[Book Sip] Odyssey of World Literature

Editor's NoteSome sentences encapsulate the entire content of a book, while others instantly resonate with the reader’s heart, creating a connection with the book. We excerpt and introduce such meaningful sentences from books.

Bringing together timelessly beloved world literary classics, this book opens a space for deep reflection. The author rereads various works cherished by modern readers under 16 themes such as ‘love,’ ‘modernity,’ and ‘salvation,’ adding new perspectives and presenting them to readers. For example, if, as Richard Dawkins argues, life is merely a vehicle for genes, then is Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947) about human tragedy? Or is it about the crisis of human genes? Also, the difference between the ‘tragedy’ in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and the ‘tragedy’ in The Great Gatsby and Contempt raises the question of whether it is because the limits of social status disappeared in the modern era, leaving only ‘love.’

“The film Let the Sunshine In, starring French actress Juliette Binoche who entered full middle age, was released in April 2018 and is a love story. The charming middle-aged woman Isabelle, played by Binoche, is always yearning for love but never reaches it?in other words, she is a lonely woman who guards her riverside hill alone without experiencing an ordinary miracle. This film is not about someone loving someone else, but about someone loving. Binoche’s character, who insists on loving no matter what, struggles clumsily with the determination to sell herself cheaply for love, whether because life is hard, she is too lonely, or for other reasons.” ? From Chapter 1: Love, Its Hollow Fulfillment and Beautiful Lack

“Josef K., the protagonist of The Trial, is arrested one morning ‘though he has done nothing wrong.’ Kafka sets Josef K.’s world so that despite no wrongdoing, he faces a ‘dog-like’ death after a year. As emphasized in the opening quote, Kafka is either outside or trying to be outside the Christian and Jewish worlds. In short, it is a world without God or one that believes there is no God. Josef K.’s world in The Trial is the same. A world without the God spoken of by Christianity is a world without original sin. It cannot be asserted that modernity completely discarded divine order, but in the West, modernity was established by attempting to overcome divine order. Just as modernity could not exist without overcoming or attempting to overcome God, the pre-modern Western world cannot be explained without God.” ? From Chapter 4: Kafka’s Solitude and Salvation Exploring Godless Divinity

“In ‘peaceful literature,’ the object that the subject endures is ‘uncivilization’ such as barbarism, violence, exploitation, and oppression. Uncivilization is usually depicted in a structured form in literature, and if the subject can be identified, it is generally set as an individual. To schematize, the framework for enduring structured barbarism in ‘peaceful literature’ (and perhaps in the world?) is broadly twofold. First, one can assume a struggle of structure versus structure, and second, one can think of structure versus non-structure (or individual).” ? From Chapter 5: How to Reach Self-awareness and Self-dignity

World Literature Odyssey | Written by An Chiyong | Le Monde Korea | 388 pages | 25,000 KRW