Scan barcode
apas's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I wish I could read the original Korean version which is supposed to have more footnotes. I found the book a nice read and it gave me a lot to think about, but it was also disappointing in a way. I also wish I had NOT read the introduction because it gave the ending away, really strange.
halibut's review against another edition
4.0
Framed as a detective story, the largest part is taken up by what I found an intersting version of the Ahasuerus / Wandering Jew story. This nested part feels like a mix of the early history of Judaism and gnostic gospels, with a tone similar to Borges Three Versions of Judas.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
『사람의 아들』 par Yi Munyol (이문열). Traduction de Choe Yun (최윤) et Patrick Maurus.
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
2.0
『사람의 아들』 by Yi Munyol (이문열). Translation by Brother Anthony of Taizé. The translation was fine despite certain strange decisions (removing not only over 350 footnotes but also nearly 10 pages' worth of text, both of which were admittedly approved by the author, but still).
He was tired of our god who never smiled or grew angry, who was never happy or sad, who never rebuked or praised; he came to think that actions disengaged from any notion of good or evil—evil without punishment, and good without reward—were all equally hollow.
arirang's review
4.0
"He was tired of our god who never smiled or grew angry, who was never happy or sad, who never rebuked or praised; he came to think that actions disengaged from any notion of good or evil - evil without punishment, and good without reward- were all equally hollow."
Book 20 in the praiseworthy Dalkey Library of Korean Literature, and my favourite so far. An intellectually fascinating theological novel.
사람의 아들 by 이문열 (Yi Mun-yol) was the great Korean author's first full-length novel, published in 1979 when he was 31 years old.
It has been translated into English as Son of Man by Brother Anthony, who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person, and who has played such a vital role in the understanding of Korean culture and literature in the English speaking world.
His translation includes some editorial decisions that would normally raise alarms with me - the deletion of 355 footnotes included in the original as "such an apparatus is not a usual feature of works of fiction published in English". I suspect it isn't a usual feature in Korean novels either, and surely English readers would need the information in the footnotes just as much as Korean readers (albeit Brother Anthony incorporates some into the main text), indeed if anything translations tend to engender extra footnotes. In a similar vein 9 pages of the original have been omitted entirely as the section "interrupts the flow of the narrative and gives an over-detailed account of a religion that is not destined to play any significant role in the novel."
But crucially, both decisions were made with the author's agreement and I'm sure, knowing Brother Anthony's reputation and nature, with integrity and great respect.
The novel is ostensibly a detective novel and starts as such, the opening lines so reminiscent of the hard-boiled genre. One can picture the movie with Bogart playing Detective Sergeant (경사) Nam Gyeongho (남 경호):
"Rain falling onto thick layers of accumulated dust had left the windows of the criminal investigations office so mottled that thet were virtually opaque. Beyond them, the dim outlines of roofs cold be seen, huddled grimly beneath a lowering city sky...Sergeant Nam fell into the state of melancholy that had recently become habitual for him... As he recalled the two little rented room he would return to after work, unless something unexpected occurred, Sergeant Nam glumly reviewed his career, over which the sense of impending failure loomed."
And Yi Mun-Yol respects the rules of the genre (perhaps overly so in my view, as one who is no fan of genre) providing us with a whodunit murder, a lengthy investigation criss-crossing Korea, and a neat resolution (although why they did it is the main point not who - fortunately, given that Brother Anthony rather gives away the murderer's identity in his introduction).
But in practice this detective novel is primarily a framing device for the main thrust of the book, an in-depth meditation on the nature of the divine and on Judeo-Christianity.
The murder victim is one Min Yoseop (민 요섭), a 32 year old former theological student. This is no ordinary case, as Nam soon realises, resignedly: "nine times out of ten incidents that were not connected with money or women turned into cases where he made no progress but only developed a headache.". A search of the victims room reveals his sole possession to be a bible inscribed with the Latin "Desperatus, credere potus. Mortuus, vivere potus." (Now that you have despaired, you can believe. Now that you have died, you can live.). And the only professor to remember him from his student explains why the initially brilliant student eventually quit the seminary: "He was more interested in the pursuit of knowledge than faith...Even if he was intellectually brilliant, we could not allow him to shake the foundations of belief."
The detective, and the reader, is rapidly led into deep theological waters. The professor immediately explains that Yoseop was interested in the teachings of the Japanese theologian Kagawa Toyohiko and in the beliefs of the Ophites, a gnostic sect that regarded the serpent from the Garden of Eden as a emissary of Wisdom not of an evil Satan. The rather clunky insertion of detailed biographical information for Kagawa the main story, exposition interrupting the narrative, is I suspect a feature of the translator's decision to omit the footnotes and instead incorporate necessary explanations in the body of the text.
