Kim Seung-jong's Literary Miscellany (172) 'The Thin Wound That Holds Me'

Jensen Huang recently revealed that Nvidia is considering Korea's physical robotics industry as a future investment target, amplifying our related interest. Recently, we have seen humanoids working in factories or logistics centers on news screens. Are we now supposed to prepare to coexist with these humanoids that will arrive at factories—beings difficult to call "he" or "she" and equally difficult to call "they"? According to experts, around 2028 we could encounter such humanoids in public places and service industries, and as early as around 2032, we might live alongside humanoids that assist with household chores. Will we be able to set our relationships and attitudes well and get along reasonably well with them?

It is possible that humanoids might be able to explain the speaker's disposition in the following poem to students in greater detail than we can, and could even write similar poems. However, those of us who are certain speakers, living that way in reality—sighing, sweating, crying, experiencing rising blood pressure, shuddering, or even sacrificing ourselves—none of these could humanoids do. Thus, they could never become our husbands or wives, lovers or friends, or even enemies or rivals, exchanging and receiving influence on each other's lives and fates.

Crying easily means opening one's ears easily

It means drawing that much closer to you

My door opens gently

Even to small hands

From frequent moving, the roof leaks and walls crack against walls

When people build a fence and confine me carefully

The fact that my eyes become bruised

Is a small door standing open

Once I envied an orange with a sturdy shell,

Sometimes I missed a pomegranate's firmness

Every night, what I fear most

The thin wound that holds me

- "Mandarin Orange—Thin House" / Jung Sang-mi

From the first stanza, we can roughly grasp the speaker 'I'. In the first line, "Crying easily means opening one's ears easily," we discern that this 'I' is not simply sensitive but possesses rich sensibility, empathizing and resonating with the circumstances of others and with small matters shared with them, always oriented toward the other. While we might harbor slight suspicion that this person's emotions are spent or weak regarding others' stories and tribulations, the second line, "It means drawing that much closer to you," reveals that the speaker's empathy and resonance are not sentimentality but stem from deliberate sympathy rooted in their own will.

Such a person would not be many among us. This remarkable disposition might be an inborn unique quality, but it is also the aspiration and nature of one who—encompassing themselves—penetrates or embraces the foolish, difficult, sad, and absurd fate of humanity that cannot be avoided through various internal and external factors, doing so with compassion, love, or benevolence.

The "door" of 'I' that opens "gently" in the second stanza is a metonymy for 'my heart,' and 'your' 'small hands' represent the other's minor wounds or pleas. The third stanza is where the speaker simply depicts one dimension of their related life. The 'thin house' is a metaphor for the self, 'moving' is a metonymy for certain 'fluctuations in human relationships,' and the 'roof' that leaks and the 'walls' that crack are aftereffects that the speaker resolves to endure but cannot avoid. The imagery regarding the 'fence' is perhaps rhetoric that evokes the attitudes displayed by those who distance themselves from the speaker's sympathy and response.

Even a well-built 'house' must deteriorate and wear away as such prolonged conflict passes over time. The fourth stanza, "The fact that my eyes become bruised / is a small door standing open," seems to be a progressive statement of that development. It would be touching to visualize the thin 'mandarin orange's' bruised appearance overlapping with the speaker's 'eyes.' The mention of the 'small door' can be linked back to the 'house' imagery in the second and third stanzas, describing an undesirable state where a 'small door' of that 'house' opens loosely, contrary to the speaker's will. For reference, this 'small door' literally differs from the 'door' in the second stanza. The 'door' in the second stanza is the main gate of the 'house,' while the 'small door' is a door to one of the 'small rooms' within the 'house.' The state in which that 'room' is 'open' in the fourth stanza differs from the state in which the main gate is 'open' in the second stanza. The former, as checked earlier, is the operation of magnanimous sensibility stemming from will and generosity, while the latter is, in other words, a state of inner scar.

And yet, the speaker declares their current state in the fifth stanza. "Once I envied an orange with a sturdy shell, / Sometimes I missed a pomegranate's firmness." The interpretation of this passage risks becoming tautological, but it is a confession that the speaker once regretted themselves—like the soft 'mandarin orange' ('thin house')—having been disappointed in the world, others, and themselves. We must not overlook the self-awareness implicit in these lines: that the speaker currently harbors no regret whatsoever.

Thus, we must read the final sixth stanza once more. "Every night, what I fear most / The thin wound that holds me." Indeed, these lines must not be read literally. What does the speaker truly fear now? "The thin wound that holds me," they say. This 'thin wound' is the 'wound' that 'holds me'—then we can read the speaker's statement as ironic, referring to the wound of their own compassion, like the skin of a 'mandarin orange,' which they must endure while sympathizing with the wounds of the communicating other.

Toward the end of appreciation, we might suddenly sense room for the 'you' in this poem's 'I' to be transformed or substituted with multiple people. It could be a husband, a wife, a child; a friend or neighbor; or even a stranger passing by.

Then, though not all of us would agree, we might call such a person one with the four fundamental virtues and seven emotions most highly developed, and we could reasonably foresee that no matter how much humanoids improve upon improvements, they could never become such a person or equivalent.

Arriving at such thoughts, we soon find ourselves, perhaps sighing that we do not have such husbands or wives, children, friends, or neighbors, sympathizing deeply with the poem's 'I' and perhaps considering them as a person we ourselves wish to become. We become aware that we all possess Buddha-nature, that we all have the principle of the greater self that controls self-interest, and that we all have love that embraces even enemies. We might turn this awareness back on ourselves, asking whether we have not already confirmed this in our surroundings, and inevitably, find ourselves sighing without knowing it.