HANMUN: POEMS AND PROSE IN CHINESE

Perhaps the second most noteworthy feature of Korean literature written in literary Chinese is that it does not constitute a monolithic structure. The corpus of works in Chinese is various in form, philosophical underpinnings, and views on language, diction, the past, the proper subject, the purpose of the whole enterprise of writing. Yi Kyu-bo (1168–1241), for example, one of the most compelling figures in Korean letters, composed poems in literary Chinese that reflected the difficult life of farming during the extended period when the court was living in luxury on Kanghwa Island, safe from the depredations of the invading Mongol armies. His poems can certainly be read as protests against the conditions of the time, but that would in turn make them criticisms of the ruling Ch’oe family, his official sponsors. Yi’s long poem in praise of Chumong, King Tongmyŏng of Koguryŏ, a paean to local, Korean mythical tales and indigenous cultural accomplishments, can be read against the grain of such Chinese-model historical works as Kim Pu-sik’s History of the Three Kingdoms, Samguk sagi (1145). In other words, the fact that it was written in Chinese does not determine a text’s ideological or cultural outlook. To take a later example, Pak Chi-wŏn (1737–1805) wrote all of his works in Chinese, but focused on the literary enterprise as a means of pursuing inquiry rather than simply as a way to express an accepted, received truth in a refined manner. Thus he introduced a revolutionary view of literature as discovery. The literary historian Cho Tong-il also notes of Pak’s work that while it was meant as a form of social criticism, it was not deployed as a means for personal advancement.¹

Of course the first thing to notice about Chinese-language materials is the vast depth and breadth of the corpus. In just one exemplary anthology, the Collection of Eastern Writing, Tongmun sŏn, edited by Sŏ Kŏ-jŏng and distributed in 1478, more than 4,000 works by some 400 writers were included. A supplement, Sok tongmun sŏn, was edited and released in 1518 in an additional 21 volumes. To take a contemporary example, Hŏ Kyŏng-jin’s series of anthologies of Korean hansi, poems in Chinese, translated into modern Korean had already reached volume 40, a gathering of 150 poems by Chosŏn-dynasty Buddhist monks, in 1997. Yet even the vast body of Chinese-language works by Korean writers has been the subject of dispute as to whether or not it constitutes a legitimate part of the Korean literary canon. Following the end of the Japanese colonial occupation, there was a tendency in Korean scholarly circles to attempt to redefine the Korean cultural heritage in indigenous terms, which meant, among other things, that Chinese-language literary works were denigrated or dismissed entirely. North Korea dropped Chinese characters from contemporary language use, yet also pursued a number of projects to translate the Chinese-language literary and historical heritage into modern Korean. At present, the answer to the question about the Korean-ness of Chinese-language literary and other works has been allowed to resolve itself in the affirmative.

Simply to give a sense of the field, I have chosen a small number of hanmun texts. Ch’oe Ch’i-wŏn (ninth century) lived at the very end of the Silla period, and many of his poems reflect his decision to withdraw from public office. Kim Pu-sik (1075–1171), the well-known Koryŏ military leader, statesman, and literatus, was chosen to produce the History of the Three Kingdoms, Samguk sagi. His poem about Kwallan Temple expresses what seems a self-deprecatory attitude, but at the same time it is written from the top, with the poet looking down, literally and figuratively, on a world that seems no more three-dimensional than a painting. Kim was also in every sense of the term a nasty piece of political work, and did away with his political enemies and literary rivals—most notably, Chŏng Chi-sang—with relish. Yi Kyu-bo (1168–1241) seems to be located at ground level. His poems about the world at large are closely observed rather than distant and express an empathetic understanding of others, while his poems about himself and his family are full of rueful humor.

Im Che was famous for his Coleridge-like withdrawal from the world of the capital and his energetic touring of the countryside. The two hansi selections have something of the taste of set pieces, especially his poem in the voice of a woman, while his sijo poem remembering the kisaeng Hwang Chin-i could record an actual visit to the site of her tomb. It is interesting, though, to compare his or any other male writer’s works—another example would be Chŏng Ch’ŏl’s “Longing for the Beautiful One”—with those of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn (1563–1589). The immensely talented and unfortunate sister of Hŏ Kyun (1569–1618), she was the mother of two children who died in infancy and the wife, evidently, of someone who made up for his comparative intellectual deficiencies by constant womanizing. Her poems are not noted for breaking new ground in a technical sense but were accorded a great deal of respect at the time they were gathered and published by her younger brother Hŏ Kyun; in the years since they have continued to elicit admiration for their clarity and great sympathy for the depths of sorrow they express.

The assortment of a few hansi by other women that closes this section shows, among other things, the casual expressive possibilities of the Chinese poetic medium, and suggests that such expression was not entirely restricted to the male population, though it does seem a rather upper-class phenomenon. Finally, it is interesting to compare the hansi by Lady Chŏng (1598–1680), “Saints,” with the sijo verse by the Confucian scholar Yi Hwang (1501–1570), “The old ones haven’t seen me …” to observe a woman’s Chinese-language and a man’s Korean vernacular expressions on a common literary theme.

Pak Chi-wŏn’s “The Story of Master Hŏ,” “Hŏsaeng chŏn,” is included in his account of a journey to Beijing, the Yŏrha ilgi, of 1780. It contains a range of materials, some of which, including “Master Hŏ,” are introduced as records of some other person’s tale—in this case, a storyteller named Yun. This may have been a ploy to avoid direct rebuke for the story’s satire. Given the general sirhak program of “censure of those who held political power and a consequent intent to bring about changes in the political and social order,”² the satirical critique of contemporary Korean society and its timid, ineffectual leadership is somewhat predictable. The proposition at the end of the story, though—that Korea could recover its national dignity and bring down the Manchu (Ch’ing) rulers of China by starting a covert political movement through the posting of talented young men to China in the guise of merchants—is startling.

The record of the reception or circulation of such materials as Pak Chi-wŏn’s story affords an intriguing series of glimpses into the history of modern as well as pre-modern Korean literary and political-ideological culture. During the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, the novelist Yi Kwang-su (1879–1951?) published a serial translation of the story in the newspaper Tonga Ilbo (1923–1924). The translation grafted a modern message about Korean progressivism, exemplified in Master Hŏ’s entrepreneurial spirit and action, to what under the apparent radical proposal to do away with the existing, Manchu order is an extremely conservative message: that Korea can and should return to its proper relationship with the true rulers of China, the Ming, not the Ch’ing usurpers. Three decades later in North Korea, the story was read as a critique of the class structure of traditional Korean society: the “Biographical Note” in the 1954 collection of Pak Chi-wŏn’s works translated by Ch’oe Ik Han and Hong Ki Mun observes Pak’s upper-class apostasy, and how “through the mouth” of the character of Master Hŏ, Pak criticized the yangban class from which he had come, portraying a society purged of class divisions by a popular uprising of the peasant farmers.³ A translation of the complete Yŏrha ilgi by Yi Ka-wŏn, published in Seoul in 1968, gives the tale the colloquial flavor of the scene of the late-night visit in Pak Il-lo’s “Song of a Humble Life.”