[Unstagram] The Outer Side of the Face

In Edmund Wilson's philosophy book Backwards to Finland (Imagine), blurry photographs or paintings of European modern philosophers are printed between the texts at the size of commemorative stamps, and Wilson also described the faces of these philosophers in writing. The descriptions are organized more by subjective impressions than by their actual facial features, and the expressions are so candid that one can guess the personalities of the subjects. The impressions come through, but the faces themselves are not clearly visible, resembling literary paintings. Regarding the face of the British thinker Robert Owen, he wrote:

"He had the nose of a stubborn and proud Englishman, but his two innocent oval eyes, seemingly deeply sunken and extending straight to the cheeks, and his slender egg-shaped face gave the impression of a gentle large mountain hare lost in thought."

When describing a person's face by referring to the outer appearance (impression or feeling), it is similar to showing a silhouette and letting the viewer imagine the substance. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his last essay collection Armageddon in Retrospect that "people with circuits of imagination installed read stories from a person's face; to those without, a face is just a face." Even a cynical intellectual representing his era left a remark on the meaning of the face as a symbol of imagined life and on writing (or drawing) stories in the invisible margins with imagination. I, too, when meeting people or looking at faces in photos, sometimes guess their lives based on my own subjective experience accumulated over time.

British painter William Henry Brooke's painting of the elderly Robert Owen

In Giorgio Bassani's novel The Gold Rimmed Glasses (Munhakdongne), the narrator said that Dr. Fatigati's glasses made him look "like the top student of the school." "Top student" is a visual symbol or metaphor that can be individually associated. Each person would recall some impression combined with various top students from their own memories. Some might see a clear face, while others might only vaguely sense the atmosphere.

There are people skilled at describing what they see in words or writing. Such linguistic descriptions can sometimes feel so vivid and tangible that they seem like the actual scene unfolding before one's eyes. When the description is about a person's face, it is a verbal painting that cannot be reached by explanations like "the nose is a few centimeters high," "the distance between the eyes is a few centimeters," or "the outer corner of the eye is tilted a few degrees from the glabella." Novelist Kim Jung-hyuk wrote in his short story "Where the Boat Goes" (in Hugs with a Fake Arm, Munhakdongne) that a woman's face had "big eyes that gave a very gentle impression, and a small mole next to her lips. From the viewer's perspective, it was a pleasing mole, but from the perspective of the one who bore it, it might have been a complex to the extent of being noticeable." Although the appearance was not detailed, the text allowed readers to freely combine and imagine faces they knew or envisioned in the margins. Whether the author wrote with such consideration (in fact, authors always consider their readers in some way) or not, the highest level of describing a person's appearance in writing is to fill the canvas of imagination with just a single dot in space.

A single leaf fell from the autumn flowerpot. It was just a leaf, but the outside of a certain face was visible. ⓒHeo Yeonghan

The totality of human life and relationships is concentrated in the face, with some aspects revealed and others hidden, gradually coming to light. The fact that a face can be drawn with just impressions or metaphors is because intangible feelings and energies existing beyond the external appearance can be perceived through human experience and insight. We see human faces even in the patterns of manhole covers on the street, in public telephones, or in holes in leaves. We welcome and enjoy all the abstractions of faces we encounter on the street. At the center of almost all human experiences is a person, and the face is the first symbol and part of the essence of a person.

Seeing a person's face is an act deeply related to the viewer's experience and insight. One sees as much as one can see. Here, "seeing" is through the eyes of visual experience, perception, and sensitivity accumulated and refined over a lifetime. The face is an objective existence, but like time, it is mostly seen and functions subjectively. This is sometimes called an impression. Expressions can be temporarily and artificially controlled to some extent by the person showing them, but the face is made over a lifetime. This applies both to the face I show and to the faces of others I imagine in my mind. The outside of the face makes the face.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.