueness of the text, one still finds oneself turning page after page. What is the force behind this mysterious allure?

  Uru Is Going to be Late is composed of three episodes, each featuring a female protagonist named Uru. The stories take place a few days after January 23, 2019, just after the death of the American filmmaker Jonas Mekas. Although the three Urus have different lives in different spaces, they cannot remember who they are or where they’re from. Still, they share the common themes of memory and identity loss. In the first episode, Uru travels to a foreign country to meet a shaman. In the second episode, after living in Brazil for some decades, Uru returns to the home of her deceased mother to write a novel. The third Uru finds herself at a hotel within a dream and finally decides to leave everything behind.

  The timeline is disjointed, and the only certainties that resonate with the readers are tension, anxiety, and nostalgia along with a faint hope, and an intangible, looming presence. Grappling with this fragmented text, readers are pulled between the lines, peering beyond the words. Behind the text, unseen and inexpressible entities come and go, occasionally revealing passages that speak to the essence of life. Just as readers grasp something, they feel a momentary sense of relief and excitement, but it is merely a shadow that quickly slips back into the space between the lines.

  The author Bae Su-ah studied in Germany, engaging in both creative writing and translation work. She holds a unique position among Korean writers due to her avant-garde style, which attempts to deconstruct grammar and syntax. Her search for the true essence of things through disorder, rather than consistent, structured thought, may have been cultivated through her experience as a translator. Translation requires conveying not only accuracy, but also the essence and feeling of the original work.

  This work captures Bae’s distinctive approach: it is visually conceived, like a monologue in a theatrical performance. The three episodes were inspired by the structure of a triptych, characterized by intense impressions that linger like afterimages. One such lingering impression is the memory of the primordial. It might be found in the protagonist’s name “Uru,” which brings to mind the first Mesopotamian city-state of Uruk (or it may be a reference to the German prefix ur-, from which we get uroboros, the ancient symbol of a serpent eating its tail—Ed.), or in the storytelling done through Uru’s deceased mother. Another afterimage is the flesh through which we experience bodily sensations like dancing and eating. There are words that are “spoken” through the body and then disappear—the unexpressed words within.

  In an interview, Bae stated that she does not wish to control the direction words take. Rather, she lets the words take her in the direction they want to go. She called these “words of passivity.” She writes by listening to the voices echoing within her—waiting, and surrendering herself to them when they appear. Something primitive lies therein. Bae finds hope in such passivity. As a tactic to ease the violence felt in a world such as ours, one might even call it “adaptability.”

  Grasping a sense of awe and hope in moments that escape expression or brushing against the soul through a passage dripping in vivid colors, through which we might touch the soul—these sensations allow us to experience the shamanistic aspects still inherent in modern Korean life.

  Opening a channel of communication with the reader through her writing, Bae manages to express the inexpressible. Her endless challenge is writing itself. Only Bae can open this communication channel that carves out a new possibility in literature, returning to the essence of what a word is/can mean. Through repeated readings of this book, readers too will eventually pass through that channel to a world of new meaning, perhaps like Uru’s journey.

 



Translated by Haruka Hirabaru

  


 

Naoko Hirabaru

Journalist, The West Japan Daily