K-LIT REVIEW In 'Greek Lessons,' Han Kang reflects on mysterious power of language

The cover of "Greek Lessons" by Han Kang / Courtesy of Tongbang Books

Han Kang’s best-known work "The Vegetarian" took the international literary world by storm when it won the International Booker Prize in 2016. Her subsequent novels "Human Acts" and "The White Book" both received English translations. Due to Han’s growing prominence in the international literary world, her 2011 novel has now been translated into English with the title "Greek Lessons."

An unnamed woman enrolls in an ancient Greek course at a private academy. She sits in the classes silently, but studying intently. Whereas in "The Vegetarian," the protagonist Yeong-hye begins refusing to eat meat and gradually stops eating altogether, here the protagonist has stopped speaking, hence her silence in class.

The woman’s psychiatrist tells her that her language loss may be due to her mother’s passing or losing custody of her son, but the woman feels the reasons are harder to pin down. Though she has no immediate practical use for the dead language of ancient Greek, she does have a reason for learning it: she hopes to reconnect with her own language by learning a wholly different one.

Han also writes from the perspective of the woman’s language teacher. Also unnamed, he is a Korean who spent much of his life in Germany, and he seems to feel out of place in modern Korea. More urgently, he is gradually but surely going blind. He memorizes his lessons in advance and does everything he can to hide his condition from his students. Realizing he won’t be able to read or write much longer, he pours out his memories and emotions in letters to loved ones, savoring the power of written language. He is also newly and acutely aware of the passage of time, his memories of youth and the little time he may have left before his eyesight totally disappears.

Gradually these two deeply introspective characters begin getting to know each other and strike up an unlikely, wordless friendship. But this is not a novel that one reads for conventional plot or character arcs. There is little in the way of a conventional resolution here. "Greek Lessons" is a highly elliptical novel, even more so than Han’s better-known "The Vegetarian." While "The Vegetarian" is distressing, "Greek Lessons" slowly reveals itself as a tender, subtly uplifting work. Though it would be a mistake to read this book as directly autobiographical, it’s obviously a product of Han’s own struggles with belonging, language and writer’s block.

There may seem something paradoxical about using the medium of literature to express an inability to speak, or a weariness with language, but Han is exploring this paradox deliberately, and also pushing the possibilities of language to its limits. At times the protagonist recalls spoken language as something traumatic, akin to vomiting. The fact that this version is a translation adds a further layer of disassociation that plays into Han’s theme of language, especially in the passages that describe Hangeul and the way that ancient Greek allows the speaker, tense and situation to be condensed into a single word.

This book's translation is jointly by Han’s long-standing translator Deborah Smith, along with Emily Yae Won. Their translation showcases Han’s style: short sentences, sensuous vocabulary and well-chosen details.

Novelist Han Kang / Yonhap

With its brief vignettes and eventual lapse into poetry, "Greek Lessons" is more like Robert Bresson’s "Notes on the Cinematographer" than it is a conventional novel. One of Bresson’s gnomic maxims about filmmaking is “if the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear.” A similar sentiment is explored in "Greek Lessons": the woman’s inability to speak gives much more to her eyes: she is now a keen observer of every visual detail. A particularly evocative passage describes the woman’s nighttime travels through Seoul on foot and by bus, past fighting drunks, discarded cans and bottles, elegant Seoulites and brightly lit bakeries and jewelry stores — she even notices that the color setting is wrong on the bus driver’s television.

Readers looking for some immediate insight into contemporary South Korea may not find what they are looking for within the pages of "Greek Lessons." But anyone who has thought about the world differently as a result of learning — or even just encountering — an additional language will find much to think about in this short yet multifaceted novel.

The book is available through Tongbang Books. Visit dbbooks.co.kr to order a copy.

John A. Riley is a writer and university lecturer based in Daejeon. He has written for The Asian Review of Books, Popmatters, Screen and numerous other publications.