The Poet Who Longs to Be a Sinner Author's Profile By Kim Yongman on Apr 20 2015 21:05:42 Vol.27 Spring 2015 Is this how Jean Valjean felt as he stole the bishop’s silverware? Or is this what passed through Faust’s mind as he made the pact with Mephistopheles? When my mind is familiar less with lofty words such as love or life and more with words of pain such as despair and futility, how am I to look into the fortress of the poet Kim Nam Jo who is revered as the “poet of love and life?” That fortress, where peace overflows, is filled with a sublime hymn. At its essence it is symbolized by water, fire, and flowers—a blinding brilliance. At any moment when I steal a glance into the fortress I could be rendered blind. And yet, it is not entirely impossible for me to safely take a glimpse. Try as I may to conquer the poet Kim Nam Jo in the manner in which she has done—and still struggles to do—I must confront Mary Magdalene.   A woman with a heart in flames, burning like a brazier for two thousand years: with long, black hair, a Jewess, barefoot, she follows the Lord constantly, everywhere.1   Above is a glimpse taken from Kim’s poem “Mary Magdalene 3.” Mary Magdalene whom Kim refers to as her “ultimate textbook”—someone she will never manage to reach—is the manifestation of the absolute values Kim pursues as a woman of faith; a person one would find in the final stage of enlightenment. If she were to achieve the status of Mary Magdalene, Kim would become one of God’s perfect creations, made to fully serve the Lord. That effort of overcoming the futility of life, a dominant tension of her own spiritual constitution, is an act that fulfills her reason to exist. Therefore, the path along her arduous journey toward those absolute values is a path as clear as day. This is because Mary Magdalene endured during her journey “with her soul seared by burns,” thus clearing the way for Kim to follow on her own journey in life.   Then, what sin has poet Kim committed to feel the need to repent, as Mary Magdalene did when she anointed the feet of Jesus with pure nard, a fragrant oil, on the streets of Capernaum? Of course there is none. In other words, Kim herself desires to be a sinner.   The sin of a person without sin—such a sin is not of this world. It is also not a sin of the flesh. It is rather a sin committed in the world of souls who strive to reach closer to the heavens, and therefore a sin that longs for more punishment and penitence. Here, the expression “longing for punishment” refers to atonement, an act like self-immolation, in which one tries to prove one’s true heart by taking the extreme measure of setting oneself on fire. So then, what does Kim mean when she speaks of practicing the art of true love through which she will prove by setting herself on fire? Without a doubt, it is the act of overcoming Mary Magdalene.   And so it is. Overcoming Mary Magdalene must be a journey of desperation that culminates at the side of Jesus; to get there, it is necessary for a ceremonial ritual to take place which transcends the limitations of human faculty—that is, there needs to be excruciating pain as in self-immolation.   For most, Kim Nam Jo is considered a poet of love, or a poet of life. Here, “life” refers to the essential elements that constitute the universe, where “the universe” refers not to the astronomical or scientific concept but rather to the universe of suffering embraced by the heavens. The characteristic of this notion of life makes it a life conceived in the womb of the “mother of life who arrived with her cold body,” and is a form of life (like the budding of spring) that becomes polished during the painful process of trimming its own body with a cold blade as one would cut a winter tree. Even truth, the willful form of all phenomena, has become refined only after significant bloodletting. In that sense, Kim’s notion of winter deviates with Christian imagery. If the ordeals of Jesus as he climbed to Golgotha carrying the cross to which he was later nailed, were a suffering in darkness, then his blissful resurrection emerges as the manifestation of a bright life. From Kim’s perspective, the former is a process of hardship such as self-immolation, while the latter could be seen as the resolution of longing in which Mary Magdalene is overcome through that hardship. Here, the resolution of longing must refer to the fruits of practicing true love, so the nature of Kim’s love becomes that much clearer. On Kim’s notion of love, the poet Ko Un once said, borrowing the medium of poetry, “To the poet who remains unchanged for a lifetime, however, love is not a mere plea for love. It is an act of penance, and another word for refinement.”   