창작과 비평

 

 

*Conference on ‘The Poetic World of Ko Un' / 8 May 2003 / Stockholm University, Sweden

 

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The width and diversity of Ko Un'spoetic work

 

The width and diversity of Ko Un'spoetic work is huge: There are the modernistic poems of the 1960tiesㅡfilled with a variety of original, mysterious and fascinating imagery that the reader can enjoy with his mind's eyeㅡand ponder over. At the same time it is Un's significant poetic voice and his style ㅡbut also part of the wave of classical modernism we also saw in those years in Scandinavia.
There are long poems, emotional poems in the first part of his authorshipㅡand political poemsㅡpoems about Ko Un in prison during periods of dictatorship.

 

There are also the impressive, ongoing work, Ten Thousand Lives , where Ko Un portrays all the people he has ever met.

 

And there are the Son-poems in Beyond Self ㅡwith their almost cynical down to earth-attitude that skewers the truth ㅡ and the reader as well. Because every time the reader expects the usual discourse of philosophical cognitionㅡthat is not what we get. We get a poetic version of Son Buddhist wisdom through the mind of Ko Unㅡ in Allen Ginsberg's foreword to the book the thrilling expression “Crazy Wisdom” is used.

 

The wisdom of the book surprisesㅡsometimes simply because one did not know what the poem knows, sometimes a surprise because of Ko Un's way of putting things so that they appear more clear.

 

One thing is for sure: His poems are unpredictable, it is impossible to guess anything about the next line in any of the poems. That in itself is remarkable.
Instead we are overwhelmed by the simplicity (because simplicity is such a difficult state of mind to achieve!), by paradoxical twists, angles from where to look at reality with great surprise as a result, fx the poem “The owl” (“올빼미”):

 

“I can't see a thing. / Just wait. / Your night's sure to come.” (“아무것도 못 본다 / 기다려라 / 네 밤이 온다 꼭”)

 

The surprising thing here is that the ability of seeing will come not until it is dark! Why is that a surprise? Because that is not our reality, not my reality . So indirectly the poem actually shows how strong human egoism is - how much it blinds us.

 

And there are almost chocking punch linesㅡlike a fist in the faceㅡbut in a refreshing and not negative way.

 

(But many of Ko Un's poems does not fit in only one category, but several of those above mentioned categories. Fx the poem “Luxury” (사치 / 奢侈 ) … )

 

Particularly reading the poems of Beyond Self I experienced a fascinating tendency towards cryptic points that seem to flicker somewhere between great philosophy and banter, seemingly filled with paradoxes.

 

However, in my opinion the Scandinavian reader does not necessarily have to go through lots of books about Son Buddhism before reading Beyond Self.

 

The excellent English translation gives various information concerning Buddhism in both the forewords and notes back in the book. In “Poet's Preface” Un himself says:

 

“Son literature is an intense act of the mind liberated from the established systems of speech and writing, a new and completely unfamiliar system. It is the vitality arising from this unfamiliarity that lies at the heart of Son poetry.”

 

Despite the differences between regular Scandinavian poetic modernism and Ko Un's Son poetry I consider it rather interesting that the demand of poetic “vital unfamiliarity” in Ko Un's Son poetry seems to be comparable with the demand for originality and avant-gardism in modernism.

 

Also the statement about poetry as a means to express what cannot be expressed in any other discourses or “established systems of speech and writing”ㅡwith Ko Un's wordsㅡcan to some extent be considered a similarity. In both cases the keyword tends to be, a transcendental aim ㅡin order to challenge us as human beings to extend our knowledge ㅡabout everything in the world ? and maybe even more intensely in Ko Un's Son poetry.

 

Key-words characterizing Ko Un's poetic world:

 

I have tried to make up some key-words andㅡexpressions that I think characterizes Ko Un's peotic world. These are:

 

1) Wildness, cool humour
2) Devil-may-care-attitude; simultaneously religious AND devil-may-care-tone.
An extremely rare thing!
3) Remarkable artistic poetic imagery
4) Emotionalㅡbut non-romantic, non-illusioned
5) Sense of justice, righteousness, courage
6) Awareness of the world near and far awayㅡvivid, in love with life!
7) Son Buddhist Existentialism!
8) Very much a Koreanㅡvery much a human being

 

Finally just as few examples from Beyond Self and The Sound of My Waves ( ㅡSelected Poems ) to illustrate some of these key-words:

 

Devil-may-care-attitude & wildness ; from the poem “A drunkard” (선시 34면) :

 

“…staggering zigzag along. / Sixty trillion cells! All drunk.” Remarkable artistic poetic imagery ; from the poem “Walking down a mountain”(선시 18 면):

 

“…The autumn breeze tosses and turns lifeless / like a cast-off snakeskin.” Sense of justice, courage & vivid, in love with life ; from the poem “Sunlight” (나의 파도소리 188면) about life in a “military prison special cell”:

 

“Without any sunlight I laughed like a fool. / One day it was a coffin holding a corpse. / One day it was altogether the sea. / A wonderful thing! / A few people survive here.”

 

Non-romantic, cool humour and maybe Son Buddhist Existentialism ; “from the poem “Beef” (선시 19면):

 

“Everything turning into something. / The most disheartening of moments. / Cut it off // Everything turning into something / while cows are turning into beef.”

 

And, From the poem ”Spitting blood” (나의 파도소리 34면): “…I gazed at the indifferent mountains and loved. / Early snow is falling; sing, then drop.”

 

THANK YOU!