[KS] Seo Giwon's "The Ma Rok Biographies" and Chinese Anecdotes

[STARR D.F.]

Dear Professor Montgomery,

The horse / deer analogy is certainly used in classical Chinese sources to contrast the superficially impressive but actually useless (deer) with the less flashy but really useful (horse). Wang Chong (Han) in his Fei Han pian (Critique of Han Feizi)cites Han Feizi saying a horse that resembles a deer (i.e. fleet of foot)can be worth 1000 in gold, but there are no deer worth that. Wang Chong compares useless Confucian scholars to deer and useful state officials to horses. 

Don Starr
Durham University  

-----Original Message-----
From: koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws on behalf of Charles Montgomery
Sent: Mon 07/09/2009 14:45
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: [KS] Seo Giwon's "The Ma Rok Biographies" and Chinese Anecdotes
 
Colleagues,

I'm reading Seo Giwon's "The Ma Rok Biographies."

I read the liner notes, which say:

Ma Rok, which stands for the various protagonists with the surname of Ma in
this series of five short stories (of which only three are included here),
actually means ³the horse and the deer² in Chinese. This odd combination of
the two animals refers to a classical Chinese anecdote in which the powerful
can coerce others into seeing a horse as a deer. According to its
connotations in Korea the title also evokes the reality of humanity
checkered by the vulgar and the noble, thus drawing the reader to recognize
the moral ambiguity that operates in the human psyche during turbulent
historical times.


This analysis seems pretty far at odds with the absurdist humor that Seo
uses in his work, and I'm far more tempted to attribute this title, if it is
at all attributable to Chinese myth, to the story of the race of the horse
and deer, in which absurd actions lead to the enslavement and death,
respectively, of the animals.

I wonder if you someone on H-Asia can comment on this editorial attribution,
or about a Korean interpretation of the foundational myth the liner-notes
refer to?

Thanks for any light anyone can shed,


Charles Montgomery
Dongguk University




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