The depth of love is proportional not only to a sense of longing but also to the weight of agony. Indeed it is penance for the guilt of failing to love one’s beloved to the fullest extent that allows one to feel an aesthetic sense of bliss. However, love in the real world sooner or later reaches its existential limit. This is because such love is for another sentient being. As long as the object of love is human, it becomes impossible for any practice of love to overcome the sense of futility. In her poem “Wind,” Kim grumbles that when the wind blows, she would go with it and “be its bride,” but here, wind is not the physical flow of energy, but rather a correlative of her noble and pure beloved (Jesus) who was portrayed “as a being that came to visit wearing a coat and hat without staying anywhere round the borders of the orchard.” Then where does such confidence come from? It is already a sin to have such affections towards her beloved, much less the confidence that allows her to make a forward gesture towards her beloved as someone she would follow anywhere just to become his bride? This is because her desperate prayer to commit sin has grown. That is, the physical struggle to sublimate bitter grief and gut-wrenching sorrow into a pain that transcends limitations has, in effect, resolved the longing of the one who is in love. No matter how fulfilling a task, if one becomes too tired, one’s emotions naturally unwind, and it is that very unwinding that triggers the hope of resolving one’s sense of longing.   Then let us first clarify the meaning of sin. Ultimately, here the notion of sin refers to the psychology of self-torture. The preposterous desire to love that which cannot be loved is indeed the sin of sins that calls for repeated contrition, and that sin is self-torture. Below is an excerpt from “Face” that hints at how sin is the psychology of self-torture. By following the poetic vessel that begins with her earlier poem “Face” and leads to the later poem “Wind,” one can get a glimpse of the transcendental sublimation of self-torture. The tangible sense of death in the poem “Face,” from when Kim was still young and full of hope, must be an inborn attribute; it may even have been inevitable that she later wrote a poem such as “Wind” that can be understood in a similar context. In short, the connection between “Face” and “Wind” is not a coincidence but a fatal link that was spontaneously generated.   The white flag defeated The white blank of the will The white of the funeral flowers Like those matured pure white of the veil Here I plan to cover. *   Thanatos, the death instinct, or that which covers the face of the living with death, cannot have been created if not for the poet’s fundamental feelings of solitude and futility. Therefore, the poet’s awareness of death is not a product of despair or renunciation, but rather a pure white veil that longs to commit the gravest sin. Here, the poet stamps a seal with the prediction that the consciousness of death is the lofty mindset of one who is “mature.” This means that because she must commit a grave sin, and because that grave sin is self-torture, the poet becomes obsessed with tormenting herself by covering her face with death. As the only possibility of transcendence being achieved is through self-torture—even that too is considered an a priori wisdom of Kim’s—it is that very wisdom that is an omen for her grand “unrequited love” for an absolute being. The following is an excerpt from “Mary Magdalene 4”:   Your body became a shrine of sounds Of driving nails and those echoes. *   Finally, one hears the sound of hammering, nail after nail. The “shrine of sounds” must be that of Mary Magdalene’s body as well as the body of the poet. The poet is now placed in a moment when death and love become one. It is the moment when a finite life and a variable love are sublimated into eternal life and invariable love. In one’s heart, an intense light and heat rages like the sun. The essence of love becomes visible. It is as if one can feel the precious blood of Jesus. Tears begin to stream down. Those tears are products of perseverance during which red blood is bleached and overflows as a river of distilled water, and that is why they are not tears of sadness, but tears of joy earned through the endurance of pain.   The strongest thing in the world Is pain. *   The above line, which Kim has confessed is the common theme of her poetry, proves that the source of life and love in her poetry is pain. Therefore the fact that Kim longs to commit sin is a communicative weapon with which she aims to assign an eternal quality to her love by intensifying that love, that is, to serve Jesus Christ by his side. The poem “God Comes as a Human,” offers a glimpse into her bold attempts at such love.   Let us realize the mystery Which because of love, God comes as a human. *   A prerequisite for humankind’s love for God is eternal punishment. However, to indulge in the ensuing pain is now inexorable. After she persists in insisting that it is enough “if one closes the sliding paper door of the soul,” she also commits the cardinal sin of making a pathetic appeal to God to visit her in the form of man. She cannot rise to the heavens herself, so she asks him to come down to her!   However, because the impudent desire to commit that cardinal sin is none other than absolute bliss, Kim Nam Jo’s challenge against the heavens can only be seen as all the more reckless. But who knows? God might really come down, or perhaps Kim herself might become a god!   by Kim Yongman Novelist   1 Kim Nam Jo, Selected Poems of Kim Namjo, translated by David R. McCann and Hyunjae Yee Sallee, Cornell East Asia Series, no. 63 (Cornell Univ. East Asia Program, 1993), p. 79. * Translated by Sunny Jung   Twitter Facebook Google Email .