[KS] KSR 2000-04:_The Early Lyrics 1941-1960: Poems by So Chong-Ju_, trans. by

Tue May 23 08:17:04 EDT 2000

_The Early Lyrics 1941-1960: Poems by So Chong-Ju_, trans. by Brother
Anthony of TaizŽ. Cornell East Asia Series, 90. Ithaca: East Asia Program,
Cornell University, and Seoul: DapGae, 1998. 299 pp. (ISBN 1-885445-90-3,
paper $17.00).

Reviewed by Hyangsoon Yi
University of Georgia

The publication of a Korean-English bilingual edition of the early lyrics
of S™ Ch™ng-Ju, also known by his pen name Midang, marks a major step
forward in Korean Studies. Unlike the existing sampler type of selected
work,1 this book covers all of Midang's early poetic output which appeared
in the first four collections of his verse: _Flower Snake Poems_ (1941);
_Nightingale_ (1948); _Selected Poems of S™ Ch™ng-Ju_ (1955); and _The
Essence of Silla_ (1960). Spanning nearly two and a half decades of
Midang's career as a poet, the Cornell East Asia Series edition enables the
reader to trace closely the artistic development of perhaps "the greatest
living Korean poet" (Introduction 9). What makes this comprehensive text
particularly valuable is not simply the sheer volume of verse it contains,
for it is during his early period that Midang made an indelible impression
on the Korean reading public with his iconoclastic, new voice. It is also
during this period that he wrote some of his most well-known masterpieces,
such as "Self-portrait," "Flower Snake," "A Leper," "A Poem about Riverside
Village," "On Seeing Mudung Mountain," and "Beside a Chrysanthemum," among
others. The availability of a substantial bulk of bilingual material for
such an important writer as Midang helps upgrade the study of Korean
literature beyond its customary survey level in universities outside of
Korea.

Read chronologically, Midang's early lyrics reflect the artist's
soul-searching peregrination.  We see his youthful penchant for a language
of the body, epitomized by European Symbolist poetics, Hellenic ideals, and
Nietzschean philosophy, develop into a mature rediscovery of the spiritual
world of Shamanism and Buddhism deeply entrenched in the traditional Korean
culture. Midang's self-acknowledged debt to Charles Baudelaire and
Friedrich Nietzsche is clearly recognizable in the brutally sensuous
imagery running through _Flower Snake Poems_. For instance, the title poem
"Flower Snake" opens:

A back road pungent with musk and mint.
So beautiful, that snake-
What huge griefs brought it to birth?
Such a repulsive body! (21)

In this poem the speaker's guilt-ridden indulgence in decadent erotic
beauty culminates as he links the crimson-colored, "lovely lips" of the
cursed snake with "Cleopatra's blood," and then again toward the end of the
poem with his young bride Sunnei's "catlike" mouth. Diverse sensory effects
coordinated in this and many other pieces in _Flower Snake Poems_ seem to
aspire for synesthesia, a technique championed by Baudelaire. _Flower Snake
Poems_, with its bold images, unabashed sexual exploration, and vigorous
rhythmic pulse, occupies a conspicuous place in the history of modern
Korean poetry.

>From the period of _Nightingale_, Midang begins to gravitate toward Eastern
religious and cultural traditions for poetic inspiration. The external
momentum for this change was provided by Korea's independence from Japanese
colonial rule in 1945. In "A Song of the Goddess of Mercy in the Stone
Cavern," Midang intimates "a fresh breath of youth" exuding from "[d]eep in
the cracks between stone and cold stone" (87).  His tone in this poem is
subdued and cautiously optimistic compared with the emotional strife
expressed earlier in the face of the irreconcilable dualism of soul and
flesh.  Blood red, the dominant color in _Flower Snake Poems_, thus gives
way to sky blue in _Nightingale_. This transformation is accompanied by a
shift in his poetic sensibility from city to nature.  Despite the
unmistakable infusion of a hopeful note, however, the reader cannot miss a
strand of tragic loss and longing resonating in _Nightingale_.
"Nightingale: The Journey Home" and "At Nightfall," for example, draw
heavily on the quintessential Korean pathos of han.

In the 1950's, Silla emerges as the central locus of Midang's poetic
vision. To him, the ancient Buddhist kingdom "represents an archetypal lost
home, nostalgia for which raises the perceptive reader out of the
limitations of the present into an awareness of eternal realities"
(Introduction 10). Midang characterizes his career as a search for "a
poetic reconciliation of the present with the eternal," and it is in the
harmonious unity of the ideal and the real symbolized by Silla that he
finds the possibility of transcending life's fundamental antinomies
(Introduction 10).  During the period of Silla, Midang writes, "a star came
down, / eager to help youths climbing Diamond Mountain / and it would sweep
the path before their feet," but the unity of our world and the world
beyond dwindled when "the teachings of the Sung masters arrived" ("A Brief
Astronomical History of Korea" 271).  Midang's work from this period on is
increasingly permeated with a Buddhist esprit at the heart of the Silla
symbolism.  Yet no poem surpasses his "Beside a Chrysanthemum" in its rich
evocative power of karmic interdependence in human as well as natural
worlds. Often viewed as suggestive of Midang's own tumultuous youth and
subsequent artistic maturation, this piece, with its exquisite epiphany of
sublime inner tranquility, has established itself as his signature poem.

