If There Were No Words

Up until 2016, the oeuvre of South Korean writer Han Kang (한강) was obscured from the rest of the world. At home, however, she is a literary superstar. She is a household name with a strong tie to literature. Her father is Han Seung-won, a prolific writer with a long list of published novels to his name. Her brother Han Dong Rim is also a writer. Her literary career commenced in 1993 with the publication of five of her poems in the winter issue of the quarterly magazine Literature and Society. A collection of short stories titled 여수의 사랑 (A Love of Yeosu) shortly followed in 1995. For years, she built a formidable literary career that included novels, essays, short stories, and poems.

Her works also earned her several accolades in South Korea such as the 25th Korean Novel Award for her novella Baby Buddha in 1999, the 2005 Yi-Sang Literary Award for Mongolian Mark, the 2010 Dong-ni Literary Award for Breath Fighting (2010), and the 2014 Manhae Literary Award. Kang’s first taste of recognition in the anglophone side of the world came in 2016, over two decades after her first work was published. Her 2007 novel 채식주의자 (Chaeshikju Uija), translated into English as The Vegetarian by Deborah Smith, won the Man Booker International Prize. She was the first Korean writer to win the award and the novel was the first to win it after its reconfiguration in 2015; the prize previously recognized a writer’s body of work rather than a single work. This victory elevated her from relative obscurity and, while the recognition was a bonus, it propelled her to global recognition.

Kang’s Man Booker International Prize victory also opened a window of opportunity for Kang. With the proverbial spotlight shone on her oeuvre, her older works were examined and some were translated into English, starting with her 2014 novel, 소년이 온다 (Soneyoni Onda) which was published as Human Acts in 2017. Her 2016 novella 흰 (Huin) soon followed in 2019 with the title The White Book. All of these works were translated by Deborah Smith. The latest of Kang’s older works to be translated into English is 희랍어 시간. Originally published in 2011, 희랍어 시간 was translated again by Smith but now with the assistance of Emily Yae Won. The English translation carried the Korean title’s literal translation, Greek Lessons.

“The language that had pricked and confined her like clothing made from a thousand needles abruptly disappeared. Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochleas and brain. Wrapped in thot foggy silence, the memories of the tongue and lips that have been used to pronounce, of the hand that had firmly gripped the pencil, grew remote. She no longer thought and language. She moved without language, and understood without language—as it had been before, she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body, both outside and in.”

~ Han Kang, Greek Lessons

At the heart of Kang’s fourth novel to be translated into English are two anonymous male and female characters whose paths converged at the most opportune moment in their lives in a classroom in South Korea’s capital Seoul. Opening the proceedings was the teacher and through flashbacks, we learn more about him. He was already in his late thirties and moved back to South Korea after spending most of his youth in a foreign land; he was born in South Korea but his family moved to Germany when he was still young. He was back in the comforts of his homeland and also his mother tongue. But even the familiarity of the environment barely provided a reprieve from the ghosts that were haunting him. Unbeknownst to everyone, he was progressively losing his eyesight.

Back in Seoul, he joined a private academy where he taught lessons on Ancient Greek. It was in the four corners of his classroom that he caught the attention of one of his students, a woman in her thirties, the book’s second character. Like the Greek class instructor, she has suddenly and mysteriously started losing one of her senses: the ability to speak. The psychotherapist she consulted pointed out several potential causes. She previously experienced the same spell of prolonged inability to speak once before when she was younger: “Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochleas and brain. Wrapped in that foggy silence, the memories of the tongue and lips that had been used to pronounce, of the hand that had firmly gripped the pencil, grew remote.”

With this, nothing about what her psychotherapist said was adding up. The reasons provided to her were too simplistic. She also started realizing that psychotherapy through a written medium is going to take time, hence, it will cause distress to her already depleting financial resources. This prompted her to seek healing through other quarters, an unexpected and unusual one: she enrolled in an ancient Greek class. In learning Ancient Greek, she was not hoping to regain what she lost but she was hoping to explore other possibilities outside of her native Korean tongue, outside of her comfort zone. One of the reasons she took the class was the fact that it was already buried in the annals of history; nobody has spoken it for centuries. It was at this class that she crossed paths with the unnamed male instructor.

One can easily surmise how their two individual threads will eventually be tied up cleanly; it wasn’t that nuanced. But Kang is too wise for that. Building up toward the cathartic conclusion, Kang indulged the readers with individual flashbacks. The narrative oscillates between the first-person point of view of the male character and the third-person point of view of the female character, the readers are provided a landscape of the unnamed characters’ lives. The female character, for instance, was a writer who produced three collections of serious poetry. Her psychotherapist also zeroed in on recent traumatic events as the primary causes for the loss of her ability to speak. She lost custody of her nine-year-old son to her ex-husband. When her mother passed away, she reached her tipping point.

“I didn’t take any photographs. The sights were recorded only in my eyes. The sounds, smells and tactile sensations that a camera cannot capture in any case were impressed on my ears, nose, face and hands. There was not yet a knife between me and the world, so at the time this was enough.“

~ Han Kang, Greek Lessons

Memories of seminal sensory experiences came to the fore. These are vestiges of what was and what has been. We read about the conversations the female character had with her son. He was brimming with enthusiasm. His curiosity was heartfully answered by his mother; these are poignant moments she treasured. She was caught off-guard when her ex-husband effectively cut off these intimate moments between mother and son. Meanwhile, the teacher was once a fervent traveler. He fed his eyes with idyllic landscapes and beautiful images. He did not take pictures and just let his senses memorize these scenes. These are images that are too beautiful that no camera can ever capture.

