[KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine Baker

Fri Nov 25 09:01:56 EST 2011

Hello again Frank and all,

I agree with Frank, where are the Korean lit. people? 

As this is has developed into a very interesting and productive line of inquiry, I will add a few more comments.

Let me start by saying that whether one reads the two essays by Yi that refer to his trip to see Baker as fiction or a factual account is, ultimately, up to the individual reader. And that may be as far as this discussion can realistically go. Let me suggest this, if scholars who are knowledgable about Baker's career can demonstrate that she was somewhere other than in Asia in July of 36 then it's a done deal. If, on the other hand, there is a gap in the record of her whereabouts for that period then we have a very different situation. I would be most thankful if someone could provide such information.

Back to the question of how to read the text, and I will reiterate that it is a personal process, during my PhD course work at Yonsei University in Korean literature, I took a course dedicated to Yi's writings. We read all of his essays and most of his short fiction. On the day that we covered the essay in question (his visit to C-port). Baker's visit was the main point of discussion. I was the only non-Korean graduate student in the class. Not one of the other 15 grad students nor the professor expressed the slightest doubt that this was a description of real events that Yi had witnessed. The unanimous opinion was, "Wow, Josephine Baker visited Korea." These were native speaking Korean PhD candidates in Korean literature coming to the text with no investment in whether she had been in Asia or not. And the professor is one of the most prolific commentators on colonial literature currently writing in Korea. Again, individual readers should decide for
 themselves, but if we are basing our judgements on what a text says and how it reads, then certainly this means something. 

Having read all of Yi's essays, one thing is clear: many of them have a dreamy, lyrical quality as does his fiction (he uses the word "dream" more than 80 times in his 350 plus page novel "Endless Blue Sky). One of his most widely read essays is titled "While Burning Leaves" (낙엽을 태우며)  in which he engages in a lyrical, dreamy rumination on life while raking up and then burning the leaves in his yard. Yet, no one doubts that he actually raked up and burned those leaves. In fact, this is the distinguishing feature of his writing whether it be essays or fiction. Several very prominent scholars have characterized him as a writer who writes a "verse-like prose" with Kim Dong In going as far as to say that he "betrayed the spirit of prose" with his predilection for a lyrical, poetic style of writing (read a lack of intense focus on terse, descriptive diction). In fact, this was an element of his modernism.: the development of a new, original way
 of using the Korean language. 

As to Frank's assertion that due to the digitalization of so many colonial sources, references to a Baker visit to Korea could not go overlooked, actually makes my point for me. Why then have all of them overlooked not one but two references to just such a visit by one of Korea's major writers? There is a limit to what one can do by punching keywords into a search engine. What else might be out there waiting to be discovered?   

Belated happy thanksgiving Frank and list members,

Best 

Steven 

________________________________
 From: Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws>
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws 
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: [KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine Baker

Re: [KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine
Baker
Hi Steven:

Where are all the Korean literature scholars gone to?
Anyone?

Two short responses ... THANKS for your careful reply, by the
way.

(...) And this brings me to point number
two above-they are included in vol. 7 of Yi's collected works,
the supil collection notdanpyeonseon which would be fiction.

Please see this online version's title page:
http://www.readbuild.com/books/388/pages/5749?edition=0.1&locale=ko
QUOTE:  Yi Hyo-sôkt'anp'yônsôn (...) 'Kûttae
kû hangguûi pam (...)

Yes, right ... not the original ... I had no time to even check
if that original journal is around. So maybe someone on the list could
and let us know? That would be great. In any case, I am seemingly not
alone with interpreting this piece as fiction rather than a
report.

