Maninbo Read online
KO UN
MANINBO: PEACE & WAR
Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation
Ko Un has long been a living legend in Korea, both as a poet and as a person. Allen Ginsberg once wrote, ‘Ko Un is a magnificent poet, combination of Buddhist cognoscente, passionate political libertarian, and naturalist historian.’
Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives) is the title of a remarkable collection of poems by Ko Un, filling thirty volumes, a total of 4001 poems containing the names of 5600 people, which took 30 years to complete. Ko Un first conceived the idea while confined in a solitary cell upon his arrest in May 1980, the first volumes appeared in 1986, and the project was completed 25 years after publication began, in 2010.
Unsure whether he might be executed or not, he found his mind filling with memories of the people he had met or heard of during his life. Finally, he made a vow that, if he were released from prison, he would write poems about each of them. In part this would be a means of rescuing from oblivion countless lives that would otherwise be lost, and also it would serve to offer a vision of the history of Korea as it has been lived by its entire population through the centuries.
A selection from the first 10 volumes of Maninbo relating to Ko Un’s village childhood was published in the US in 2006 by Green Integer under the title Ten Thousand Lives. This edition is a selection from volumes 11 to 20, with the last half of the book focused on the sufferings of the Korean people during the Korean War.
Essentially narrative, each poem offers a brief glimpse of an individual’s life. Some span an entire existence, some relate a brief moment. Some are celebrations of remarkable lives, others recall terrible events and inhuman beings. Some poems are humorous, others are dark commemorations of unthinkable incidents. They span the whole of Korean history, from earliest pre-history to the present time.
COVER PHOTOGRAPH
Participants in a parade celebrate Buddha’s birthday in Seoul
© Jodi Cobb/National Geographic Society/Corbis
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Five of these poems were published in Volume 1 (2007) of Azalea (published by Harvard University’s Center of Korean Studies) and have been slightly revised since: ‘Eonnyeon in Siberia’, ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Yi Jeong-yi’s Family’, ‘DDT’ and ‘Gweon Jin-gyu’. Six of the poems appeared in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems, edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2014).
CONTENTS
Title Page
Acknowledgements
For the Faces of the World
Translators’ Preface
A Brief Summary of Korean History
Ko Un: A Short Biography
VOLUME 11
Hiding the Name
The Entrance to Camp Reagan
The High and Low Tides in the West Sea
Hong’s Wife in a Shack by Cheonggye Stream
A Quack
Third Daughter Seong-suk
The Widow in the Central Market
Gongju Dawdler
The Man in Tapgol Park
Father and Son
Jeong Hwa-am
The Shit Clan
The Long-Term Guest at the Dabok Inn in Dadong
Three Feet of Rotten Rope
A Night in Mugyo-dong
The Time It Takes to Piss
An Old Prison Officer
The Person in Charge of Detention Cells at Seodaemun Police Station
VOLUME 12
Colette, No Jeong-hye
A Blind Man by Saetgang River
Muttering
Dr Jang Gi-ryeo
Three-headed Hawk
Kim Geun-tae
Jei Jeong-gu
Yun Han-bong
Seo Gyeong-seok
YH’s Kim Gyeong-suk
VOLUME 13
Police Inspector Im Byeong-Hyu
First Love
Won Byeong-o’s DMZ
A Fake Blind Beggar
The Seven-year-old King
Cheong-dam the Monk
Neung-un the Monk
At Evening
Hyeyung
Ho In-su
Three Family Names
The Cleaner at Okcheon Station
Seol Dae-ui
An Unfilial Son is Weeping
VOLUME 14
Mr Foul-Mouth
His Own Sword
An Inkstone from Dangye
Countess Yi Ok-gyeong
Together with Pastor Jeong Jin-dong
Kim of Geumho-dong
King Jicheollo
Weol-san the Seon Master
King Gyeongmyeong of late Silla
VOLUME 15
Six Generations of Widows
Blind as a Bat
Ten Eyes
A Kkokji Beggar’s Values
Twin Prison Guards
Idlers
Walking Sticks
The Yu Brothers, Grave Robbers
A Police Spy
Little Ham Seok-heon’s Teacher
Jeong Jeom’s Grandmother
Two Singers
An Elderly Comfort Woman
A Child
A Day without Beggars
VOLUME 16
Seung-ryeol’s Tomb
Elena
Others’ Eyes
Two Rivers
Old Sim Yu-seop
The Lake
Despair
Young Jun-ho
Bachelor Kim
Man-su’s Grandma
The House with Wooden Tiles
Homecoming
Yang Hyeong-mo
The Old Widower
Shin Hyeon-gu
The Refugee Camp in Songtan
Yi Jeong-sun’s Spirit
Widow Mun
The Fields That Winter
One Kitchen
Home
Ortega Kim
Nam Ja-hyeon
One-armed Park
Yong-sik, Aged Five
