As we’re coming to the final two episodes of HTCCC this weekend, I took some time to search and start reading the books that Hong Dus-ik mentioned or was seen reading just to get a clue of the ending. So far, I found 6:
1. What Men Live By - Leo Tolstoy - which I will discuss below
2. Walden by Henry David Thoreau - I finished What Men Live By this morning and just started reading this tonight but basically, it’s about the author’s experiences over the course of two years of living simple and self-sufficient life in the woods around the shores of Walden Pond.
3. Erotism: Death and Sensuality by George Bataille -still not able to get a digital copy of this since it’s not available on Amazon. But according to the book description, Bataille pursues the themes of taboo and sacrifice, transgression and language, death and sensuality in a challenging perspective. Investigating desire prior to and extending beyond the realm of sexuality, he argues that eroticism is "a psychological quest not alien to death."
4. 헤어진 사람의 품에 얼굴을 묻고 울었다 by 장석주 - I’m still consulting with my teacher what this means and if I got the correct translation. But to my very little understanding, it means “I Cried in the Arms of the Person I Parted With”. I don’t want to put the google translation here because my teacher said not to use it as it is most often incorrect.
5. La Cantatrice chauve' (The Bald Soprano) by Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano is an Absurdist masterpiece by Ionesco about two middle-class couples who spend an evening making meaningless small-talk
6. 에코의 초상 by 김행숙 - if translated, Portrait of Echoes by Kim HaengSuk - I can’t find any books on amazon for this one but this is where he got and recited the “Doorbell” poem.
What Men Live By:
This is a book composing of 4 short stories by Tolstoy:
I. What Men Live By - A story about an angel named Michael punished by God because he disobeyed His order of delivering a soul back. In order to be forgiven, the angel needs to find the answers to three questions. A man, who was a leather crafter, found him sitting in a shrine and took him in as his right-hand man. Over the course of his stay, he was able to get the answer to the three questions while encountering the following people:
1. Learn what dwells in a man - upon meeting the leather crafter’s wife, he found that the answer is “Love has been given to men, to dwell in their hearts”
2. Learn what is not given to man - upon encountering a rich man who wanted a pair of boots to be crafted using the most expensive leather and died after meeting the craftsman, Michael instead crafted the leather to a pair of slippers that the corpse can wear. He found that the answer is “It is not given to men, to know their own needs”.
3. Learn what men live by - upon encountering the twins whose mother is the soul he refused to deliver back (but eventually was sent back to heaven) and was taken under the care of a neighbor, he learned that “Man does not live by care for himself, but by the love for them that is in other’s hearts”.
II. The Three Questions - A parable about a king who wants to find the answers to what he considers the three most important questions in life:
1. How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?
2. Who are the people I most need, and to whom should I, therefore pay more attention than to the rest?
3. What affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?
He consults wise men with a promise of a huge sum of money to anyone who could answer the questions but no one can give that satisfies the king. So as a last resort, he goes to a wise hermit for answers only to give him none. Upon staying with the hermit, a wounded person came crawling to them who they nursed back to health. When the stranger awoke, they found out it was someone hired to kill the king but was found out by the guards and was beaten almost to his death. And thus, the hermit explained the answer:
“Remember then, there is only one time that is important — Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with anyone else: and the most important affair is, to do him good because for that purpose alone was men sent into this life!”
III. The Coffee House of Surat - A story of a public discussion between travellers with different religious backgrounds regarding the existence of God, who is the real god and such. Among them was a student of Confucius who didn’t join the discussion until asked, which he said,
"So on matters of faith, it is pride that causes error and discord among men. As with the sun, so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his own, or at least a special God for his native land. Each nation wishes to confine in its own temples Him, whom the world cannot contain.
"Can any temple compare with that which God Himself has built to unite all men in one faith and one religion?
"The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man.
"Therefore, let him who sees the sun's whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising the superstitious man, who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light. Let him not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at all."
IV - How Much Land Does a Man Need? - A story about a farmer who wanted to own more land and is charmed by the Devil to get more than what he needs. This farmer goes to a place where strange people are and they make him an offer: he can get the land area as big as he wants by marking it starting at daybreak using a spade. If he returns to his starting point by sundown, all the land in his route will be his. But if he does not reach the starting point, he will lose his money and have no land.
He started marking the land at daybreak but towards the end, he realizes that he’s too far from his starting point. So he ran and ran and got exhausted and finally arrived at where he started. But out of exhaustion, the farmer drops dead on the ground. His servant buried him in an ordinary grave only six feet long.
Thus, answering the question of how much land does a man need? You only need land as big as your body, to be buried when you die.
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In relation to HTCC, I think the writers were highly influenced by the idea of these short stories particularly about death, greed, and the love for one’s neighbor. There was one scene that Dus-ik was explaining to Hyejin,
“Money and success aren’t the only valuable things in life. Happiness, self-contentment, world peace, love. Life isn’t a mathematical equation. It doesn’t have a clear answer. THere’s no right answer either. You’re just given a problem, and it’s up to you how you solve it”.
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