Greek Lessons by Han Kang
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Why did the hosts pause the James Joyce series to discuss Han Kang’s *Greek Lessons*?
Quick public service announcement. So it turns out that James Joyce's Ulysses is quite a big book, and it's taking Sophie and I a little more time, a little longer than a week, to get our heads around this huge sprawling masterpiece. So to give ourselves more time, we are not releasing our third James Joyce episode this week on James Joyce's Ulysses. We're gonna give ourselves another week. And in the meantime, we are giving you an episode we recorded a few months back on Greek Lessons by the Nobel Prize-winning South Korean novelist Hang Kang. Happily, Greek Lessons is, of course, Odyssey adjacent. It it keeps more or less in the theme we've been on the last six weeks, which is Homer's Odyssey, because the book is about a group of people studying ancient.
Greek to get closer to the Greek classics. That of course is not merely a happy coincidence because everything that happens on Secret Life of Books is in keeping with a rigorous master plan. So enjoy this episode and we'll be back next week with James Joyce's Ulysses.
There's a really terrific conceit in this week's book, John T, which is that one of the characters asks the other character to name themselves after a natural thing that they most resemble. I think, and this is a hint to our listeners, I think it could be described as an epithet. He asks her to give Herself an epithet. So I'm going to give you an example and then I'd like you to give me an epithet. The son in the story calls himself a sparkling forest, and And he calls his mother thickly falling snows sorrow. So, what do you got?
Well, Sophie, I've got to go for muddy pool because the name Claypole is Old English for muddy pool. Uh And so I'm just gonna lean into the heritage of my name. We're in the world of nominal determinism, where our personalities are shaped by the names we have. And I do f spend a lot of my life feeling like a muddy pool, a muddy pool of water. How about you, Sophie?
Well, let's see. I'm gonna go with snow capped wisdom mountain. Snow capped mountain of wisdom.
Great. You're referring to your white hair there as well, aren't you?
I'm also really channeling my my Greek provenance.
Yeah, Sophie, wisdom.
Never noticed that my name comes from a classical Greek past.
It's a very literal image you've come up with there.
I couldn't get to your opaque depths, Johnti.
This is The Secret Life of Books. I am John T. Claypole, a middle-aged man who has signed up to do a evening class in ancient Greek, largely just out of loneliness, I think, but also because I have a a passion for for knowledge and for learning and for Sophia, which is Sophie, as we know, wisdom.
So I am Sophie G. I'm a woman wearing a high necked black sweater and black trousers. I've hung a black jacket on my chair and a black scarf in my bag which is knitted for black wool. And I am neither young nor particularly beautiful.
This episode Greek Lessons by Han Kung.
John T, I think is this the first book in translation that we've done? We we did the Odyssey, which of course is translated from the ancient Greek, and now for our second book, which is translated from Korean It's still about ancient Greek. So there's a certain kind of uh brand consistency here.
Today's author won the Nobel Prize for Literature a couple of years ago. And no podcast which is dedicated to classic literature can take itself seriously for so long without at some point covering one of the most recent Nobel Prize winners.
So, with no further ado. In the heyday of literary theory in the nineteen eighties, the Yale theorist Paul Demann coined the phrase blindness and insight. The idea he was getting at is that only by being unable to see can we attain true insight and understanding. That's the kind of guff that we had to contend with back in the nineteen eighties in English departments. Along with shoulder pads and fetticini primavera. In any case, blindness and insight is one of classic literature's most enduring paradoxes, I think. It's made famous in the classical literary tradition by Sophocles' character Oedipus blinding himself after he realizes that he's married his mother.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did the hosts pause the James Joyce series to discuss Han Kang’s *Greek Lessons*?
0:01–8:49
2
How do blindness and insight function as central motifs in *Greek Lessons*?
8:49–17:47
3
What are the traumatic backstories of the Greek teacher and the mute Korean woman?
17:47–26:28
4
Why does the novel focus on the Greek “middle voice” and what does it symbolize?
26:28–35:52
5
How does the teacher’s obsession with Plato’s *Republic* shape the narrative?
35:52–45:34
6
In what ways does Borges’s life and ideas influence the opening of the book?
45:34–54:25
7
How does Ingmar Bergman’s film *Persona* parallel the novel’s themes of muteness and identity?
54:25–1:03:30
8
Will Han Kang’s *Greek Lessons* become a lasting classic of world literature?
1:03:30–1:06:17