[KS] Gwageo cheongsan (Kwageon ch'eongsan)

David McCann dmccann at fas.harvard.edu
Wed Sep 11 11:24:19 EDT 2002


One minor note:  the strange number in my last posting re the Martin/Chang
dictionary is not a page number.  It was supposed to be the date of
publication, 1968.

One middling note:  The first line of Hwang Chini's sijo song, quoted in
another of my posts, could be translated as  In the midst of ch'eongsan--
which we realize could be something like "in the midst of the green/blue
mountains," OR "in the midst of fixing the accounts" -- Don't be proud of
easy passing (sui kameul) OR easy subtracting (kam).

This other is of course an absurdist reading, and all of you were kind to
ignore it.

One other note:  Mark Peterson's mention of death as a theme puts me in
mind, again, of the seriousness of my reading of that sijo.  Whether we are
doing accounts, or re-doing history, or simply slipping along through the
valleys as a stream of water, we will reach the broad sea, and disappear
into it.  Hwang Chini's sijo reminds us to pause for a moment, and then go
on.  These particular postings, serious ruminations on history and what and
how it means, have given me such moments to pause and reflect, and have led
me to look again at that sijo, to appreciate it for what it is, not what I
make of it, and somehow this morning turn that thought to the memory of
this day one year ago.

David McCann







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