Recently, I came across “Eun-gyo,” Park Bum-shin’s best-selling novel of 2010. Ostensibly, it is an account of a 69-year-old poet who is infatuated with a 17-year-old high school girl. Its movie version with the same title was also a smash hit because it depicted an old man’s obsession with a girl 52 years younger than him. Critics, too, interpreted the novel in terms of an aging man’s clandestine sexual desire or obsession with a juvenile girl.
However, it would be wrong to read “Eun-gyo” simply as an erotic novel or perceive the old poet as a pervert. It occurs to me that perhaps the nymph-like girl Eun-gyo is a symbol of perennial youth or the artistic inspiration that the aging poet has long lost but still yearns for.
When the poet narrates, “She evoked my latent instinct,” he does not simply refer to “sexual instinct.” Indeed, the poet depicts Eun-gyo not as an astonishingly pretty girl but as an average-looking, cute girl. Besides, possessing her sexually is not a priority for the poet; even when he finds Eun-gyo in his bed, the poet quietly slips out of bed, leaving the peacefully sleeping girl alone. When Eun-gyo whispers, “You can kiss me, if you like,” the poet only gives her a peck on the forehead.
Rather, the poet seems to adore Eun-gyo’s burgeoning fragrance of youth and wants to protect her chastity from his disciple-novelist Seo Ji-woo, who, in fact, could be interpreted as his younger alter ego. The poet is the ghostwriter for his disciple Seo, who becomes a celebrity thanks to his mentor’s help.
It is precisely in this context that we can safely assume that the novel’s latent theme is the aging artist’s intense wish to regain and preserve the purity of art. In his journal, the poet writes, “Ah, Eun-gyo! My everlasting ‘young bride’ and my perennial virgin! At the dusk of my life, you suddenly appeared to illuminate my footsteps.”
Thus by conspiring to kill his rival Seo, the poet symbolically tries to eliminate his own mundane ego because Seo has sexually molested the innocent girl. By the same token, by designating Eun-gyo as the beneficiary of the future royalties of his poetry books in his will, he wants her to inherit his legacy.
If we read the novel in this fashion, we will find that it is a highly sophisticated, artistic work that delves into man’s secret wish to regain and preserve youthful beauty and bygone times. The novel also explores the theme of the evanescent nature of youth; as time passes, everything gets older and loses its chastity and beauty. Eun-gyo, too, will become withered and tainted eventually.
Park’s “Eun-gyo,” reminds us of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Initially, critics and readers misread “Lolita.” When it was published in 1958 in New York, American readers immediately condemned it as an immoral novel dealing with incest and nymphomania. In “Lolita,” a professor of literature from Europe named Humbert Humbert fantasizes about fondling a precocious 12-year-old American girl whom he calls Lolita. He chooses to marry Lolita’s mother in order to stay near Lolita and becomes her stepfather.
During her westward journey with Humbert, Lolita is abducted by a man named Quilty who afterwards abandons her. Later, when Humbert finds Lolita, she is already seriously tainted; she is married and pregnant. Now Lolita is no longer the innocent young girl whom Humbert fantasized about. Deeply disillusioned, Humbert leaves her and kills Quilt for ruining the innocent young girl.
Despite its initial controversy, “Lolita” is not an erotic novel either. One way to read “Lolita” is to read it as a parody of literary modernism, which is obsessed with the idea of preserving the beauty and chastity of pure arts forever. The book informs us that it is impossible to stop youthful beauty from being tainted and withered.
Another way to read “Lolita” is as a parody of America. Indeed, as an innocent, young country, Lolita may be a symbol of America. Both Nabokov and Humbert are from Europe, which is more mature and tainted than America. Gradually, however, the American youth and innocence, too, are destined to get old and contaminated, no matter how hard you try to preserve them.
Recently, a Korean Army colonel was arrested for raping a female petty officer who was 26 years younger than him. As the commanding officer of his unit, he was responsible for his men and women’s safety and welfare. Unlike the poet in “Eun-gyo” or Humbert in “Lolita,” the colonel simply took advantage of his female subordinate for his sexual needs, unabashedly abusing his rank and position. It is obvious he did not care about the future of the woman he impudently molested. We lament the brutality and shallowness of the military man who clearly never agonized over the dignity of the woman he sexually assaulted. As we grow older, we should try very hard to be decent and respectable. Otherwise, we are doomed to be labeled as “dirty old men.”
By Kim Seong-kon
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.
