[One Sip of a Book] The Shame and Sorrow Left by Love: 'Love in a Liquid State'

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of connection with the book. We present meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

Starting her literary career through the 2018 ‘Daesan College Literature Award’, poet Kim Yeon-deok published her first poetry collection, The Future of Ash and Love, in 2021. Her first essay collection has now been released as the fifth series of Everyday and Eternity. It records fleeting people, lingering places, scenes of the day, and books read all together. The poet’s attitude, choosing to remember even the shame and sorrow left by love rather than forget them, is like a snowman unafraid to embrace the flame.

When I want to talk about love, or the object of love, I don’t know exactly why I always end up using spaces and models like wooden buildings, mountains, living rooms, miniature ice mountains, or miniature ice valleys. But it is clear that I have a particular attachment to images of wooden buildings and mountains. In the case of wooden buildings, rather than Western-style, I often imagine and write about images like my maternal grandmother’s house or old houses in Japanese films, with Eastern-style wooden floors and secretive staircases. _p.119

My liking for ice is similar to my liking for light and glass. Ice, when light passes through it, sparkles and becomes transparent in parts; if the light continues, it melts, and if placed in the cold, it freezes again. This property of ice felt similar to the heart. (...) Sitting in a wooden house, carving an ice mountain, thinking about love and the person I love. I think I like such scenes the most. When I think of such scenes, there is something like sadness and peace that approaches without any obligation. _p.121

These days, I often think that love is similar to a state of being dead. Like Marguerite Duras, who said that the feeling of happiness is ‘a somewhat dead feeling,’ I think perfect love might also be a somewhat dead state. A quiet state where wounds, adventures, and love for other objects are blocked; lying in one place, able to see only one scene; in other words, a brightly dead state. _p.133

Love in a Liquid State | Written by Kim Yeon-deok | Minumsa | 260 pages | 14,000 KRW