Sergeant Nam soon comes into possession of a novel written by Min, and large sections of this are incorporated verbatim into the text forming a second novel within the main book.
The novel-in-a-novel starts arrestingly with a different take on the Nativity, stating that the Three Wise Men "must have been an embarrassment to Yahweh..when they arrived so noisily...with indiscretion".
Min's novel is based on the (rather dubious) European legend of the "Wandering Jew", condemned to wander the earth till Jesus returns as punishment for having harangued him on the road to calvary. Min turns him into a real historical figure, Ahasueres, born at the same time as Jesus, and explains what led to the point where he confronted Jesus (not, in his telling, their first meeting).
At precisely the same time that the boy Jesus is debating with the teachers in Jerusalem, Asahueres first comes across the "doubts that are bound to confront you as soon as you free yourself from the superficial exegeses of the scriptures and all the prejudices and fallacies that are so prevalent".
A deliberately false prophet explains to him that the Word is not enough in a world of suffering and teaches him what the Messiah must bring: "Be sure to remember: bread, a miracle, and power. The mere incarnation of the Word, just like the Word itself, can give us nothing". A partner in adultery argues that sin is a man-made concept "isn't it because people have told you that things are sins that now you regard them as sins?." And he himself wrestles with how sin can exist in a pre-destined world (reflecting the Gnostic beliefs of the Ophites and the Sect of Cain).
Asahueres in his twenties leaves Israel and spends a decade travelling the Roman empire, seeking different religions, on "a quest for a new god and a new truth that might be able to console him for the despair he felt about the old god of his people."
But his main discovery is that Yahweh, the "god of his people", has actually absorbed the best aspects of all the foreign gods. He traces how, in his view, the shephardic God of Abraham became the warrior God of Moses under the influence of the Egyptians, an agricultural God with permanent temples and burnt offerings under Elijiah and Hosea (as the Canaanite Baal), under Amos and Isaiah "he was transformed from a tribal god to the "absolute, unique god of the cosmos", and finally how the creation myth came from the Babylonians and the eschatology (Satan and the hierarchy of angels) from the Persian Zoroaster.
And he concludes both that "it was not Yahweh who made us but we who made Yahweh" but equally that the many foreign religions he experiences contain just "a faint image of my old, irrational god" rather than any new truth.
At times this part of the novel can get a little heavy going, with sentences like "although no precise texts have survived, Ahasueres is said to have spoken of belief in avatars and the future Buddha Maitreya, both of which can be understood in terms of metempsychosis, cyclical eschatology, and other transformations of the notion of rebirth.". One wonders if this would have been better or worse with the original multiple footnotes instead of exposition in the text.
Yi Munyol rather acknowledges the reader's difficulties via Sergeant Nam, who is of course reading the same sub-novel, found in the victim's belongings. At one point he laments that it "seemed to be playing intellectual games in antiquated spaces of history" and another finds him "slightly discouraged to find Ahasueres still wandering incomprehensibly in foreign lands. Considering the energy he expanded reading and analysing the novel, he was getting too little out of it." Fortunately this reader, at least, did not feel the same way.
Asahueres then moves back to Israel and confronts Jesus in the desert, both having fasted for 40 days and nights and each having achieved their own revelation. The words of his first teacher comes back to Asahueres - "Be sure to remember: bread, a miracle, and power." - and it is he not Satan, who applies the three temptations, arguing that only a Messiah who brings these things is any use to humanity.
Similarly other familiar challenges to Jesus during his ministry are attributed to Asahueres who ultimately even coordinates his betrayal and execution. And, in Min's account, Asahueres is not condemned to wander the earth but rather chooses to do so, so as to re-confront Jesus should he ever return: Jesus's lament becomes "what will you do about that man who will walk the earth for thousands of years, whispering to people? How can you be sure that when I next come down into this world there will not be another cross waiting for me, that I shall not once more return home in tears? I ask you again, unless it is something I must accept, take this cup from me."
