{"id":422,"date":"2018-10-02T12:30:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=422"},"modified":"2018-10-02T12:30:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T11:30:11","slug":"han-kang-the-white-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2018\/10\/02\/han-kang-the-white-book\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI will give you white things\u201d: an exquisite exploration of grief. Han Kang, The White Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Portobello Books, 2017)<\/h2>\n

The White Book <\/em>is a short meditation on mourning, as Han Kang explores through words a loss that has accompanied her throughout her life: her mother gave birth prematurely to a girl who lived only two hours, and Han has lived with the knowledge that \u201cI\u2019d been born and grown up in the place of that death.\u201d Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, The White Book <\/em>is another stunning collaboration between Han and Deborah Smith, though very different from the book with which they previously won the MBI, The Vegetarian<\/em>. As you may know, it was Smith\u2019s translation of The Vegetarian <\/em>that kick-started the Women Writing Women Translating Women <\/em>project<\/a>, and it took me a further seven months and over 40 books before I returned to another collaboration between the two. The White Book <\/em>had been on my to-read list for some time, but if I\u2019d been putting it off, it was because I suspected it was going to be bruising to read. And though in some ways it was, it is also an incredibly uplifting and beautiful book. Even the cover is stripped bare, and seems vulnerable, fragile, serene, with a raised typeface on the front making it seem like an object to touch and feel as much as to read. And it is certainly like no other book I\u2019ve read this year: it is close to poetry with its sparseness and its short lines, its placement on the pages leaving white spaces that seem to be both a void and a possibility. There is something almost spiritual in the reaching out for a connection with a sister to whom Han acknowledges that \u201cif you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now\u201d. Part invocation, part incantation, The White Book <\/em>explores a deeply internalised mourning and brings it to some kind of light: the two sisters were never to meet, and still cannot meet on the pages of a book, but yet there is some kind of in-between space, \u201cthe gap between darkness and light\u201d, between the blank page and the words on it, where they can each make out the other\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image from portobellobooks.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Smith\u2019s translation just took my breath away. I truly believe that she is a very special translator; I do not doubt that this was a difficult text to translate, to grapple with, to absorb and to reflect, but Smith makes it seem effortless. She has that rare talent of making a translation her own without deflecting or vampirising any of the admiration owed to the original. I\u2019m curious to read her translations of other authors, to know whether there\u2019s some special kind of alchemy between her and Han, or whether Smith brings this kind of vulnerable wisdom to all her projects… On almost every page there was a word or a turn of phrase that was so unexpected and yet so absolutely perfect, words layered with meaning, that when placed with the other words next to them turn something simple into something dazzling. Let me give you a couple of examples to explain what I mean: \u201cthey would have felt lacerated by happiness. Which would have been life. Which would have been beauty\u201d; \u201clike a clutch of words strewn over white paper\u201d: I would never have thought of being \u201clacerated\u201d by happiness, yet it shows how the yearning of a soul to live, to find hope, is something close to pain. And what is the mass noun for a collection of words? \u201cClutch\u201d says so much here: the grouping together of the words, the closeness of the black type on the white page \u2013 all of which is aesthetically evident in this book \u2013 but also clutching onto something intangible, desperately reaching out with words towards something that slips away\u2026 a tale that clutches at your heart.<\/p>\n

Growing up \u201cinside this story\u201d of her sister\u2019s death has clearly been a transformative experience for Han, knowing, as she acknowledges to the sister she has never seen, that \u201cmy life means yours is impossible\u201d. So what kind of ending can be given to a book this deep, this raw? Han parts from her sister, but draws into herself everything of her sister\u2019s life and death:<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t die. For God\u2019s sake don\u2019t die.
\nI open my lips and mutter the words you heard on opening your black eyes, you who were ignorant of language. I press down with all my strength onto the white paper. I believe that no better words of parting can be found. Don\u2019t die<\/em>. Live<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This inscription of love and loss onto the white paper, imprinted there with \u201call my strength\u201d, gives life to the sister; pressing down onto the paper, rather than writing on it, transfers the deep emotions in a near-transcendental way. Within the pages, \u201cwithin [\u2026] all of those white things\u201d, writes Han, \u201cI will breathe in the final breath you released.\u201d And so rather than imprisoning a barely-caught memory of her sister within the pages of a book, Han uses the book \u2013 both the writing of it, and the artefact of black on white \u2013 to bring her sister into herself, and give her life not by writing for her, but by living with her.\u00a0No easy \u201chealing through writing\u201d is offered up \u2013 though right from the start Han acknowledges that she is writing to transform her pain: \u201cthe process of writing it would be transformative, would itself transform, into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound. Something I needed.\u201d But to say that articulating pain means that it disappears is to simplify human experience in a way that Han resists, as she explains that \u201clearning to love life again is a long and complicated process.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is depth and complexity on every page of The White Book<\/em>; this is a book that aches and meditates, not one that offers answers, unless it is simply that \u201cnothing is eternal\u201d, not even suffering. It is both a journey and an endless circle: neither birth nor life is posited as the opposite of death, but rather they are all exposed with unflinching honesty as part of the same continuum. Just as white and black are not depicted as opposites, nor are life and death. Instead, life is plural, endless, twisting \u2013 and so is death. What struck me most of all \u2013 whether it is intentionally in the text or just my interpretation of it \u2013 is that this book is about love. \u201cI will give you white things\u201d writes Han, and offers to her sister, in writing, the breast milk she never lived to drink, the snowflakes she would never see, silence condensed into a pure white pebble, the candles that are lit to her memory. And in so doing, instead of living with the spectre of a dead girl, she offers her life from within herself, the white cloud of breath escaping on a cold morning. This is not a book to read if you want a story, a plotline, or a formula, but if you want to read something incandescent, then this is for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith (Portobello Books, 2017) The White Book is a short meditation on mourning, as Han Kang explores through words a loss that has accompanied her throughout her life: her mother gave birth prematurely to a girl who lived only two hours, and Han has lived with the knowledge that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[273,397,525,969,1055],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cI will give you white things\u201d: an exquisite exploration of grief. 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