Korean Studies
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The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese, translated and introduced by Sung-Il Lee, Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1998. 153 pages. $17.00 paper. ISBN 1-55659-076-8.
A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction, selected and translated by Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998. 191 pages. $38.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8248-2015-0), $15.95 paper (ISBN 0-8248-2071-1).
The Prophet and Other Stories, Yi Ch'ông-jun, translated by Julie Pickering, Ithaca, New York: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999. 189 pages. $22.00, cloth: ISBN 1-885445-61-X; $14.00, paper: ISBN 1-885445-01-6.
Reviewed by Robert J. Fouser
Kagoshima University[This review originally appeared in a modified form as "Korean Literature in Translation: A Trio Virtuoso", in Translation Review 58, (2000), pp. 59-62.]
The last years of the 1990s have been good to Korean literature in English translation. Together, the three works discussed in this review round out existing translations by filling a number of important gaps in the corpus of Korean literature in English translation. Though translators and aficionados of Korean literature frequently lament the state of Korean literature in translation compared with that of Chinese or Japanese literature, the three works reviewed are cause for hope because, they match the quality of some of the best translations of Chinese and Japanese literature being done today.
To date, most translations of Korean literature into English have focused on shijo, an accessible genre of vernacular poetry from Chosôn period (1392-1910), the most famous works of classical fiction in Chinese and han'gûl, and post-1945 literature from South Korea. Translations of post-1945 fiction have appeared mainly in anthologies of short stories by different authors. In recent years, a number of translations of poetry by one author have appeared, but novels or collected works by one author are still relatively rare. The works reviewed here all diverge from this pattern in important ways.
The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese, translated by Sung-il Lee, is the best one-volume anthology of poetry written in classical Chinese by Koreans from the Unified Shilla period (A.D. 668-935) to the Japanese colonial period. Translating classical Chinese poetry into Korean is tricky because the translator needs to maintain the austere, almost "foreign," tone of the original while making the translation aesthetically attractive. In the past, Koreans who could write classical Chinese had a choice of two written languages, each language contained different nuances and filled different functions. Chinese was formal and philosophical, whereas Korean was emotional and spontaneous. These differences imply a degree of tension in Korean writers of Chinese poetry who were confined at once by the language of classical Chinese and the desire to express feelings through poetry. Dr. Lee has done an admirable job in conveying the sense of both the original Chinese and the Korean translation of the original in English.
Finding fault with The Moonlit Pond is difficult, but the translator could have included more poems that reflect the social context of the times. There are, for example, no translations of poems by Chong Yak-yong (1762-1836), one of the greatest philosophers of the Chosôn period and a master of terse, sarcastic poetry in classical Chinese. Nor are there any long narrative poems, which were often used to comment indirectly on court politics or social injustice. The translator may be correct in assuming that short poems about nature are more appealing to readers in English, but the omission of didactic and socially relevant works leaves a distorted impression of this important genre of Korean literature.
A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction, translated by Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton, is one of the most important collections of Korean short stories to appear in English translation in years. The anthology provides a comprehensive overview of important authors of the first half of the twentieth century, which was dominated by the Japanese colonial period. Many of the works, some of which are required reading in Korean high schools, are "early-modern classics" that established literature in han'gûl as the dominant form of literary expression in Korea. Of particular importance, however, is the number of major authors who have rarely appeared in English translation: Yi Ki-yông, Yi T'ae-jun and Pak T'ae-wôn. All three went to North Korea before or during the Korean War and were banned from publication in the South until democratization in 1987. Yi T'ae-jun disappeared shortly after he went to the North, but Yi Ki-yông and Pak T'ae-wôn were the only authors from the South to survive the purges in the North in the 1950s and enjoy successful literary careers.
Though diverse, the stories in A Ready-Made Life all touch on the distortion of colonialism in Korean society. None are overtly anti-Japanese because Japanese censorship at the time would have prevented them from being published. Rather, they focus on the social dislocation of colonial "over-development" that created an educated urban middle and upper class--most authors in this period were themselves educated at Japanese universities--that lived off colonial capitalism, while most Koreans lived in abysmal conditions in the countryside. Indeed, some of the characters in "The Barbershop Boy" by Pak T'ae-wôn have Japanese names and his description of city life in Seoul has an oddly Japanese feel about it. Yi Sang's "The Phantom Illusion" and Kim Yu-jông's "Wife" are "placeless," which alludes to the dislocation of the colonial condition.
