korean poetry(2)

Korean Poetry

So You Are Going

So you are going, going away,

Forsaking me and going away?

How can I live without you, 

When you forsake me and go away?

I wish to implore you not to leave me, 

But fear you would never return,

If I annoy you much with my tears.

So I'll let you go, my dearest,

Only hoping you would return soon,

As abruptly as you leave me now.

Korean poetry

The bond of human relations and the sense of inconstancy are again the theme of "To My Son Editing My Poems", a short poem written by Yi Kyu-bo in Chinese:

I have always feared to wither sooner than grass and trees,

But I find the volumes of my poor poems worse than nothing.

Who will know, a thousand years from now,

That a man named Yi was born in a corner of Korea?

Korean Poetry

Filial piety of the son and the modesty of the father toward his own poems make this piece very engaging; and the sudden view-point which regards human life and relations against a long stretch of time startles and convinces the reader. The nature imagery in the first line is also very apt in a poem dealing with generation and extinction. 

Korean Poetry

If the two poems which we have just read treat urgency of human affairs in terms of nature imagery, the following jijo throws a human figure into the large background of stable nature:

Autumn night falls on the river

And the water grows chill.

I cast a line,

But the fish do not bite.

Loaded only with insensible moonlight

I row back an empty boat.

Korean Poetry

Depiction of scenery and the mood of the speaker become one, and the reader gets a sense of serenity arising from the oneness of man with nature. Quiet joy in the presence of nature is a legacy of Taoism, which together with Buddhism exerted a great impact upon the Korean sensibility.

Korean Poetry

"Sangchun-gok", one of the most famous gasa, deals with joyful life in nature through a more leisurely progression. If a sijo apprehends the moment of enlightenment through a few strokes, a gasa moves through scenes and details toward such a statement as this: "Since at one with nature, I cannot but feel the joy". 

Korean poetry

The leisurely progression of gasa lends itself also to a fine analysis of the mood as "Samiin-gok", a love song, exemplifies:

No birds are flying, there's no traffic of men

It is cold enough here in the south,

How severe it must be up where my lord dwells!

Oh that I seize the sunlight

and let it shine upon my lord!

Oh the sun at my grass eaves

shien upon his pavilion!

Korean Poetry

The poet of "Samiin-gok" assumed the role of a lady in separation from her lord in order to express his loyalty for a king. Through allegorical imagination which employs passionate relationship between the sexes, the poet stylized his devotion while preserving the intensity.

Korean Poetry

Gesture of humility and ardency of yearning fostered in the past by Confucian values emerge again in poets of the present century. "Azaleas" by Kim So-wol is one of the most loved Korean poems:

Korean Poetry

Whe you leave, 

Grown weary of me,

I will gently let you go.

An armful of azaleas

From Yaksan, Yongbyon,

I will gather to adorn your path.

Tread softly,

Step by step,

Upon the flowers as you go.

When you leave,

Grown weary of me,

I will bite my lips to stop my tears.