After Seoul Was Recaptured
Commie 1
Commie 2
Commie 3
Lovely Geum-gak
Headmaster Shin Jin-seop
Yi Bok-nam from Geochang
Im Chae-hwa
Township Head Park Yeong-bo
A Baby in the 4 January Retreat
A Grandmother
Age of Spies
Two Kilos of Pork
Manguri Cemetery
3 October 1950
North Korean Soldiers
Choi Ik-hwan
O Se-do the Trader
Yeong-ho’s Sister
Yi Geuk-no
Hyeon Gye-ok in Shanghai
Yi Seung-tae
Love
A Single Photo
So-called Student Soldiers
VOLUME 17
That Old Woman
Paddy Fields
Two Deaths
Flowers
General de Gaulle
Lee In-su
An Outstaring Game
A Room at Last
Mud-flats on the West Coast
One Day
And Another Day
Old Shin
Other Clouds
Homecoming
Pagoda Park
Middle School Classmates
Kim Jin-se
Chwiwonjang in Northern Manchuria
That Year’s Paper Korean Flags
Exoduses
A Scene
That Child
Chi-sun
Yi Jong-nak
The Lock-seller
Yi Yohan the Orphan
South Gate Street, Suwon
Cheonggye Stream
Heukseok-dong
The Porter at Seoul Station
The 1920 Massacre
Old Cha Il-man
Hong Jin-su
&nb
sp; VOLUME 18
Ong-nye’s Husband
Old Madman
Gunfire in Bongdong-myeon, Wanju
A Cow in Gangneung, 1953
Kim Jong-ho
Sim Bul-lye
Bak Yeong-man
Seok Nak-gu
Street Broadcaster Choi Dok-gyeon
Gi-seon’s Mother
Page from the Diary of a Youth Who Butt-flogged Kafka
Yeong-seop’s Mum
A Mouse
The Fiancée
VOLUME 19
Orari
One Rubber Shoe
Kim Seong-ju
The Younger Brother Stayed Behind
Little Cheon-dong
Kim Jin-yeol
Bak Gwan-hyeok
Yi Yeong-geun
Gamak Valley
One Schoolgirl’s Life
Today’s Meal Table
Han Jae-deok
Tachihara Seishu
Sang-gwon, Only Son
Ten Days on the Continent
Yi Jang-don’s Wife
A Birth
VOLUME 20
The Present
Seven-year-old Nam-ok
No Cheon-myeong
A Chance Encounter
Eon-nyeon in Siberia
Seong-jin
Hallelujah
Ji Ha-ryeon
Lieutenant Bak Baek
Bracken in Namdaemun’s Dokkaebi Market
Yi Jung-seop
Two Men
Na Jeong-gu of Myeong-dong
Hong Sa-jun
Gwon Jin-gyu
Lovers
Im Chang-ho’s Death Anniversary
The Lady Eom
Yi Hae-myeong’s Wife
DDT
Yi Jeong-i’s family
An Empty House
Biographical notes
Copyright
For the Faces of the World
The reason why there is night should be the stars. Beneath the starlight of the night sky I have lived the chronology of my poetry.
In October 1979 I provided one of the motivations for an incident by which the most blatant dictatorship in modern Korean history had to be brought to an end. After the assassination of the dictator, I was freed from prison. However, in May the following year, with the second military coup, I abruptly became a criminal, guilty of conspiring to rebel, violating martial law, and inciting others to violate martial law, etc.
The special cell in the military prison was a closed space without windows, measuring 1.5 metres by 1 metre. Given the state of emergency in force then, my very survival was most uncertain. I had already decided what my final gesture would be when the time came for me to die. Deprived of present time in that despair, the incompetent act of remembering alone served as a substitute for the present time. I began to realise that remembering and imagining something could be a source of strength, enabling me to endure day by day the darkness and the fear.
The works that I would have to write if I survived and went back to the world were born in that way. Those were the seeds for the seven-volume epic Mount Baekdu and the thirty-volume Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives). Thanks to campaigns inside Korea and abroad, I came back out into the world a few years later. Marrying belatedly at fifty, I began life with my wife. This married life has been a time filling my epic and lyrical works with the sound of the waves of the ocean.
I don’t think that the active volcano of my poetic passion that once again began to erupt was a destiny allotted to me only. It was a blessing descending to me through the blood of all the sounds of birds and animals living in the primeval forests of the tropical regions on the Pacific equator as well as of the lengthy oral narratives, lasting several days, that were transmitted in the Eurasian continent since prehistoric times.
Maninbo is a collection of songs about the people I have come to know in this world. The encounters I have had are no private matter, but essentially public. This public nature cannot vanish by our personal forgetfulness or neglect. It is the commemoration of the truth of life itself, resisting ephemeral nature. Even one of our trivial meetings has an integrality of history contained within it. I took that as a principle, so I tried to depict not only people’s noble aspects but also their ugly ones.
