The ​Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry 1 csillagozás

David R. McCann (szerk.): The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry

Korea's modern poetry is filled with many different voices and styles, subjects and views, moves and countermoves, yet it still remains relatively unknown outside of Korea itself. This is in part because the Korean language, a rich medium for poetry, has been ranked among the most difficult for English speakers to learn. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry is the only up-to-date representative gathering of Korean poetry from the twentieth century in English, far more generous in its selection and material than previous anthologies. It presents 228 poems by 34 modern Korean poets, including renowned poets such as So Chongju and Kim Chiha.

>!
Columbia University Press, New York, 2004
192 oldal · ISBN: 0231111290

Népszerű idézetek

kaen>!

Han Yong’un: The Master’s Sermon

I heard the Master preach.
“Don’t be chained to love and suffering. Instead, cut the
ties of love and you will rejoice in your heart.” So he
said in a loud voice.

The Master is quite a fool.
He does not know: true it hurts to be tied with love, but
it will hurt more to cut the ties of love, it will hurt
more than even death.
In the tight binding of love’s bonds lies their unbinding.

Thus great liberation is to be had in the bonds
themselves.
My love, I was afraid the rope of your love might be
weak so I doubled the strands of my love for you.

31-32.

kaen>!

Yi Sang: Mirror

In the mirror there is no sound
There is probably no world so quiet

In the mirror also are my ears
Two pathetic ears are there unable to hear my words

In the mirror I’m left-handed
Lefty that can’t take my handshake—who doesn't know
how to shake hands

Because of the mirror I can’t touch the mirror’s I but if it
were not a mirror
How could I've ever done something like meet myself in
a mirror

I don’t have a mirror on me now but there’s always an I
in the depths of one
I’m not sure but he’s probably sunk in some sinistral
project.

The I in the mirror is my real self’s opposite but
Also takes after me considerably
Unable to care for and examine the mirror’s I I get very
depressed

71. oldal

kaen>!

Pak Mogwol: Hanbok

I like hanbok because it’s roomy:
pants, blouse, and coat
are warm, homey apparel.
Those feelings of reassurance
that wrap me when I wear hanbok,
where do they come from?
My hair, turned foam, freezes
as it stretches to the distant shoreline.
I’m at an age when
my ears
hear the sound of a different sea,
an age on which snow is piling.
Winds lash the frozen land
but my hanbok is amply padded.
Hanbok isn’t just apparel.
It is the weave—with breaths strong and liberal—
of a stolid life homeward bound.
Cotton pants, blouse, coat—
dyed jade:
hanbok wraps the body and in doing so
lets me strip the body away.

115-116. oldal

kaen>!

Pak Tujin: Inscription Etched by Water

One stroke at a time, now and then in spare moments
retracing the strokes with water
during ten times a hundred thousand years
I wrote
one word.
After a time, later again
quietly searching out the place, then
my hand’s touch exploring gently,
retracing each of the strokes,
after passing yet again ten times a hundred thousand
years,
I wrote one word.
In the etched form of each stroke gleamed
a gorgeous rainbow,
in the sun’s rays lighting the water
a rainbow of the currents.
There were the times once when I listened,
inclined my ear to the messages, but
having heard
then afterward, and afterward
recorded the inner sense of those words,
now I find that
after carving a few ancient characters
year upon year, for too long,
I have completely forgotten
what words I wrote.

127-128. oldal

kaen>!

Im Yeongjo: Soap

The unusual saint of this age,
it had an affinity for water,
suave and of lively disposition,
unreservedly friendly toward all.

Asking no payment whatever,
it dissolved its whole body and as if forgiving our sins
washed our dirty hands,
erased all sorts of impurities carried from outside
and those memories we wished to forget.
Even when its holy ministrations were forgotten
and its master went forth smelling,
it never condemned or told us to clean up a checkered
past,
only silently cleansed our most shameful places
and our hidden weaknesses,
never revealing our secrets.

As it lived in an ever more soiled world,
a life consumed for a clean conclusion
it was beautiful and too soon gone,
shedding its precious blood sacrificially in self-giving,
the unusual saint of this age.

Today
as though receiving its laying on of hands
I washed my face and hands,
washed my body and felt an expiation for my sins.

235. oldal

kaen>!

Kim Seungeui: Sun Mass

The dark precedes the sun,
the sun destroys the dark.
Reality precedes dreams,
and then dreams destroy reality.
Hey, eagle taking the sun for a stroll
now, behind the wall of clouds,
I dare
to dream
that the sun’s mysterious corpuscular waves
are linking my life to the sun.
To prevent my life from becoming an ashtray
to prevent my life becoming
an icy mask
I dare imagine:
my fire revolving as the sun
in its eternal orbit.
For ever, eternally.
Unite
my life and that enormous life.
What spinning wheel
in the void of what fog
is our thread becoming unwoven?

236-237. oldal

kaen>!

Kim Hyesun: The Old Hotel

Such an old hotel. Curled up like a cat by the river at
night. That kind of hotel. The hotel, in the heart of it are
rooms numbered 1992, 1993, . . . , and it’s been said that in
the room next to mine my loved one sleeps. In my heart
there is a hotel, and in that hotel, there am I again. Inside
the hotel in my heart, there is a bed spread with a blue blanket,
and I am lying on that bed. And in the heart of my lying
body is that hotel again. Outside the hotel in my heart, a
green river flows like wrinkles on a crumpled sheet of wool,
and a boat full of tourists moves up and down inside my
head as the water rises and falls. And with a drunken
headache I’d look at the river, or I’d stand at the window
that opens only by yanking at the knob. The hotel’s breathing,
its pulse’s beating, and a silent vacuum cleaner passes by
in the red carpeted hallway. And a woman with a white cap
stretches her back from time to time, shaking off her cap.
Keys to each room of the hotel in my heart are at the front
desk and though I have a bunch of invisible keys in my
pocket, I am unable to open the door to the room in the
hotel in my heart and enter as I please. Oh, and did the
lights in the rooms of that hotel light up at night? When
they’re alight, I want to throw off my blanket and fling open
the doors to the rooms of the hotel in my heart. My belly
button lights up with anxious desire. When the doors don’t
open after my frustrating pulling and yanking, I want to call
someone strong. The hotel that sometimes runs like cat in
the rain. The hotel that sometimes lifts me up and throws
me out the window. I am told that another lunatic me who
stole my sleep hides behind the grandfather clock at the end
of the hallway of the hotel. That hotel; at night with lights
off, looking lost like a king’s crown just excavated from a
tomb, not knowing where it is, and looking unfamiliar even
to me when I look at it awakening from sleep. The hotel
where, my love, you stick your face out of every window
under the gable roof when I open all the windows in my
body, as from the rows of boxes on the writing pad* with a
roof hanging above it. The hotel that runs away like a
night-cat into the river when the morning comes and hangs
its windows again above the water.

242-243. oldal


Hasonló könyvek címkék alapján

Peter H. Lee (szerk.): Anthology of Korean Literature
Szerb Antal (szerk.): Száz vers
Emlősök / Mammals / 哺乳類
Allie Esiri (szerk.): A Poet for Every Day of the Year
Rosemarie Robotham (szerk.): Mending the World
Kenneth Rexroth: In the Sierra: Mountain Writings
Neil Astley (szerk.): Being Human
Neil Astley (szerk.): Staying Human
Neil Astley (szerk.): Being Alive
Paddy Bushe (szerk.): Voices at the World's Edge