The aesthetics of defining your life

Jun Sang-jick
The author is a professor at the Department of Composition of Seoul National University’s College of Music.

In Korea, the epitaph on the tombstone of George Bernard Shaw was translated — or perhaps mistranslated — as “I knew it would end like this after a reluctant life.” It was quoted in 2007 for a teaser advertisement of a mobile communication service provider. Before then, it was largely quoted to mean that there is no time to waste in our life. This famous statement’s translation — “reluctant” or “hesitant” — is a problem. The original sentence says, “I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.” How to interpret it depends on the reader.

Of course, Shaw couldn’t have lived a reluctant life. He was praised as one of the greatest minds in literature after Shakespeare. He was the 1925 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and was so “arrogant” that he had only written down his name 12 times when asked to list a dozen of the most outstanding novelists. Therefore, the well-known Korean translation is clearly a mistranslation, in my opinion. But it may be OK to keep this great mistranslation in our hearts since it is more touching than the original text. It doesn’t have to be great or a creation of a famous person. I would just add admiration for the literary imagination that has translated “long enough” to “reluctant.”

Another tombstone was engraved with “3.14159265358979323846264338327950288…” It belongs to Ludolph van Ceulen, a mathematician who calculated the numerical value of “pi” using essentially the same methods as those employed by Archimedes. He calculated the value to 35 digits. “I’ve finally stopped getting dumber,” read the humble epitaph of Paul Erdos, a Hungarian mathematician. America’s radical labor activist August Spies’ tombstone read, “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

In the movie “Griffin & Phoenix” (2006), starring Peter Falk, he finds his lover’s gravestone while browsing a cemetery. It reads, “P.S. — Hi Griffin Thought you’d probably drop by.” Just like this one, some epitaphs are dedicated to one particular person.

On the other hand, some people chose to engrave abstract symbols, not memorable statements or accomplishments. An unpolished black stone is engraved with a musical notation — the staff, a whole rest, and a fermata on top of the rest. You’ve already noticed it must belong to a musician. This is the gravestone of Alfred Schnittke, a German-Jewish Russian composer famous for contemporary music listeners.

The notation instructs no sound to be made for the indicated length, but this very sound without sound forms the flow of music with other sounds. Although he had stopped composing due to his death, maybe it means that his music is still continuing. So, the fermata on top of the rest is the time of rest that has no beginning and end, where nothing happens while forming a part of his music or his life.

Gravestones in Europe are often engraved with R.I.P. (requiescat in pace in Latin), and the word rest means the same to the fermata in music. In light of the Christian cultural belief that the soul and body separated by death fall asleep and reunite on the judgment day, a rest is sleep and a reward for today (life) and the wait for tomorrow (resurrection). Therefore, death is never the end for Schnittke.

And as the extension mark is not enough, fortissimo is placed beneath the fermata, instructing that no sound should be played for the period of eternity. Does it mean a loud silence? Is it arbitrary for me to read from the musical notes his desire for the body’s rest and soul’s purification?

Whether they had written their own epitaphs or those who were left behind wrote in memory of them, epitaphs summarize the life of the dead buried under the gravestones. The deaths they look at are the lives they looked at. How we see and define them defines our life and death.

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty, I’m Free at last!” read the gravestone of Martin Luther King Jr. It shows life is a calling and rest is a reward. “This is my father’s crime against me, which I myself committed against none,” read the self-composed epitaph of Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri, an Arabic philosopher known for his irreligious views. It says life is uncomfortable.

“On the day when I end the picnic in this beautiful world, I will go and say it was beautiful,” read Chun Sang-byung’s poem. It says life is a gift. What is life for me?

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.