Maninbo begins with portraits of the villagers of my home town from my childhood in the 1930s. And the central five volumes, from volume 16 to volume 20, are filled with random, fragmentary portraits evoking the several millions who died during the three years of the Korean War from 1950, as well as those who survived amidst the ruins of war.
I did not try to portray only people. It was because human beings cannot exist without the ‘mandala’ of this world. Part of my task was to manifest the world. I finished Maninbo with thirty volumes, in which some 4,000 people come on the stage from all walks of life, from our country’s history and land. That also includes those whom I met in my years of wandering and those who appeared briefly at turning points in Korea’s history.
Maninbo is both my poetic study of people and my nameless historic act. For a poet cannot live without the organic function of history. Having completed this project, I truly had the feeling that I had made the past lives of those people whom I met or whom I did not meet present, one by one, either in reality or in history. This is also a realisation of the mourning that has been one of the topics of my writing.
While I was writing Maninbo I strove to overcome to some degree the poetic first-person. Frame is sometimes fatal. The poet opens his eyes in the grey of today’s morning leaving the light of the previous day behind. In recent years I have raised questions regarding the poetic speaking voice: how I could bring multiple poetic, metaphorical selves to life through the first-person ‘I’ in a poem, how I could attain the truth of each one of endless others, for how long ‘I’ could remain me, with no end.
The view that wouldn’t take poetry as anything more than a kind of fantasy existed already in ancient times and Lukács also expressed it. Even without that, I was sure that I did not want to defend for ever the identity of the speaker in a poem.
If the modern age is the age of the self, then according to this ostentatious common sense modern poetry is a poetry that realises the self. The ‘I’ as the subject in modern poetry is accepted as an almost absolute condition. The ‘I’ in poetry is something like an event as moving as when four-legged animals first became two-legged humans and stood on the ground. The world becomes different for the first time with that.
However, the modern self might never be a gift that we could receive easily. The path leading to the self is incomparably challenging. The ideology of God, the ideology of the group repressed for long outpourings of the self. History has shown a violence that tramples down the potential of the self.
In the time of the feudal ages of North-East Asia, Korea designated the majority of the subjugated classes as nameless objects. In such regions, the self was bound to appear either as a threat or an unexpected force, or too late. The period of division following the Japanese colonial period was also much more of an adversity to the self. ‘I’ barely survived by killing ‘I’. Apart from these adversities, ‘I’ have not dropped anchor until today, with an acute recognition that there is no way to seek for the self.
The ‘I’ in modern Korean poetry has these hard times as wounds. But when such an ‘I’ becomes stuck in the barbarous egocentrism of modernity, if another self that can take it out does not appear, we would have a reality of double pain.
The speaking ‘I’ is an illusion if it does not have the ‘exterior’ of mind, that constitutes a necessary prerequisite for the imagining of a narrative structure about people and the world and human self-discovery. Statements about reality and the portrayal of society and humanity would be reduced to a dried-up river-bed if there were no memoir of imagination. Here I dream of a new third-person narrator. Now the third-person is not something matching the absolute first and second-person, but signifies the inner dialectic of those.
It is certain that all the interiority of poetry will breathe anew so long as poetry has a yearning for the exterior that is the source of poetry. The self is a complex body that has an exterior as an expansion of the self and an interior as a interlocking of the self. It is therefore no empty words to say that all the world resides in a mote of dust. Penetrating into the world! We can explain this as: when the self becomes other, that is another self and from there a new self as another is born, then the speaker in a poem will return to ultimate selflessness. I cannot exist without you, without a committed devotion to you, and ultimately ‘I’ become not only you but the third-person Indra’s Net that is an infinite plural of ‘I’ and ‘you’ and attain an emptiness that is neither private nor public. That emptiness is the Buddhist ‘being in profundity’. The speaking ‘I’ is the world of an ‘other I.’
The world of Maninbo is a world where unfamiliar relationships evolve between the poet, the speaking voice, and the subject being depicted or the action existing between the lines. An interpretation of human beings is possible in the process in which they establish inseparable, irreversible relationships. It is the never-ending life where you are I, I am you, and you are he or someone and that someone is another I…the movement of the world. The stage for the social cycle which begets the freedom of ‘I’ and others is the space of Maninbo. I, the author, cannot but be an alter ego of that ‘I’. Society is like that. Therefore, the distinction between good and evil, beautiful and ugly can be valid only when we get rid of the logic of one domination. Dream produces a cyclical ethics, like a snake biting its own tail.
Many years ago, a volume of English translations of poems selected from volumes 1 through 10 of Maninbo was published in the US. The present volume contains poems selected from volumes 11 through 20. The subjects of many of the poems in this volume are obtained from the traces of my experiences prior to and during the 1950s. They depict tragic scenes – situations of life and imminent death, the things that happened when traditional society collapsed, existence and ruins, incursion of ideology, migrations of population, a war that caused dehumanisation, and the possibility of humanity in that war. The ruins gave birth to what follows despair.
Maninbo