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Farmers' Dance, by Shin Kyông-Nim, translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Young-Moo Kim.  Cornell East Asia Series, 105.  Ithaca:  East Asia Program, Cornell University, and Seoul:  DapGae Books, 1999 (bilingual edition).  212 pp.  (ISBN 1-885445-05-9, paper, $14.00).

Day-Shine, by Chong Hyon-jong, translated and edited by Wolhee Choe and Peter Fusco.  Cornell East Asia Series, 94.  Ithaca:  East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1998.  128 pp. (ISBN 1-885445-54-7 cloth, $22.00; ISBN 1-885445-94-6 paper, $14.00).



Reviewed by Gregory Nicholas Evon
University of New South Wales

 

In the Series Editor's Afterword to Farmers' Dance Young-Moo Kim states that "to fall upon a good translation is much harder than to discern a good original work."  Nonetheless, it seems that he and Brother Anthony of Taizé have succeeded on both counts, and to this may be added Wolhee Choe's and Peter Fusco's efforts in Day-Shine.

Born within four years of each other, both Chong (b. 1939) and Shin (b. 1935) experienced the political and social upheavals suffered by Korea in this century.  These upheavals, nonetheless, largely remain in the background to their poetry.  They serve as context, but in no way limit the poets' engagement with the concrete, human element.  "Common humanity" and "shared humanity" are emphasized in the introduction to Chong's collection, yet these descriptions are applicable to Shin as well, and in a sense these two collections can each be seen as companion pieces.  

Chong is the more self-consciously literary of the two--with references to Samuel Beckett (p. 62), the Marquis de Sade (p. 14) and Nietzsche (p. 117)--and paradoxically, he is the more East Asian of the two, so to speak.  As noted in the introduction (pp. 5, 6, 8, and 9), one finds in his poems certain Taoist and Buddhist sensibilities, and yet these come across not so much as clichés but instead inventive re-readings of clichs. The introduction states (accurately, I think) that through the use of "clichés or near-clichés...he opens up possibilities of new meaning by novel juxtapositions, parodies, or partial substitutions and changes.  Since words, once uttered, begin to limit the reality to be comprehended, he tries to rescue words by lifting them from a given context and placing them in poetic constructions where they may float freed from contentious discursiveness" (p. 9).  This evaluation strikes me as being in fundamental agreement with Chong's interesting essay / meditation on poetry, "Breath and Dream--On Poetry" (pp. 113-117), which concludes the selection and is beautifully translated by Uchang Kim and Ted Hughes.

Appropriately, we find a degree of mistrust in Chong's attitude towards words, and this is given its clearest expression in "Empty Room, 5" (p. 50) where he exclaims "There is no deliverance from this word to that word. / At any rate, as for the tongue, / it's most useful to kiss with!"  A similar sense of the natural and physical offering a release not found in the intellectual is found also "In Praise of Dusk" (p. 24), which begins "With the passing of twilight / the world becomes richer!" and concludes with a comparison of the corporeal body to the void, resolving with "there's nothing my hands cannot touch. / Water is the same: / its hands extend to infinity--"  There is in this a sense of expansiveness which, intriguingly, seems to be at odds with another poem with a similar title:  Jorge Luis Borges' "In Praise of Shadow" (Elogio de la Sombra).  Whereas Chong's praise of dusk centers on opulence-- "to be opulent is to lack distinction"--Borges' self-knowledge comes through a stripping away of thoughts on other matters to arrive at a distinct self:  "Emerson and snow and so many things. / Now I can forget them. I reach my center, / my algebra and my key, / my mirror. / Soon I will know who I am."

This is not to say that Chong's work as represented here is without political content.  "To Get Attached to Someplace Is Hell-- May 1980 Kwangju" (p. 14) and "Like a Ghost" (pp. 55-56), detailing Korea's liberal use of tear gas-- "so poisonous it can not be exported"--on college campuses, are both fine poems which happen to depict political oppression.  Indeed, his question in "Ghost"-- "How come you act so without restraint?"--is sufficiently answered in the former poem:  that one who commits a crime to gain power then "uses that power to secure the freedom to commit other crimes."  In other words:  "How come you act so without restraint?"  "Because we can."  It is perhaps not unreasonable to wonder whether his recognition of this fact ("part of Maurice Blanchot's explanation of the world of the Marquis de Sade") is in some sense responsible for his evident love of nature and even his very vision of poetry as "breath, the breath of liberation" (p. 114).