   The essay published in
December, four months after the C-port essay, is the most
interesting (after the original essay in question of course) for our
discussion. It is titled "Goyohan {Dong}ui Bam: or "A
Quiet Night at 'Dong'." Dong was the name of a cafe that Yi
frequented in Nanam, Gyeonggi-do. In his essay about his visit to
Cheongjin to see Baker, he mentions that he went with a friend that he
became close to while frequenting the cafe "Dong."
In "A Quiet Night at Dong" he identifies the man as a
railway engineer and says that "This engineer had a great
knowledge of music and was the only one (from Dong) to accompany me
when I went to see the famous jazz singer in Chongjin." This is
exactly the same thing he says in the original essayGudae Gu
Hangui Bam: "In our party 'R' and I were the only ones from
the Dong crowd (that made the trip)..." If the original essay was
fiction, or as Frank later suggets a "fictious
report," why bother to repeat the fiction in another essay
that is clearly not fiction and will obviously be read by the very
friends he is talking about (among whom are other writers)? What
conscientious writer would do that?

Well, there is absolutely no contradiction here to what I stated.
My understanding is that Yi's piece was, to repeat myself, a
fictitious (or fictional, if you like that better) report, a literary
genre. Of course would Yi use whatever actual information he has about
the landscape, coffee shop, people, etc.  I understand that is
confusing, but it is also not unusual for any literate. Just the other
day I ended up reading a short report about a German writer I know
from long ago ... that author is best known for an imaginary report of
a meeting between two poets and their discourses around 1800--but that
meeting never happened. That is not a new genre. Stephen Epstein and a
colleague just wrote a piece about an up-to-date version of such a
genre, afictitious report--a "documockery"
that got a 500,000 views on YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLA6Bk_ivs, "The True
Origins of Pizza": find the essay here:
http://japanfocus.org/-Rumi-SAKAMOTO/3629
Now, that may not be a 100% match, and after all we are 75 years
apart, but it demonstrates my point.

As to why there are no other reports
of Josephine Baker's trip to Chongjin I can only speculate. Frank
is asking why, (...) That's an easy one, they have not gone back
and dug their way through obscure Chogwang articles nor have very
many people read Yi's essays.

Sorry, can't believe that. Since the 1990s we have wonderful
tools ... a very large percentage of colonial period newspapers and
magazines are digitized and even the content is searchable. Please go
here:
http://www.koreanhistory.or.kr/index.jsp
or directly to the search window:
http://www.koreanhistory.or.kr/eng/srchservice/detail/mainDetailSearch.jsp
Enter Josephine Baker (In Han'gûl) as a search term, and the
only item that comes up is the article Tonga ilbo article you
mentioned earlier. SOMEONE researching issues in the colonial period
and having some interest in music or dance would have seen something
... that is no scientific proof, of course, yes, but believe me, a
visit by someone already so well known in East Asia in the mid-1930s,
especially since 1936 and her big success in Paris, such a person
would have gotten some ink here and there. If not in Korea, sure in
China and Japan.

As to point three, it was a literary
convention of the time to use an initial to identify not only
places, but people (as can be seen above e.g., "R"). Both Yi
Hyoseok and Yi Sang make abundant use of this convention, and
that much more so in their essays than in their fiction
because, no doubt, they are talking about reality.  I hope this
helps.

Not a "convention" -- it was mostly either one of these
two:
(a) Japanese censorship, where entire syllable or words were
replaced by X or by circles (one for every syllable, in good and
"honest" Japanese fashion), and sometimes after the author
was getting back the manuscript he was then allowed to use a Latin
Letter as a placeholder.
(b) A mockery by Korean writers (and also Japanese) to made it
appear as if a text had been censored ... usually done with words or
names that one could indeed anticipate would be censored. That then
became part of the colonial tool set of writing. (Note that up to the
Park Chung Hee era, if not Chun Doo Hwam, this censorship tool was
continued in the South.)

Starting with this kind of censorship issue, writers like Yi
Sang, whom you also mentioned, then made a true art from this. That is
true. ***But*** when someone writing a "harmless" REPORT
about a visit in Chôngjin ... and if Chôngjin is then referred to
as "C-Harbor," then this indicates he is writing literature.
The place name is very likely *obscured" this way exactly because
the reported story did not happen in that particular place. Why
otherwise doing this with a city name?

Best,
Frank

-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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