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SIWF 서울국제작가축제

2023 Seoul International Writers' Festival

Crossing the Bridge of Language

  • Date2023.09.08.(Fri) ~ 2023.09.13.(Wed)
  • VenueNodeul Island
  • Organizing CommitteeKang hwa gil, Baik Ji yeon, Hwang inchan, Jongyon Hwang

We have crossed the bridge of language and entered into the world. As we learn language, we escape from primordial darkness and head into the light of the world where our family, friends, and neighbors live. Thanks to learning language, we have left the pond of Narcissus, acquired the norms, values, memories, and knowledge of our communities, and thus we’ve become human.

However, the world we have entered after crossing the bridge of language is not one. Our mother tongue is only one of many languages ​​in which mankind expresses itself, and the culture transmitted by that mother tongue is only one of many cultures.

We are comfortable, but short-sighted in our language; knowledgeable, yet self-obsessed. The humanity we have acquired thanks to our language is limited by that very language. Having entered into the world by crossing the bridge of language, we are about to head back over that same bridge and depart outside of our world.

As you know, literature is a strange language. It’s a language that has mastered the laws of language, and also it is a language that violates the laws of language. It serves the purposes of culture and resists culture at the same time. To overcome a restrictive culture, to transcend our narrow-minded human nature, we have literature.

Some East Asian traditions in literature and philosophy teach us that ultimate truths have no name, that words don’t offer access to the Real. This suggests each of us should think beyond our linguistic and cultural limitations. We hope that the Seoul International Writers’ Festival will be an opportunity to encounter those limits and to see beyond them.