Asahueres's own revelation in the desert was of the real god he sought, and Min Yoseop takes up the theme. Based loosely on the Ophite teachings, Min postulates that what the bible calls Satan is actually a second dual divinity alongside Yahweh - Freedom to his Justice, and Wisdom to his Goodness. Far from it being this divinity / Satan who rebelled, in Min's account Yahweh went his own way, and the lack of balance from the god of Wisdom accounts for much of the woes of the world. This god, just before the coming of Jesus, pleads with Yahweh to either re-unite with him and leave the world alone without any need for divine intervention, or as a second-best option to at least remove all traces of freedom and wisdom and return people to the Garden of Eden days, taking away free-will. But of course salvation via faith is key to the Christian religion that Jesus establishes.
Asahueres in the inner-novel and Min Yoseop in the detective story both become the prophets of this second god, but as the opening quote to my review suggests Min eventually becomes disillusioned with this disengaged divinity, and this leads to his murder.
Fascinating - as the length of my review shows.
Book 20 in the praiseworthy Dalkey Library of Korean Literature, and my favourite so far. An intellectually fascinating theological novel.
사람의 아들 by 이문열 (Yi Mun-yol) was the great Korean author's first full-length novel, published in 1979 when he was 31 years old.
It has been translated into English as Son of Man by Brother Anthony, who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person, and who has played such a vital role in the understanding of Korean culture and literature in the English speaking world.
His translation includes some editorial decisions that would normally raise alarms with me - the deletion of 355 footnotes included in the original as "such an apparatus is not a usual feature of works of fiction published in English". I suspect it isn't a usual feature in Korean novels either, and surely English readers would need the information in the footnotes just as much as Korean readers (albeit Brother Anthony incorporates some into the main text), indeed if anything translations tend to engender extra footnotes. In a similar vein 9 pages of the original have been omitted entirely as the section "interrupts the flow of the narrative and gives an over-detailed account of a religion that is not destined to play any significant role in the novel."
But crucially, both decisions were made with the author's agreement and I'm sure, knowing Brother Anthony's reputation and nature, with integrity and great respect.
The novel is ostensibly a detective novel and starts as such, the opening lines so reminiscent of the hard-boiled genre. One can picture the movie with Bogart playing Detective Sergeant (경사) Nam Gyeongho (남 경호):
"Rain falling onto thick layers of accumulated dust had left the windows of the criminal investigations office so mottled that thet were virtually opaque. Beyond them, the dim outlines of roofs cold be seen, huddled grimly beneath a lowering city sky...Sergeant Nam fell into the state of melancholy that had recently become habitual for him... As he recalled the two little rented room he would return to after work, unless something unexpected occurred, Sergeant Nam glumly reviewed his career, over which the sense of impending failure loomed."
And Yi Mun-Yol respects the rules of the genre (perhaps overly so in my view, as one who is no fan of genre) providing us with a whodunit murder, a lengthy investigation criss-crossing Korea, and a neat resolution (although why they did it is the main point not who - fortunately, given that Brother Anthony rather gives away the murderer's identity in his introduction).
But in practice this detective novel is primarily a framing device for the main thrust of the book, an in-depth meditation on the nature of the divine and on Judeo-Christianity.
The murder victim is one Min Yoseop (민 요섭), a 32 year old former theological student. This is no ordinary case, as Nam soon realises, resignedly: "nine times out of ten incidents that were not connected with money or women turned into cases where he made no progress but only developed a headache.". A search of the victims room reveals his sole possession to be a bible inscribed with the Latin "Desperatus, credere potus. Mortuus, vivere potus." (Now that you have despaired, you can believe. Now that you have died, you can live.). And the only professor to remember him from his student explains why the initially brilliant student eventually quit the seminary: "He was more interested in the pursuit of knowledge than faith...Even if he was intellectually brilliant, we could not allow him to shake the foundations of belief."
The detective, and the reader, is rapidly led into deep theological waters. The professor immediately explains that Yoseop was interested in the teachings of the Japanese theologian Kagawa Toyohiko and in the beliefs of the Ophites, a gnostic sect that regarded the serpent from the Garden of Eden as a emissary of Wisdom not of an evil Satan. The rather clunky insertion of detailed biographical information for Kagawa the main story, exposition interrupting the narrative, is I suspect a feature of the translator's decision to omit the footnotes and instead incorporate necessary explanations in the body of the text.
Sergeant Nam soon comes into possession of a novel written by Min, and large sections of this are incorporated verbatim into the text forming a second novel within the main book.
The novel-in-a-novel starts arrestingly with a different take on the Nativity, stating that the Three Wise Men "must have been an embarrassment to Yahweh..when they arrived so noisily...with indiscretion".
