{"id":301816,"date":"2015-07-20T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/07\/20\/pavane-for-a-dead-princess\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:32","slug":"pavane-for-a-dead-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/07\/20\/pavane-for-a-dead-princess\/","title":{"rendered":"Pavane for a Dead Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1899, Maurice Ravel wrote \u201cPavane pour une infante d\u00e9funte\u201d (\u201cPavane for a Dead Princess\u201d) for solo piano (a decade later, he published an orchestral version). The piece wasn\u2019t written for a particular person; Ravel simply wanted to compose a pavane (a slow procession) that a princess would have danced to in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even though it\u2019s an elegant piece of music, Ravel has claimed that the title is meaningless: According to a story that appeared in the Rocky Mountain News<\/em> in 1970, he told someone, \u201cI simply liked the sound of those words and I put them there, c’est tout<\/em>.” <\/p>\n

Korean novelist Park Min-Gyu was obviously inspired by Ravel\u2019s work, but he\u2019s not offering a strict interpretation of it. Unlike the French composer, Park writes about a time he lived in (the mid-1980s), a time when people in his country were beginning to get wealthier (thanks to the housing boom and the stock market), but didn\u2019t know what to do with their new wealth. It was also a time when women, regardless of whether they were beautiful or ugly, were exploited for business purposes. In fact, his novel looks at society\u2019s obsession with beauty by pairing a good-looking narrator with a love interest\u2014the \u201cprincess\u201d in this story\u2014who is \u201cextraordinarily ugly.\u201d The result is a haunting (albeit flawed) love story, as well as a commentary about our obsession with money and beauty. <\/p>\n

The nameless 19-year-old narrator was not among the wealthy, but he did inherit the good looks of his father, a D-list actor who one day abandoned him and his mother. The narrator gets a job at a department store, where he falls for an ugly co-worker. \u201cWhat is this?<\/em>\u201d he writes. \u201cIn the same way I\u2019d have sat stunned before the TV, I stood in that office, transfixed by her. I had seen quite a few unattractive girls, but I\u2019d never seen a woman this ugly before. Just as the world\u2019s most beautiful woman, the world\u2019s ugliest woman is no less powerful in completely disarming a man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though, as we later learn, the woman experienced a lot of pain growing up because of her ugliness. Despite being a great student and a hard worker, not many people want to hire her. In fact, an employer refuses to give her a job, even though she receives a recommendation from one of her teachers. Later, when she gets a promotion, she only gets it because the manager figures she\u2019ll never leave her job because she\u2019ll never get married. At other times, co-workers tell her to leave because she\u2019s scaring the customers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this pain that causes the both of them to be uncertain of each other. However, their friend and co-worker, Yohan, who spends a lot of time observing the foolishness of human beings (especially rich ones) over beer and junk food, gives the narrator advice about love: <\/p>\n

\n

When someone\u2019s light is lit, she\u2019ll look beautiful. The stronger the lightbulb, the blurrier the curves of the light and the shape of the bulb. Most women\u2014those women who look so-so or aren\u2019t too attractive\u2014and most men, for that matter, are like dim lightbulbs. Once they\u2019re lit, though, anyone can shine, and that is more beautiful and marvelous than any lightbulb that has lost its light. That\u2019s love. Humans are basically electric cords with a single charge running through them. And when two people meet, they light up each other\u2019s soul. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At first, readers may be surprised that someone who lives alone and who is considered \u201cweird\u201d by one of his co-workers would be able to give this kind of advice, but Yohan ends up taking on a much more significant role. Unfortunately, though, this role convolutes the ending. As a result, the reader cannot help but feel somewhat cheated, since Park uses a device akin to making the whole story seem like a dream, an unnecessary tactic in a novel that would have been better without it.<\/p>\n

Another problem with the novel is that, at times, the myriad references to Western pop music overwhelm the story. For example, in the chapter called \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever,\u201d lines from the Beatles\u2019s song weave in and out of the narrative so much that it becomes a distraction. Later on, Park does the same with Roberta Flack\u2019s \u201cThe First Time Ever I Saw Your Face\u201d and Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cBlowing in the Wind.\u201d Sometimes, though, the references seem to serve no greater purpose other than to remind the reader of when there is a shift in time (e.g., Britney Spears\u2019s \u201c. . . Baby One More Time\u201d during the few scenes that take place during the late 1990s.)<\/p>\n

That said, Pavane for a Dead Princess<\/em> still has a lot going for it. It\u2019s a pleasant read in the vein of Norwegian Wood<\/em>, Haruki Murakami\u2019s classic love story set during a period of great change. The characters are appealing enough that readers will want to follow them on their journey to adulthood. And like his Japanese counterpart, Park shows that regardless of the dark that surrounds us, true love can shine a light. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1899, Maurice Ravel wrote \u201cPavane pour une infante d\u00e9funte\u201d (\u201cPavane for a Dead Princess\u201d) for solo piano (a decade later, he published an orchestral version). The piece wasn\u2019t written for a particular person; Ravel simply wanted to compose a pavane (a slow procession) that a princess would have danced to in the sixteenth and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[61816,54156,17496,1196,61806,61796],"class_list":["post-301816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-amber-hyun-jung-kim","tag-christopher-iacono","tag-dalkey-archive-press","tag-korean-literature","tag-park-min-gyu","tag-pavane-for-a-dead-princess"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335956,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301816\/revisions\/335956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}