[A Sip of a Book] Gyoccha 3ho: Electricity, from Life to Writing

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Itda's review mook, which crosses eras and disciplines to introduce the latest theories and trends of thought. The theme of issue 3 is "Biography, from Life to Writing." It examines the biography genre, which has described a wide variety of lives from ancient times to the present, from emperors and heroes to philosophers, artists, scientists, madmen, and unknown people. Can writing truly capture the quantitative vastness and qualitative complexity of a life? How do biographers, who inevitably confront the richness of life and the poverty of writing, attempt to overcome this predetermined failure? What can we gain from these records of failure? The fifteen reviews included face these questions and inquire into the possibilities and limitations of biography writing from their respective perspectives.

As a unique activity, biography is a cultural product in which humans establish an essential relationship between life and writing. Humans formed within this culture learn how to intercept life, which falls into oblivion and death, through writing. No one has fully mastered this. But if they had only lived, they would neither have felt nor recognized life. Life is perceived according to the structure, style, and network of meaning of the text. Biography is the act of translating life into writing, but in some sense, it is through writing that one truly lives. It is hard to imagine how much theoretical and practical implication this simply written sentence holds. [...] Biography, in prioritizing the individual human and aiming for transparent understanding, is the exclusive domain of old-fashioned humanism and, so to speak, the literature of the Anthropocene that must be overcome. Yet the form of the next human, the next something, will appear in biographies never seen before. The reason is simple. The principle of biography is the effort to discover and define beings different from oneself. "Human" is only a provisional name given to this being. From Kim Young-wook, "Writing a Human Being"

The Records of the Grand Historian (Sagi) and the Book of Han (Hanseo) were inevitably compared from the beginning. For nearly 2,000 years, intellectuals in the Chinese character cultural sphere referred to Sima Qian and Ban Gu collectively as 'Banma' and discussed their works together. [...] Yu Jinong (1231-1294) presented a new value called literary quality in his critique Banmai Dongpyeong (A Critique on the Differences and Similarities between Ban Gu and Sima Qian). Yu Jinong praised Sima Qian in the Sagi Biographies for vividly depicting characters even by employing fictional content, and Ming dynasty intellectuals also regarded the Sagi as a model of literature by the same standard. Meanwhile, during the Qing dynasty, with the rise of evidential scholarship, preference for the Hanseo increased again. In the Joseon era, King Jeongjo (reigned 1776-1800) recommended reading both the Sagi and Hanseo multiple times but evaluated both by saying, "The Hanseo was ultimately bound by ritual and leaves no room beyond the text, unlike the bold and resolute Sima Qian." Thus, the values pursued by intellectuals changed over time, and accordingly, which of the Sagi or Hanseo was more highly regarded also shifted. The content of evaluations may vary, but all presuppose that the Sagi and Hanseo hold an unparalleled status that overwhelms other historical records. From Joo Ah, "The Orderly Tradition of East Asian Historical Narration"

Itda Issue 3: Biography, from Life to Writing | Joo Ah et al. | 416 pages | Itda | 22,000 KRW

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