9muses stack011

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The weight of the past, enforced by these countless tombs, these tortoises bearing the mileposts of time,
advancing imperceptibly across the countryside, heads raised skyward… Can it be reduced to the sole role
of ornament, as we do ? Can the borderline between statues and men be drawn so tight that no vertigo crosses,
no vast cry of madness or destruction?

For some time still two Koreas stand face to face.The question arises everywhere, except where culture has
irrevocably become the stuff of museums. What will be lost, what will not, what will change skins, these forms
threatened with remaining forms, these forces threatened with remaining forces, all these enemy currents:
the construction that lies and the truth that destroys, free constraint and free despair, hymns to joy and
deep-dwelling chants -all we can do is listen to their mutually jamming broadcasts in ourselves, while waiting
for the bigamy of spirit to be condemned by the law. All the while straining never to forget- if one did, the
Korean legend would be there to say it in its way- that a moment comes when man’s life must be paid for
with the death of his gods.

A woodcutter had saved a pheasant threatened by a snake. Changed into a girl, the snake succeeded in leading
the woodcutter into a tower, and there -caught tight. The woodcutter invoked the protection of the gods, and
the serpent-girl agreed to wait until dawn: if the woodcutter could prevail upon the gods to sound a temple
bell a few miles distant, she would let him live. The vigil began, the woodcutter in agony, the snake-girl
attentive. And toward the middle of the night, the temple bell rang heavily. Terrified, the snake slipped away,
the tower disappeared in a puff of smoke. When the woodcutter reached the temple after several hours’ march
to thank the gods, he saw a smear of still-fresh blood on the bell, and on the ground, the broken body of a
pheasant.