The Phases of the Post-Sublime: Redefining Han's Sorrowful Fraternity through the Works of Yi Sang and Hwang Sun-Won

Sublime experiences can become illusory. Yi Sang’s “The Wings” (1936) and Hwang Sun-Won’s “Rain Shower” (1953) aptly prove this fact given their attempts to understand life after the destruction of a sublime experience in their writings. Each of their narrators experience a traumatic epiphany when their suffering, and their sublime fantasies, become tangibly invalid and unreal. Having lived in their own constructs of a sublime world, prevailing Japanese colonialism and the ongoing Korean War eventually move each of their characters away from their sublime experience. The post-sublime realm highlights the aftermath of such separations, demonstrating how one’s misconception of happiness and grandeur is destined to reach an inevitable climax. Exploring Yi’s and Hwang’s discourse through the Kantian sublime and the Korean concept of han supports the phenomenon of the post-sublime. Fundamentally ordinary in their sufferings, each narrator seeks to validate their individual selfhoods amidst the post-sublime’s communion with the other.