51st Korea Times Translation Awards Poetry Commendation Award: Two Colors in a Picture Book
Cover of Moon Bo-young's poetry collection "Pillar of Books" Courtesy of Mineumsa
Written by Moon Bo-young
Translated by Hedgie Choi
Two Colors in a Picture Book
This picture book is horizontal and composed of only two colors. Color 1 and Color 2 are equally unimportant. That by itself intrigues the reader.
If a character dies on the left page, the right page rejects it. Because only two colors exist in the picture book, coloring shadows isn't a real possibility.
The fact that someone has died disrupts the narrative flow. It's a kind of manpower shortage. It reflects the writer's inability to save people. Also, being unwilling to keep people alive is the writer's trademark.
Let's not ignore the fact that in order to illustrate one death, at least two people are spared.
Could the slight gap under the barn's roof represent the death of the character inside? The author has only two colors. The author's material impoverishment is so typical. But doesn't that only glorify this irresponsible death?
Saving a person from death and not saving a person from death appear to be equally important. This betrays the reader's curiosity.
Two colors are enough to express death's spatial depth. Quit it. The way you're going, you're going to wreck someone. One or two lines of dialogue per page is enough for a picture book.
The right page and left page can't agree on how to allude to the corpse's back. So death is delayed. In the end each page sticks to its own method. In the end the reader believes two people die. That's a trademark of the writer, says the children's book critic who wears his hat backwards.
The reader's interpretation
that the corpses are depicted like that
because there wasn't enough money for the artist to buy paint
is a fantasy, and
the praise people give
because they think that great work was created serendipitously through the writer's poverty
is equally unimportant.
That by itself intrigues the reader.
Turning the page is like opening the lid to a coffin.
Every time the coffin opens
the perspective of the world
of the person inside
is changed.
Fallen Kid
I want to drink water and
there's this fallen kid.
I want to drink water but
Because I need to drink water
some kid fell and I
need to eat this kid, but
the water fell.
Depending on the circumstances
I'm either water or the fallen kid, but
even if we fall, the kid pledges not to fall like water, and
falls like water.
There's a kid here.