Reflections on Death and Art, translated by poet Choi Seung-ja
A steady seller loved in Korea for over 40 years
The first complete translation in Korea with additions to previously missing translations

What book on suicide has garnered the most consistent attention in Korea?
The next book that can be mentioned after Émile Durkheim's 『Suicide』, a classic in this field, is 『Studies in Suicide』 by Al Alvarez.
This book became a steady seller in 1982 when the edition translated by poet Choi Seung-ja gained considerable popularity, and has continued to sell for nearly 40 years since then, establishing itself as a timeless classic among Korean readers.
The new 『A Study of Suicide』 published by Amsilmunko is a comprehensive revision based on the original translation by Choi Seung-ja, and is the first official complete translation in Korea that includes additional translations of content omitted from the previous edition.
The added volume amounts to approximately 50 pages based on the original book.

When I was a student, I had a physics teacher who was unusually kind and informal, but who constantly talked about suicide in a joking manner.
He was a small man with a broad, ruddy face, a large head covered with curly gray hair, and a perpetually worried smile.
Unlike most of his fellow teachers, he said he had been top of his class at Cambridge University.
One day, after a class, he said in a casual tone that anyone who was about to behead someone should always be careful to put their own head in the bag first, or else there would be terrible chaos.
At those words, all the children laughed.
Soon the bell rang, signaling 1 o'clock, and all the boys went out in groups to eat lunch.
The physics teacher rode his bike straight home, put his head in a sack, and decapitated himself.
There was no great confusion.
I was very impressed at that time.
--- p.9~10

Disaster, when it finally strikes, is never as severe as anticipated.
She too was able to write with the same sense of relief, and even her writing speed increased, as if to foreshadow the horrors to come.
She realized that in some ways this fear was what she had been waiting for all her life, and that now that it had arrived, she had to harness it.
“The passion for destruction is also the passion for creation,” said Mikhail Bakunin.
That was true for Sylvia too.
She transformed the feeling of anger and pain into a kind of celebration.
--- p.59

An artist's creative act does not necessarily help him recover.
In other words, just because an artist expresses his or her fantasy does not mean that he or she is automatically freed from that fantasy.
According to a certain peculiar logic inherent in the act of creation, the methodology of 'borrowing form to express' may be a device that helps artists, rather than escaping from the materials they have drawn from the abyss, get closer to them.
--- p.80

Suicide may be a declaration of bankruptcy in a life filled with failures.
But on the other hand, it can be said that it is the history of a life that ends with that one decision and, through the ultimateity of that decision, escapes at least from complete failure.
Some minimal freedom, the freedom to die in the way and at the time of one's choosing, is what saves life from the wreckage of all those fates one never wanted.
Perhaps that is why totalitarian states feel 'victimized' when their dissidents commit suicide.
--- p.157

Society is something that improves, albeit painfully and very slowly.
In other words, society continues to grow essentially independent of humanity.
Professor Stern gets to the heart of the matter:
“At some stage in his evolution, man must have discovered that he could kill not only beasts and fellow humans, but also himself.
From then on, we can assume that human life became something entirely different.” Ultimately, it seems to me that even the most sophisticated and plausible sociological theories short-circuit with this simple insight:
The insight is that suicide, like sex, is a human trait that even a perfect society can never erase.
--- p.169

Mandelstam was arrested again and died in a forced labor camp near Siberia.
However, he opposed his wife's suggestion to commit suicide until the very last moment.
His wife later said:
“Every time I brought up the topic of suicide, he would say this.
Why are you in such a hurry?
The end is the same everywhere, and here it is coming upon us in a hurry.' Death, therefore, seemed more real than life, and more concise.
(...) When we are confronted with some terrible horror in this world, or when problems that seem utterly insurmountable weigh us down with particularly strong pressure, then the essential nature of life, the ordinary problems, always recede into the background.
"How can we hold such awe in the power of nature and the eternal laws of existence when the realistic fears of the world are so acutely felt in our daily lives? It may seem like a strange conclusion, but on the other hand, such worldly fears seem to bring a certain richness to our lives."

--- p.225