Re-reading 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'

Life is given to everybody regardless of whether she or he wants it or not. We live that life. Though that life is tough from time to time, we have to live.

My family lived in Suwon, near Seoul, for about 10 years. We lived in a house with a garden in which large white magnolia flowers, light violet lilacs and red rose trees were planted, and small orange color pomegranates and cute cherries bore fruit. Through an alley up the way from my house, there was a pharmacy with a middle-aged female pharmacist, from there little bit to the right, there was a church. And there was a back gate of an elementary school that I attended also nearby.

Though it looks strange even now, once I wrote a poem titled "A Poet" when I was a first grader in middle school. It was made into a green, yellow color picture on a red wood panel with my poem written on it and it was exhibited at a students’ exhibition. "A person who walks along the road in the forest, a person who loves nature, a person who talks with nature ... I want to be such a poet ..." These are some of the lines of the poem that I still remember. In addition, I liked a poem titled "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" written by W. B. Yeats. I first found it on the cover page of a reference book in the English language. It was printed on a picturesque photograph of a light red dusk, blue clear sky, a calm lake and shades of little grasses. "I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree. And a small cabin build there, nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee ..." I was mesmerized by it.

I liked reading poems and novels and I decided to major in English literature at university. When I entered college, it was a cold winter just before spring in 1987. I went to Seoul with my brother by taking the subway and we stopped by a bookstore (Kyobo), in Gwangwhamun. I bought my first English book Frankenstein there.

When I was a freshman at university in 1987, the torture death case of Park Jong-chul came to light, a then-university student. Large-scale demonstrations for democratization took place throughout the city. Afterward, the June 10 demonstration and uprising, the June 29th declaration by then-President Roh Tae-woo and a direct presidential election followed. A newspaper advocating for progressiveness and democratization was founded at that time and I subscribed to it. One day I could read a big advertisement in that newspaper. Probably it must have been for sponsorship and subscription. It read; "In such a hard time, what did father do? Later our children will ask." When I read it, it occurred to me that it showed a rather patriarchal sexual division of labor and a public/private split between male and female that I had learned about in the feminist or women’s studies class. Upset by that advertisement, I wrote a letter to take issue with it and resist it and sent the letter to the address of the newspaper.

A few days later, there was another advertisement in the paper. But surprisingly, the advertisement was changed as follows; "In such a hard time, what did father and mother do? Later our children will ask." I was pleased. Though it was just a small matter, I was satisfied that I expressed my own opinion and changed the advertisement in the newspaper.

Lee Nan-hee studied English in college and theology at Hanshin University.