Between Korea and France: Adventures in Literatures   By Claude Mouchard on Nov 09 2014 05:03:04 Vol.16 Summer 2012 “Oh gentle sound of the rain On the ground and on the roofs!” – Paul Verlaine   One evening, while I was at home in Orléans, in the middle of France, I read these phrases, these phrases from La Mousson1, a collection of short stories by the novelist Yun Heunggil2. It was raining. Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked. What I was reading, even though written by a Korean author, resembled what I was actually hearing. I could almost hear the sound of the rain hitting against a metal pail….But “the storage platform”? Nothing of the sort, obviously, where I was. Any normal French reader would need an explanatory note at this point: “a place behind a house where the pots containing fermented products to be used in flavoring various dishes such as soybean paste, kimchi (a Korean spicy cabbage dish)…”3 (One might point out, in passing, that it is not sufficient to translate a novel or poems: these need to be extended by explanatory notes, or a preface, or by some other means—and this is an art, a very subtle art.) Another rain sound: that of raindrops drumming on large, tall earthenware pots, placed outside, against a wall. It is not the same sound that Yun Heunggil talks of. This drumming of the rain on the pots came back to me while reading La Mousson that night in Orléans—I was remembering some moments of an evening I had spent two or three years earlier, somewhere in the southern part of Korea. Where exactly? I don’t know. When I experienced those moments, I only knew that I was on a mountain in Korea: exhausted and a bit drunk—and in any case strangely happy.