_The Early Lyrics 1941-1960_ is a book well worth perusing for its
aesthetic merit--in both languages--and for its pedagogical usefulness.
Brother Anthony deserves unstinting applause for the contribution he has
made to the translation of Korean poetry. The English text of _The Early
Lyrics 1941-1960_ was first published in 1993 by Forest Books under the
title of _Midang So Chong Ju: The Early Lyrics 1941-1960_. A crosscheck of
the two editions reveals that the translator has made minor revisions for
the bilingual version. Although local in their scale, these revisions
showcase the translator's ceaseless efforts to create English verse worthy
of the original in rhythm, musicality, and visual imagery. Compare, for
example, the two different opening lines of "Self-portrait": "Dad was a
slave. He wasn't home even late at night" (1993) versus "Dad was a slave.
Never home even late at night" (1996). The structural tightening enhances
the syntactic and semantic tension of the line with the added echo of "n"
between "never" and "night." Throughout the book, assonance serves as one
of Brother Anthony's preferred strategies for attuning the Korean poems
with English prosody. "Flower Snake" offers a prime example of the ways in
which carefully crafted alliterative phrases and rhythmic patterns add
spice to unassuming diction and thereby amplify its poetic resonance. On
the whole, Brother Anthony maintains a conversational style that, in
seemingly treating the audience as a confidante, both captures Midang's
lyrical voice and adds to the vibrancy, immediacy, and drama of the
translations.

In his introduction to _The Early Lyrics 1941-1960_, Brother Anthony states
that his translations are "as full and as conservative as is possible
within the limits of the option to translate poems as poems" (10). This
statement accounts for the preservation of many of the characteristic
features of the original in the translations, ranging from line
arrangements and cultural allusions to the frequent repetitions of
emotionally loaded phrases. As is seen in his rendering of "Ky™nu ui norae"
as "The Herdsman's Song" and "Sudaedong si" as "A Poem about Riverside
Village" ("A Poem about My Old Neighborhood" in the 1993 version), Brother
Anthony endeavors to transfer the visual and cultural dimensions of the
original to the target language faithfully. Despite these "conservative"
aspects, his approach to _The Early Lyrics 1941-1960_ can be described
overall as a "transposition" or "versioning" rather than a "translation,"
according to his own distinction of the different levels of translation.2
To render "poems as poems," he occasionally opts for expressions familiar
to the English ear ("lyre" for k™mungo) rather than attempting awkward
substitutions or calques. For the uninitiated reader of Midang's work,
Brother Anthony's introduction and notes are indispensable. They are,
however, economical enough not to interfere with the pace of the advanced
student.

_The Early Lyrics 1941-1960_ will benefit various types of readers. It can
serve as a basic textbook for students of Korean poetry and also as a handy
bilingual reference for researchers in modern Korean literature. This
edition not only fills in for a Western audience gaps in the early stages
of Midang's poetic career and the development of modern Korean poetry at
large, it also paves a smooth passage into _Winter Sky_, which, published
eight years after _The Essence of Silla_, is considered by some a pinnacle
of Midang's poetic achievements to date.  Whether read independently or in
conjunction with other works by Midang, the bilingual edition opens up new
avenues of exploration in Korean literature courses; it can also facilitate
study for those interested in translation theory and practice as they
pertain specifically to Korean poetry. Given that several different
translations of Midang's poems are already available in English, such
exercises have become plausible. To fully ensure the pedagogical potential
of the book and to attract new readers to Korean poetry, however, minor
typographical and formatting errors should be corrected in both the English
and Korean texts. In spite of these mechanical flaws, _The Early Lyrics
1941-1960_ promises both further breadth and depth in the study of Korean
literature in the West.

Notes
1 See, for example, _Poems of S™ Ch™ngju_, trans. by David R. McCann.  (New
York: Columbia UP, 1989); and _Poems of a Wanderer: Selected Poems of
Midang So Chong-ju_, trans. by Kevin O'Rourke. (Dublin: Dedalus P, 1995).

2 Brother Anthony uses the terms "translation" and "transposition" to
contrast literal with liberal translations. See Brother Anthony,
"Methodologies of Poetry Translation," in _Han'guk munhak ži oekug'™
p™ny™k: hy™nhwang kwa ch™nmang_ [Translation of Korean Literature: The
Current Situation and Prospects], ed. Jong-gil Kim et al. (Seoul: Minumsa,
1997), 238.

Citation:
Yi, Hyangsoon 2000
Review of __The Early Lyrics 1941-1960: Poems by So Chong-Ju_, trans. by
Brother Anthony of TaizŽ (1998)
_Korean Studies Review_ 2000, no. 4
Electronic file:
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/korean-studies/files/ksr00-04.htm

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