Shin's poems, on the other hand, seem largely devoid of any self-consciously intellectual thought, and nature itself is usually a setting for observations of people busy with living, or as is more often the case, trying to live.  In "Summer Rains" (p. 33), for instance, we find this sense of "trying to live" brought out forcefully through the mundane which seems to serve in Shin a function similar to the use of cliché in Chong:  the promise of food ("pig's lard in shrimp sauce"), the desire for cigarettes ("our pockets have run out of fags"), mention of an "old woman" who "lost her son," uncomfortable as she sits "drenched in the monsoon rains," and finally, "Old So [who] is worrying about his flighty wife, and Pak [who] / is spinning tales of stockings he never bought, so fine / his daughter's flesh would have shown right through."

Music, food, and above all else, booze-- makkôlli and soju--are basic ingredients in these poems.  Brother Anthony's decision to discuss those things peculiarly Korean (food, alcohol, political / social background, the architecture of Korean houses, etc.) in the introduction seems to me to have been a good decision.  Consistent references to similar items throughout the poems allow for Brother Anthony's comprehensive initial treatment, and in turn, the reader is able to see rather clearly the Korean elements of Chong's poems when reading the English translations:  "it was the usual chilly April / as uncle's friends in their sneakers / gathered in our yard and tossed back soju" ("The Abandoned Mine," p. 73) or "We plain folk are happy just to see each other./...gulping down makkôlli sitting at the bar" ("After Market's Done," p. 19).

Yet one of Shin's poems also manifests a mistrust of language.  He paints this mistrust by looking at a baby from an adult perspective, noting that "in a little while he will learn the word 'Mama.'  It means / he will lose the secret contained in the word 'Mama.' / But he doesn't realize that."  In this poem, the very process of language acquisition results in the loss of the secret contained in each thing a word designates, and the "day he loses every secret, he will become fully human" ("A Baby," pp. 119 and 121).  This equating of becoming human with the loss of understanding or at least, the loss of appreciation of actual objects ("flower, tree, star") suggests the recognition of the distance between what we become and what we might have become: self-knowledge that only adults have.  The indication that this is, indeed, what Shin has in mind is found in the
final line of the poem:  here, that baby has grown up, and "he will suffer torment at the thought of some girl. /...he will weep, homesick for himself.  Yet one senses that even the near-philosophical aspect of "A Baby," with its sense of frustration and loss, is not all that different from the other frustrations found in the poems:  that this homesickness for oneself is but one more example of that frustration--political, economic, or otherwise--which is visited upon us when we "become fully human."

Despite the apparent gloominess of this observation and the harshness of the majority of the human lives he depicts-- "after living a lonesome life, he died" ("Graveside Epitaph," p. 115) or "the carrier's grandson, gone to make his fortune, / came back even poorer than before and / we held a party for him to celebrate only / the party soon turned into a fight" ("That Winter", p. 81)--Shin's poetry is marked not so much by a grim view of life but rather a careful accounting of the grimness of certain aspects of certain lives.  To make poetry of this must not be easy, and to make of these Korean poems English poems is also an accomplishment worthy of praise.

Both Day-Shine and Farmers' Dance deserve high praise for contributing to a relatively small but growing body of excellent Korean literature in excellent English translation.  Volumes such as these demonstrate admirably the strengths of and beauty to be found in Korean literature, and moreover, demonstrate that Korean literature can be translated into English well, given the proper texts and the proper translators.


Citation:
Evon, Gregory Nicholas  2000
Review of Shin Kyông-Nim, Farmers' Dance, transl. Brother Anthony of Taiz and Young-Moo Kim (1999); and
Chong Hyon-jong, Day-Shine, transl. and ed. by Wolhee Choe and Peter Fusco (1998)
Korean Studies Review 2000, no. 2
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr00-02.htm

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