The writers represented in this collection dealt with the issue of language in diverse ways. Ch'ae Man-shik, Kim Yu-jông, and Yi Hyo-sôk all used an earthy colloquial language that evoked images of Chosôn-period marketplace storytellers known as kwangdae. Pak T'ae-wôn and Yi Sang used experimental language that draws on modernist literary trends in the West and Japan. Pak also used the Seoul dialect, which formed the basis of the "standard Korean" that has since spread through much of South Korea. Also present are language pioneers, such as Yi Kwang-su and Hyôn Chin-gôn, who were among the first to write fiction in the vernacular. Their work established stylistic and grammatical conventions that contributed much to the development of the literary language known as "modern Korean."
The task of translating such complex language into lucid English is daunting, but Dr. Kim and Dr. Fulton have conveyed the essence of the original remarkably well. In particular, the translators bring the orality in many of these stories to life without resorting to the clumsy slang or contrived colloquialisms that are found in a number of translations of Korean literature, mostly by non-native speakers of English. The only minor quibble with A Ready-Made Life is the literal translation of some place names in Seoul, such as Tongdaemun into English as "East Gate," while other place names, such as Sup'yogyo, are transliterated with an English word added at the end, as in "Sup'yo Bridge."
If The Moonlit Pond and A Ready-Made Life provide sweeping overviews of the two sides of literary diglossia in Korean literature, then The Prophet and Other Stories, by Yi Ch'ông-jun and translated by Julie Pickering, offers an in-depth look at one of Korea's best and most prolific writers of fiction today. Yi Ch'ông-jun joins Hwang Sun-won, Yi Mun-yôl, and Kim Sûng-ok as one of most gifted storytellers of the post-liberation era in South Korea, but unlike Hwang and Yi, his work has never appeared in a solo anthology in translation. Kim Sûng-ok stopped writing in the late 1970s to become a Christian missionary, though his best short stories have long been available in translation. Yi Ch'ông-jun has won every major literary award, and Sop'yônje, a novel about traveling musicians in the colonial period, was made into a hugely successful film in 1993. The Prophet thus fills a major gap in the corpus of contemporary Korean fiction available in translation.
The title story of The Prophet is a novella about the social life of a neighborhood bar called the Queen Bee. One of the regular customers in the bar, Na U-hyôn, has the odd talent of being able to predict the future. After the bar changes hands, the new owner, known as Madam Hong, forces the customers and waitresses to wear masks, which frees them from social restrictions. Business booms, but, as Madam Hong becomes increasingly autocratic, Mr. Na predicts that a murder will take place in the bar. When no murder takes place, he loses his credibility and becomes an outcast. The rest of the story deals with the conflict between the loss of credibility and his stubborn faith that he will be proven right. Written in 1977, the novella is an allegory to the harsh years of dictatorship in 1970s and the group psychology that supported it.
Yi's fiction, like much contemporary Korean fiction, is heavy on narration and light on dialogue. Much of the dialogue feels stunted, whereas the description is detailed and, at times, haunting. In The Prophet, the characters rarely have extended conversation and most dialogue consists of one-line commentary or simple answers to nonsensical questions. Though gripping in Korean, Yi's fiction burdens translators with the task of making the work interesting to readers who are used to extensive dialogue. Ms. Pickering has done an outstanding job in making these stories as interesting in English as they are in Korean. Ms. Pickering is at her best in dealing with the affectionate but caustic linguistic banter that marks much of Yi's fiction.
All three books reviewed here have an informative introduction by the translator that provides context for understanding the book. In each case, the translator and translators have directed their explanations at readers with limited background knowledge of Korean literature. A Ready-Made Life also contains a concise biography of each of the authors that are represented. Each of the books is a fine production, with few typographical or other production errors. Romanization in A Ready-Made Life and The Prophet follows the standard McCune-Reischauer system of romanization, which is also officially recognized in South Korea, but romanization in The Moonlit Pond is somewhat idiosyncratic, which could confuse readers who encounter translated works by the same poets in other collections.
To conclude, Yi Ch'ông-jun's The Prophet resolves, like the last movement of a sonata, the tension running through more than a thousand years of literary diglossia. Vernacular literature in han'gûl that is deeply rooted in the Zeitgeist of its time is now paramount in South Korea. A sonata, however, can have a fourth movement, usually a minuet, inserted before the concluding movement. The seeming fear of dialogue that many contemporary Korean writers exhibit suggests that the conflict over literary language in Korea has not yet reached a resolution and that the accomplishments of Yi and others may be only a vibrant minuet before a resolution to the politically enforced "neo-diglossia" that divides Korean literature into North and South.
Citation:
Fouser, Robert 2000
Sung-il Lee (tr.), The Moonlit Pond: Korean Classical Poems in Chinese, (1998); Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton (tr.), A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction (1998); and Yi Ch'ông-jun (tr. Julie Pickering), The Prophet and Other Stories,
Korean Studies Review 2000, no. 13
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr00-13.htm
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