Love stories...Love Story (Segal, 1970) & Cinema Paradiso (Tonatore, 1988)

Love stories do not have to be mutually exclusively cheesy and touching.

If I were to ever look back at the last week as a special one out of my entire college career, I would call it a week of "back into classics" - whether it be for movies, modes of thinking, or experience.

What would be there, in "Elizabethtown?"

Not a movie review, because I haven't seen the film.

But the snapshots alone are so fascinating enough!

Elizabethtown (Crowe, 2005)

*Picture source: Elizabethtown official movie site

Post preview! Translation of a Korean poem, "님의 침묵"/"Silence of the Beloved"

님의 침묵

한용운 

님은 갔습니다 
아아 사랑하는나의님은 갓슴니다 
푸른 산 빛을깨치고 단풍나무 숲을 향하여 난 
작은 길을 걸어서 차마 떨치고 갔습니다.
황금의 꽃같이 굳고 빛나던 옛 맹세는 차디찬
티끌이 되어서 한숨의 미풍에 날려 갔습니다.

날카로은 첫 키스의 추억은 나의운명의 
지침(指針)을 돌려놓고 뒷걸음처서 사러졌습니다.
나는 향기로운 님의 말소리에 귀먹고 
꽃다운 님의 얼굴에 눈멀었습니다.

사랑도 사람의 일이라 만날 때에 미리 떠날 것을
염려하고경계하지 아니 한 것은 아니지만
이별은 뜻밖의 일이 되고 
놀란 가슴은 새로은 슬븜에 터집니다.

그러나 이별을 쓸데없는 눈물의 원천을 만들고 마는 것은
스스로 사랑을 깨치는 것인 줄 아는 까닭에 
걷잡을 수 없는 슬픔의 힘을 옴겨서 
새 희망의 정수박이에 들이부었습니다.

우리는 만날 때에 떠날 것을 염려하는 것과 같이
떠날 때에 다시 만날 것을 믿습니다.

아아, 님은 갔지마는 
나는 님을 보내지 아니 하였습니다.
제 곡조를 못이기는 사랑의 노래는 
님의 침묵을 휩싸고 돕니다. 

I worked on translating one of my favorite Korean poems, "님의 침묵"/"Silence of the Beloved" with my friend, Aly, who wanted to translate a text in an unfamiliar foreign language into English for her translation workshop assignment. I'll get the fully translated version with all the sounds, nuances, and messages taken into account on my blog as soon as it gets done. 

But here goes a little bit of preview for the post about the translation experience!

The Korean word, 님 (pronounced as nym) in the title and repeated a lots of times throughout the whole poem, was one of very important vocabulary to be dealt with but also quite difficult to be translated into English because this simple single-syllable word, 님, could make scores of implications. It is a word referring to somebody in a superior position or someone whom you love or admire in a very polite way. It also sounds archaic and romantic if you call a person you're in love with by this word, and normally you don't in everyday conversation especially in modern times. We finally made it to give it a possibly closest-meaning English word, the beloved - here it should be also noted that the whole poem speaks of someone/something unspecified but kinda directed at a certain person/object, so allowing the addition of a definite article, the. 

So please stay tuned for another fun post about this translation work that turns out more and more interesting and fascinating. 

*Image source from a Japanese movie, Rainbow Song (虹の女神, Kumazawa, 2006)

**Poem text from a naver cafe site

A midsummer night's party at 청담 ACTUALLY

Followed by the DMC party held in a recently opened Korean branch of Hard Rock Cafe, Itaewon, I went to a wine party at Cheongdam in a bar-esque cafe named Actually on the behalf of FeetManSeoul. The party held by Dana, an ex-president of a prestigious Korean model agency, Model Line, I was quite nervous about attending it because I am very new to this social party scene of Seoul. Especially the news that this party will be open to only the selectively invited upper-class folks made my heart so relentlessly thump on my way to the party by taxi with FMS that we tried to relax by reminding each other of positive-self imagery. 



But things didn't go very tough once I got to the party. Thanks to the image-prompting therapy in the taxi, I could feel confident and comfortable talking to the people who didn't necessarily look like coming from the other ritzy world. At the party, there were more of non-fashion-affiliated people than I expected, but still they all seemed ready to network with other people in natural, polished manners. I remember several impressive men and women who worked in diverse fields - a guy working at a Korean branch head office of Hershey Chocolate, an old man owning his own film production line, a fabulous woman running her own wholesale clothes shop in dondaemun, a not much adorned, but alluring female shoe designer having her shop, Shoe Comma Bonnie, covered in a famous cable TV fashion reporting show, and also a white skinny guy dressed in a tight black formal suit working at a marketing company which coordinated this party. The party host, Dana, was also a very fascinating woman completely equipped with confidence, beauty, articulated, lovely manners.

I was in the middle of a 10-day-long camp a.k.a. BroSis Project, which aims to raise awareness of international and domestic college students from Seoul and sister cities of Seoul about the "sustainable development" of metropolitan cities. Having a short break out of the intense imprisoned feel of the camp and doing away with all the commitment as a staff, I felt hanging out on top of the world, intoxicated of a few glasses of wine.