More than one woman has felt she has lost her voice, that she is not heard, that no one heeds her feelings or ideas. In Greek Lessons, Han Kang brings to life a woman who literally loses her voice. That since childhood, she has loved letters and words, their shapes and sounds, means her loss cuts deeply.
She remembers incidents from her past, including when, as a young child, she became mesmerized by the way the letters were formed and the sounds that words made when the letters were combined in certain ways. The translation by Deborah Smith and Eamily Yae Won is detailed and poetic, showing just how deeply connected the protagonist is to the power of language.
The woman, who once lost her voice for a time as a teenager, is suffering another loss now. Divorced after a horrific marriage, her ex is now taking her son away from her. He says she is crazy because she will not talk.
Because the reader is hearing from the woman through her interior thoughts, she knows that is not true. Her voice is more something that was taken from her by the stress of life, rather than something she has given up. She struggles to speak but it won't come out. Words once were things to marvel. Both times she has lost her voice, they have become torture.
The descriptions of what it is like for her to not be able to speak are descriptions of loss, even if there may be some freedom involved:
The language that had pricked and confined her like clothing made from a thousand needles abruptly disappeared. Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochleas and brain.
Sounds a bit like not being able to see clearly.
The unnamed woman, who once taught Greek herself, is taking a night class on the language. It's a small group. The instructor is careful in putting the letters up on a chalkboard. Because of the structure of the language, with its complicated tenses and forms, philosophy is as much a part of the lectures as grammar.
The instructor is going through a loss as well. He has been going blind for years and is trying to cover up just how little he can now see. He also has lost two people who he loved. One, a young woman who was deaf, rejected him when he asked how they would communicate when he went blind. The other was a young man at university with him, who loved him. Whether the instructor was afraid of being loved or giving love is uncertain. But the fear he felt then is as deep as the fear the woman feels when others try to communicate with her.
Along with the fear is regret. The first time he fell in love, he noted it was like a haunting. Regretful of passing up love later in life, he notes:
A body [is] born to embrace someone, to desire to embrace someone.
I should have embraced you as hard as I could, at least once before that period of our lives passed us by.
It wouldn't have hurt or harmed me to do so.
Coming from a character that is a wounded survivor of life, it's an affirmation that reaching out would have been good regardless of what later happened. Greek Lessons is a story of how wounded souls may not be able to heal their own hurt, but they can be a balm to someone else.
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