The complexities of language and communication, palpably, were the overriding themes of the story. Ironically, both characters existed in vacuums muffled by the noise of a metropolis teeming with life and activities. In studying a language that is virtually no longer spoken, the female character was trying to find silence. But it was in the obscurity of a language no longer spoken that the two characters started finding new meaning in their individual lives. As captured by Kang, the power and beauty of language extend beyond what is spoken. Silence, in itself, is a powerful language. Simple actions can convey beautiful messages that can be captured by the keen observer. In this aspect, Greek Lessons also underscored our profound impact on others. We may not always be cognizant of it but we are impacting those around us, even in small quantities.

Beyond language, Kang probed into the subtleties of human nature. By leaving her characters anonymous, Kang provided a more universal experience; the characters she conjured can be any of us. With the story unraveling with every turn of the page, we read about the sensibilities of the characters. As they gradually gravitated toward each other, their vulnerabilities were exposed. Just like us, despite their apparent detachment from the rest of the world, there were parts of them that longed for connection. They yearned to be loved and be understood, to be appreciated as they are. They once had these; she in the love she had for her son and him with a long-lost love in Germany who was deaf. Their individual stories resonate with us.

With the story exploring the nuances of language, Kang contrasted ancient Greek with insights into Hangul, the written form of the Korean language. She also reflected on the German language, the male character’s second language. Language was ubiquitous in the story and yet the romantic overtones were cultivated by a wordless interplay. The development of the character’s romance further underlined the beauty and power of language. It fittingly evoked a line from Martina McBride’s song, Valentine: If there were no words, no way to speak, I would still hear you. The contrast in the alternating points of view was a stroke of brilliance as one captured a voice unable to express itself while the other voice is lost in its thoughts. A cathartic ending, albeit expected, was earned.

“Once human beings moved from communicating in silence and only through unsegmented vocal expressions, such as ooh-ooh, to creating the first few words, language gradually acquired a system By the time this system arrived at its zenith, language had extremely elaborate and complex rules. And that, you see, is precisely the difficulty in learning an ancient language.“

~ Han Kang, Greek Lessons

With Kang’s adept writing, she was able to bring out the beauty of language in Greek Lessons. Her writing glued all of the novel’s wonderful elements together. The novel is a reminder of the wonderful and lyrical quality of her prose. She wove a riveting tale that one barely notices how she managed to subtly weave into the novel’s lush tapestry an element prevalent in her works: grief. The novel reverberated with details of loss and grief and she skillfully did this by using the power that lies within language. However, compared to her other works, the book pales in comparison. There was something unsure about the execution. But perhaps this can be attributed to the phase when the book was written. It was during a point in time when she was trying to recover the voice she lost after losing interest in fiction exacerbated by her own misgivings about language.

The beauty in Kang’s prose and writing lies in her ability to push her readers’ imagination. Through her works, she implores readers to probe deeper, to reevaluate their own perceptions and understanding. This was a quality palpable in Greek Lessons. With language and the loss of language – and by extension, senses – as vessels, Kang wove a lush tapestry that captured the pangs of grief and loss. Still, the short novel beaconed with hopeful messages. In finding the comfort of muteness in a language long lost, the two characters found the beauty of establishing connections with others, underscoring the profound impact we have on them. As a writer, Kang is no pushover. Through her works, she was able to establish a reputation for being an astute observer of the intricacies of human nature. This was palpable in Greek Lesson, a testament to the incisive quality of her prose.

“There were nights when I thought of that frightening silence of yours. A silence entirely different from R’s, as R’s silence had felt like an immense pool of undulating light. Yours was like a hand under ice that had turned stiff after slamming in vain at the frozen surface. A silence like a snowdrift blanketing a blood-stained body. I was genuinely afraid that your silence would turn to actual death. Turn rigid, then glacial.“

~ Han Kang, Greek Lessons
Ratings

72%

Characters (30%) – 23%
Plot (30%) – 18%
Writing (25%) – 20%
Overall Impact (15%) – 11%

It was back in 2017 when I first encountered Han Kang; I kept reading glowing reviews of her novel The Vegetarian. It was enough to pique my interest. I wasn’t initially impressed by the short novel but after becoming attuned to certain elements of Korean popular culture, I have started to understand the deep message woven into the story. Six years later, I am reading my fourth Han Kang novel, my third during the pandemic. I was elated when I learned about the release of Greek Lessons; it was even listed by Time Magazine as one of the best books this year, so far. Greek Lessons reminded me so much of The Vegetarian because I wasn’t originally keen on the story. I barely connected to the main characters but the more I think about the story, the more I appreciate it. This, I guess, is the impact of Kang’s work on me. They make me reevaluate my own perceptions and understanding, which I guess is a good thing as not many writers can do that. I am hoping that more of Kang’s work will be translated into English. Sure, I can read Hangul characters but my comprehension of the Korean language is pretty limited.

Book Specs

Author: Han Kang
Translator (from Korean): Deborah Smith
Publisher: Hogarth
Publishing Date: 2023 (2011)
Number of Pages: 173
Genre: Literary, Romance

Synopsis

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, while day by day he is losing his sight.

Soon the two discover that a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish – the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity – their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish – the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity – their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

About the Author

To learn more about Han Kang, please click here.