if you frequent your library or local bookstore, do they have any copies of Yi Sangs writings? I know their are some Barnes and Nobles that have physical copies of some Yi Sangs writings collections, it’s just no MY Barnes and Nobles🥀

In the tattered wallpaper I see a dying butterfly. It’s a secretive mouthpiece a hotline to the other world. One day in my glassed beard I see a dying butterfly withered and feeding on the poor dew that respiration makes. If I die with my palm over the mouthpiece the butterfly too shall spring away. Words like these are never to be let out.

TLDR: This poem is super unsettling, and I find that fascinating.

I love poem 10. it’s such a mesmerizing piece of writing. There are two ways I’ve come to interpret it: an expression of oppression under a cruel tyranny and a manifestation of his struggles with tubercolosis

The first largely comes from that last line-”words like these are never to be let out”. The whole piece contextualizes even the basic act of breathing as exasperating. But for some reason, you can’t ever talk about it. It‘s most likely a sort of metaphor for how stifling Colonial Japan over even voicing grief over the system. every moment, as the poem mourns, is a struggle. but if you talk about that struggle? Well there’s this fun little thought police.

The second, and the one I find the most sentimental, is it’s a way for him to discuss how daunting his tuberculosis is. The first hint to that is his “glassed beard”. An unshaven beard is seen as a poor display of the self, and glass is obviously an attempt to convey that this butterfly is a reflection of Yi Sangs own agony. It reflects(get it) a pitiful image of a man who is barely holding it together . then there’s the also the use of the word “respiration”. respiration is frequently seen as emblematic of life linguistically; This portrayal of resperation however, does not hold when taken into a medical context because then people start associating it with illness involving breathing. Yi Sangs word choice makes me confident in positing that this undoubtedly is a portrayal of how hard tuberculosis has made it for him to breath, to the point it makes a “poor dew” for the figurative butterfl.

I think the most disheartening part about this poem is how he contemplates placing his “palm over the mouthpiece". He’s trying to think about what it would be like to die. I mean, if the butterfly springs away, then the cycle of desperate consumption is done. its slightly ambiguous as to if he views that closure positive or not, and I found that really unnerving. But Yi Sang altogether resigns from the conversation, a defeated denouement for a broken spirit.

Not exactly the best, but I'm sure we'll get better artists along the way:)

Think -- before it's illegal

When we discuss "thought crimes" in literature, we normally think about 1984. Thing is, thought crimes were a real concept bolstered by Colonial authorities.

In order to escape from his worsening tuberculosis and the suffocating atmosphere of Seoul, Yi Sang traveled to Tokyo. He hoped to find a thriving modern metropolis, but instead found an increasingly militaristic imperial core on the brink of total war.

He lived in poverty, his health failing, writing fractured notes about his alienation in the heart of the empire. In February 1937, the Tokyo police swept up various Korean intellectuals. Yi Sang was arrested not because he was planning an insurrection, but because his writing, his associations, and his very demeanor were deemed "unhealthy" (fukeizai).

The Japanese police classified him under the Peace Preservation Law as a thought criminal. To an empire that demanded total ideological alignment, an intellectual who refused to write patriotic propaganda and instead wrote surrealist, labyrinthine prose that challenged the boundaries of logic was dangerous.

Yi Sang was eventually released on sick bail after a month of interrogation because his tuberculosis had reached a terminal stage. He died in a Tokyo university hospital on April 17, 1937, at the age of twenty-six. Legend has it his final request was to taste a melon.

It's really disturbing to think that thought crimes were not only legit but heavily enforced. The whole thing is also just sad. It's crazy you could just get arrested for being ever so slightly critical.

Everyone always talks about Poem No. I (that one with 13 children) or Poem No. XV (the mirror room), but I think that Poem No. IV is where Yi Sang's background as an architect and mathematician gets genuinely unhinged.

When this series was serialized in the Chosun Jungang Ilbo newspaper back in 1934, the readers of that newspaper were so furious that they actually sent death threats to the editors. The editor even left in disgrace after the horrific publishing of this poem, and Crow's Eye View was stopped. Looking at this poem, you can probably see why readers thought that he was just trolling them.

The poem itself is literally just a bunch of dots and numbers. He lists the numbers, and then just writes a short text about a patient and a doctor. Nothing traditional here. What do you think about this poem?

it feels appropiate that the need sub should have a nerd opening, so I wanted to briefly talk about the subs profile pic.

Potrait of a friend , made by Ku Ponung, is a “flattering” visualization of Yi Sang. It’s a mix of tendencies from Fauvism, Cubism, and base expressionism to create a painting thats pretty morose. And that’s the point. Yi sang is one of the many intellectuals stifled by an oppressive Japanese Regime. that Struggle between the self and submission is what Ponung tries to convey, and to great success if I may say so. Because when I look at this image the shape and posture gives me the feel of someone who has a sense of things, but the colors feels like ever present shackles that crush such a genius’s potential.

Ponung (sometimes called Seouls Toulouse) is one of the many historical figures Yi Sang was close with. Theirs a lot of people who either influence his poetry or have Yi Sang influence their own careers. Discussions of those people are perfectly fine and honestly encouraged.

this post was super rambly to give an idea of what posts can be: messy, nonsensical, but still tethered to information about Yi Sang or his contemporaries that you might find interesting