SNIPPETS

It is said that the difference between the young Goya and the old could be studied as you progress from the art displayed in his basement of his youth to the top floor 

with the unutterably mysterious and disturbing “black paintings.” If you knew this, you couldn’t help but think of it when you saw what served as Joohyun and Hayi’s

studio at the top floor of the house—with its high roof and glass windows like a greenhouse, somehow always maintaining a dusty quality. Seunghyun only thought of

Goya the second time he visited. The first time, he was paralysed by what he saw. It left Seunghyun cold and hot when he entered that studio at that day, when the sun

was at its most pregnant—readying to burst colours of blood and flesh. It felt like all his fire has been extinguished and his imagination turned ice cold when he saw

the numerous sculptures that were to the side of the room facing the windows, illuminated by the sun. 

        Hayi had shown him her works—and he saw the change, from the formal beautiful sculptures of faces and portraits like the Greeks, her first sculptures, and the

progression to her most recent ones, the beautiful ugliness of crooked faces like that of Goya’s etchings, dark and brutal. She said she was crippled and depressed when

she was making the first ones, but when her sculptures turned uglier and uglier, she felt the strangling of herself and her mind weaken, and now she had more power

than she liked, now she felt like she was an artist. She wasn’t vain because that involved caring very much about what other people thought of you, but now she’s just

very thoroughly amused with herself, it was all Joohyun’s work on her of course,she had told Seunghyun. 

        There were netsukes, powerful and wild.  Sometimes he felt like he was looking at the essence of  things, if anybody asked, what was the essence of the flower, he

would show the orchid table top that Joohyun had sculpted. There were only a few things Seunghyun would call sublime, perhaps some of the paintings of El Greco

and Van Gogh, and Michelangelo’s churches, as well as Bernini’s sculptures. It aroused in him a feeling of awe, and paralysis because of a threatening, all-

encompassing power. He felt he was visiting the sanctuary of a goddess. 

    He saw an enormous clay head at the first stages of composition, a faceless images acquiring a a quasi-human personality which only reminds one of monsters. Hayi

said it was one of Joohyun’s things where she wants some sort of impossible liberation, so she’s playing with it and hoping it will tell her something. 

         He clutched his head and laughed hysterically to himself,“I can only be saved if she has me.” 

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“She’s a goddess, like Diana, I’m not good enough for her. She makes me nervous, I am restless all the time, I can’t look at her for a time without wanting to go prostrate. If only she would allow me to kiss her feet.”

She laughed wetly. “You weren’t like that with me. “

“You were a queen. You’re human, subject to any kind of disease and desire and age. You become less beautiful. “

Hyori made an inarticulate sound of protest and indignation. 

“Seunghyun, you hurt me when you say something like that. It hurts so much. I can’t tell you how much it hurts.”

“I’m so sorry——Hyori,” he said her name in that special quality that always left her breathless in the past, suggestive of a dark passion and power, and which almost always resulted with her clawing at and leaving angry, helpless marks on his back, legs wrapped around him in ecstasy. He knew he was being unfair.  “You have to forgive a person in love.”

He knew she was tearing up and was going to start sobbing; and that she was breathless and ashamed that she was blushing. “I didn’t know you could be so cruel. Hush Seunghyun, you know I’m in love with you.” 

“You know better than anyone else that falling out of love is simply the matter of forgetting how charming someone is. You’ll forget soon.” 

She laughed, now less tense but still very miserable. “Joohyun isn’t charming at all. So that isn’t why we fell in love with her.” 

He scoffed.  “Charming? She’s horrible.”

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“This is grave news,” said Hayi. “The two people I like the most in the world are in love with each other,I can’t help but feel jealous really.” 

“That’s what Hyori said, but with less levity and less teeth,”said Seunghyun, smiling. “Come on, act more dismayed Hayi. You’re miserable somewhere in your soul.” 

“I’m miserable everywhere in my soul, it’s a condition of my soul, that’s how I know I’m an artist.” she said.“At least now I could focus doing things I like, I’ve been inactive for a while, with either one or both of you at my neck. You two were time-consuming.” 

“You were very generous.”

“I am an angel.”

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  “I am a terrible object of fascination for you. I am a severed head such as primitive tribes and old alchemists used to use, anointing it with oil and putting a morsel of    gold upon its tongue to make it utter prophecies.”

  She was quiet, smiling. 

  He smiled back. “You told me once you were a severed head. Can one have human relations with a severed head?” 

   She was compelling him with her smile. 

   As she would not speak, Seunghyun said, “Could we be happy?”

   She said, “This has nothing to do with happiness, nothing whatever.” 

   Seunghyun thought it was true. He took in the promise of her words. “I wonder if I shall survive it.”

   Joohyun said, smiling splendidly, “You must take your chance!”

   He gave her back the bright light of the smile, softening out of irony. “So must you, Joohyun.”