[KS] Early French publications of Korean texts

Frank Hoffmann hoffmann at koreanstudies.com
Tue Dec 2 11:23:54 EST 2014


Thank you Brother Anthony, for this pointer (and your summary). 
You pointed to the assassin Hong Chong-u's (alias Hong-Tjyong-Ou, 
1850-1913) merits as translator and cultural ambassador. I just wanted 
to point out that he was also immensely important for the exhibition 
and understanding of Korean art and handicraft objects in France. 

But let me start with something else:
The Bibliothèque nationale de France has in the past decade done an 
absolutely stunning job in putting early, non-copyrighted texts online 
as digital images, freely accessible and downloadable for everyone, no 
account needed. Among those sources are also many hundreds of 
magazines. This is a wonderful source!

=> http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search

Just enter, in this case, the French spelling of Hong Chong-u's name 
(Hong-Tjyong-Ou), and you have immediate access to several full-text 
sources related to him. (Choose option "All Gallica," for a start.)
Hong's _Le bois sec refleuri_ and others that you mention are also 
accessible and downloadable in full text:

=> http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k54364928

One of the true pearls amongst the Korean art and handicraft 
collections in Europe is the one at the Guimet Museum in Paris. Make 
very sure not to miss visiting if in Paris, it is a smaller, beautiful 
museum that has a great collection. It was Hong Chong-u who catalogued 
and described its Korean collection at the time, that was his main job 
in Paris. Hong was thus the first Korean in Europe doing such 
"assistant" curatorial work -- usually some native French, German, 
British scholars would then sign and get the academic credits, a 
practice that may even still be going on today in some EU countries. 
Not so in this case. Accidentally, I came across a nephew of another 
Korean assassin, of An Chung-gŭn, of course, who did much the same job 
as Hong-Tjyong-Ou did in Paris -- but he did so in Dresden, and two 
decades later (and there were others) ... soon to be published in 
Andreas Schirmer's forthcoming volume on Korean-Central European 
relations. In any case, Hong's _Le bois sec refleuri_ was actually 
published as volume 8 of the Annales du Musée Guimet -- so the museum, 
and that so early, should be given credit to have allowed Hong to 
publish under his own name and not that of Maurice Courant (whose 
_Bibliographie coréenne_, by the way, is also accessible as full text 
at above library portal), or any other of those activists of French 
colonialism in Asia. 
 
My question to Brother Anthony and others who are into literature:
Brother Anthony wrote:
"(...) the story told in the 2nd book also intrigues me immensely 
because although it is essentially the story of Sim Cheong, at the same 
time it isn't (..)"
That's been almost three decades ago now, but I recall I read (and 
still have it) a local 19th century Yŏnbyŏn version and also a North 
Korean scholarly (annotated) edition of _Ch'unhyang-chŏn_, and those 
had also MAJOR differences to what I knew as standard version as it is 
popular in South Korea. (Ch'unhyang-chŏn, by the way, was also one of 
the earliest Korean pieces translated into German.) Is there anything 
like an "original" text? Isn't it more like the _Arirang_ song, that 
has hundreds of versions, textual and melodically, where we can discuss 
which ones still are and which ones should better deserve a different 
name? To me Ch'unhyang-chŏn was always more oral culture (part of 
peasant culture) than literary, high culture, which, for sure, modern 
Korea then tried to convert into literary culture. The long coexistence 
of high culture (literary culture) and low culture certainly let to 
such literary recordings early on, but the huge diversification of the 
content of texts with the same title would otherwise hardly be 
explainable. No?
Alternatively, and *if the case* that would be unique to Korea -- but I 
can at least imagine so -- would it be possible that the development 
was going the other direction? That is, from a literary text to oral 
culture? There are very many such examples if we look at, for instance, 
Korean shaman practices, recited texts. Might that be an option in the 
case of _Ch'unhyang-chŏn_ as well? 


Best,
Frank



--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com


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