Autumn Night

Seo Dae-kyung

Artwork by Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee

One fall night I puked up a monkey. I was in the bathroom at a bar. Two ice cold hands opened my mouth from inside my body and then, with a thump, the monkey fell on the tiles of the floor. Shining oily black under the phosphorescent light, it grabbed the pipes under the sink and climbed above the mirror and up the wall. I looked with sobered eyes upon the little beast’s scared face, the little beast with blood red eyes and a body covered entirely with short, grey hair. I wrapped the monkey in my coat. Shivering slightly, the monkey rolled up its tail and burrowed its face into one of the pockets.

The man who filled my glass asked me with surprised eyes where I got the monkey. “I was nauseous, so I puked and this dude came out.” I placed a cut-up slice of dried squid into the monkey’s hand. The man sitting next to me slowly nodded his head. He wore a profound expression. “Poor beast.” the man said. “As you know, it is a physical manifestation of your repressed unconscious.” “Probably.” I said. We silently watched the sparkly flash of the canines that appeared through a hole in the monkey’s little mouth whenever the monkey took a bite of the squid. The man pouring my drink said, “Look at those teeth! And look at those red eyes like blood. Yes, it looks frightened. But the monkey’s nature is to be sly and cold blooded.” Then with a contemptuous look, he whispered, “Of course I don’t mean this as an attack on you.” I smiled bitterly, emptied my glass, and rose from my seat.

I walked on the dead leaves that carpeted the tree lined street, the monkey huddled to my chest. The night sky was clear and cold. The monkey gasped in pain as it dug into my chest. I whispered, “Are you sad and in pain?” With a cracked voice that rose feebly from the inside of my arms it said “Yes.” “I know I cursed and denied you. I hit you and I choked you. But you know, you are not my repressed unconscious.” “Yes.” “Do you want to die?” “I want to die.” “But you’re just an illusion I’m having.” “I want to die.” As I slowly pulled the shivering monkey away from my chest, its entire body shriveled up. The dry and thin fall moonlight sparkled blindingly over the monkey’s short, grey hair. “Who are you?” I asked. The small and opaque, blood red pupils looked at me. “I want to die.” the monkey whispered.

translated from the Korean by Soeun Seo and Jake Levine

Read the original in Korean

Seo Daekyung’s poem “Autumn Night” begins “One night in the fall I puked up a monkey. I was in the bathroom at a bar.” This leads to a quirky discussion between speaker and monkey, where the speaker tries to deny the authenticity of his own creation.

“I know I cursed and denied you. I hit you and I choked you. But you know, you are not my repressed unconscious.” “Yes.” “Do you want to die?” “I want to die.” “But you’re just an illusion I made.” “I want to die.”

When the speaker says “you are not my repressed unconscious,” we have a situation like the joke about the patient who, when asked by the psychoanalyst about the contents of their dream says, “I didn’t have sex with my mom.” The truth is revealed by denial of the truth. This is a microcosm of Seo Dae-kyung’s first book When the Idiot Feels the Atmosphere. The real is revealed by dreamscapes and fantasies. We arrive there by travelling through the obfuscation of truth and the make-believe. This is why I read Seo Dae-kyung’ speculative fiction as non-fiction. His works says to me something profound about the nature of (un)reality in Korea. Unlike K-pop groups like BTS which ask viewers to create their own meaning in displays of empty spectacle, offering a cheap and universal catharsis, contemporary poetry like Seo Dae-kyung’s capture the meaninglessness of a society obsessed with spectacle, communicating the anxiety and tension of what it is like to live in that world.  

—Jake Levine

Seo Dae-kyung was born in 1976. He studied English in college. He is the author of The Idiot Feels the Atmosphere.

Soeun Seo is a poet and translator from South Korea. Her translations have appeared at Hayden’s Ferry Review, Circumference, Puerto del Sol and more. Her original poems have been published at Hayden’s Ferry Review, Potluck Magazine, Witch Craft Magazine, and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance. She is currently a Michener fellow. She was a co-translator of Kim Yideum’s Hysteria (Action Books, 2019) and is currently working on a translation of Kim Min Jeong’s Beautiful and Useless which will be coming out in Spring 2020 with Black Ocean.

Jake Levine is an American translator, poet, and scholar. He received both his BA and MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently Abd in a PhD program in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University. He works as an assistant professor of creative writing at Keimyung University and as a lecturer at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He is the assistant editor at Acta Koreana and the editor for the Korean poetry series Moon Country at Black Ocean. Previously he served as the editor-in-chief of Sonora Review and as the poetry editor of Spork Press. His translation of Kim Kyung Ju’s poetry collection I Am a Season That Doesn’t Exist in the World (Black Ocean, 2016) was a finalist for ALTA’s Lucien Stryk Prize. Last spring saw the release of his co-translation of Kim Yideum’s Hysteria (Action Books) and a special collection of translations of Contemporary Korean Women Authors came out with Puerto Del Sol. His translations of Kim Kyung Ju’s poetry collection Whale and Vapor (Black Ocean) and verse-play Butterfly Sleep (Tupelo Press) are scheduled to be released in November.