Min's novel is based on the (rather dubious) European legend of the "Wandering Jew", condemned to wander the earth till Jesus returns as punishment for having harangued him on the road to calvary. Min turns him into a real historical figure, Ahasueres, born at the same time as Jesus, and explains what led to the point where he confronted Jesus (not, in his telling, their first meeting).
At precisely the same time that the boy Jesus is debating with the teachers in Jerusalem, Asahueres first comes across the "doubts that are bound to confront you as soon as you free yourself from the superficial exegeses of the scriptures and all the prejudices and fallacies that are so prevalent".
A deliberately false prophet explains to him that the Word is not enough in a world of suffering and teaches him what the Messiah must bring: "Be sure to remember: bread, a miracle, and power. The mere incarnation of the Word, just like the Word itself, can give us nothing". A partner in adultery argues that sin is a man-made concept "isn't it because people have told you that things are sins that now you regard them as sins?." And he himself wrestles with how sin can exist in a pre-destined world (reflecting the Gnostic beliefs of the Ophites and the Sect of Cain).
Asahueres in his twenties leaves Israel and spends a decade travelling the Roman empire, seeking different religions, on "a quest for a new god and a new truth that might be able to console him for the despair he felt about the old god of his people."
But his main discovery is that Yahweh, the "god of his people", has actually absorbed the best aspects of all the foreign gods. He traces how, in his view, the shephardic God of Abraham became the warrior God of Moses under the influence of the Egyptians, an agricultural God with permanent temples and burnt offerings under Elijiah and Hosea (as the Canaanite Baal), under Amos and Isaiah "he was transformed from a tribal god to the "absolute, unique god of the cosmos", and finally how the creation myth came from the Babylonians and the eschatology (Satan and the hierarchy of angels) from the Persian Zoroaster.
And he concludes both that "it was not Yahweh who made us but we who made Yahweh" but equally that the many foreign religions he experiences contain just "a faint image of my old, irrational god" rather than any new truth.
At times this part of the novel can get a little heavy going, with sentences like "although no precise texts have survived, Ahasueres is said to have spoken of belief in avatars and the future Buddha Maitreya, both of which can be understood in terms of metempsychosis, cyclical eschatology, and other transformations of the notion of rebirth.". One wonders if this would have been better or worse with the original multiple footnotes instead of exposition in the text.
Yi Munyol rather acknowledges the reader's difficulties via Sergeant Nam, who is of course reading the same sub-novel, found in the victim's belongings. At one point he laments that it "seemed to be playing intellectual games in antiquated spaces of history" and another finds him "slightly discouraged to find Ahasueres still wandering incomprehensibly in foreign lands. Considering the energy he expanded reading and analysing the novel, he was getting too little out of it." Fortunately this reader, at least, did not feel the same way.
Asahueres then moves back to Israel and confronts Jesus in the desert, both having fasted for 40 days and nights and each having achieved their own revelation. The words of his first teacher comes back to Asahueres - "Be sure to remember: bread, a miracle, and power." - and it is he not Satan, who applies the three temptations, arguing that only a Messiah who brings these things is any use to humanity.
Similarly other familiar challenges to Jesus during his ministry are attributed to Asahueres who ultimately even coordinates his betrayal and execution. And, in Min's account, Asahueres is not condemned to wander the earth but rather chooses to do so, so as to re-confront Jesus should he ever return: Jesus's lament becomes "what will you do about that man who will walk the earth for thousands of years, whispering to people? How can you be sure that when I next come down into this world there will not be another cross waiting for me, that I shall not once more return home in tears? I ask you again, unless it is something I must accept, take this cup from me."
Asahueres's own revelation in the desert was of the real god he sought, and Min Yoseop takes up the theme. Based loosely on the Ophite teachings, Min postulates that what the bible calls Satan is actually a second dual divinity alongside Yahweh - Freedom to his Justice, and Wisdom to his Goodness. Far from it being this divinity / Satan who rebelled, in Min's account Yahweh went his own way, and the lack of balance from the god of Wisdom accounts for much of the woes of the world. This god, just before the coming of Jesus, pleads with Yahweh to either re-unite with him and leave the world alone without any need for divine intervention, or as a second-best option to at least remove all traces of freedom and wisdom and return people to the Garden of Eden days, taking away free-will. But of course salvation via faith is key to the Christian religion that Jesus establishes.
Asahueres in the inner-novel and Min Yoseop in the detective story both become the prophets of this second god, but as the opening quote to my review suggests Min eventually becomes disillusioned with this disengaged divinity, and this leads to his murder.
Fascinating - as the length of my review shows.
More...