A short prose text and a few poems by Kim Chi-ha

Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)

For a meeting of the Seoul Literary Society at the Swedish Ambassador’s residence in Seoul March 15, 2011
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The poet and writer now known as Kim Chi-Ha (chiha means ‘underground’) was born in 1941 in Mŏkp’o and originally received the name Yŏng-Il. He graduated from the Department of Esthetics in Seoul National University in 1966. He was a student activist and spent 4 months in prison in 1964 for demonstrating against the establishment of diplomatic relations with Japan. His first published poem was 황톳길 (hwangt’o-kil, dirt track, 1969). On the publication of 오적 (ojŏk, five bandits) in 1970, he was charged under the anti-communist law and imprisoned. In 1974, he was condemned to death as an accomplice in the People’s Revolutionary Party Incident, this was then commuted to life imprisonment but the sentence was suspended and he was released in February 1975. Re-arrested a month later on further charges, he was again sentenced and was only released in December 1980. These were the years in which his name became known across the world as a “prisoner of conscience” and an imprisoned writer, the subject of international campaigns by International P.E.N, Amnesty, etc. A small selection of his poems were published in Japan in Japanese translation as part of this campaign and a number of foreign correspondants in Tokyo translated some of them into English. These were for many years the only English translations of his work available and although more translations have now been published, they mostly fail to transmit his true power.
His physical and mental health were seriously compromised by his prolonged imprisonment and in the years following 1980 he began to develop a new synthesis of Christian and oriental thought centered on respect for life. Intensely individual, he refused to play the politically dissendent role many expected of him and became increasingly isolated. While his prose writings mystified many by their strange terminology, his poems lost the earlier note of intense satire and often seemed facile or sentimental. With the passage of time he has become a revered but remote senior writer, and there seems to be little that unites the prophetic, satirical writer of the 1970s with the “one-man Donghak Party” of the new century, whose writings are loaded with unfamiliar Chinese terms often drawn from abstruse metaphysical treatises of earlier times. In recent years he has begun to write extensively in a visionary vein, using a non-scientific eco-biological / life-science terminology and inventing a vast new vocabulary related to his central notion of “san’al,” the central cell-like seed and source of life within each being.
 

나의 ‘흰 그늘’에 관하여

김지하

 ‘흰 그늘’은 나의 시학의 이름이다. 나의 글쓰기는 열 여섯 살부터. 벌써 50년째다.
돌이켜보니 ‘흰 그늘은 그 긴 세월 내내 줄기차게 내 시안에 서려있었다.
‘흰 그늘’은 무엇일까?
한자어로는 백암(白闇)이요 영어로는 white shadow, 카를 융의 정신병리학에서는 ‘Religio-Schatten'이고, 야콥 부룩하르트의 르네상스 미학에서는 ’invienttamentliche Ausbrachtheit'에 가깝니다.
‘아니다 •그렇다’의 모순어법이겠다.
왜?
어째서 이 모순어법이 나의 시학의 이르미 된 것일까?
설명의 위해 동아시아의 지혜의 한 가지인 ‘易學’(Iching)을 빌린다면 ‘南離北坎(남쪽의 빛과 북쪽의 어둠)에 해당한다. 남북의 방위를 넘어서면 곧 ’흰 그늘‘아니겠는가?
고통으로부터 시작되는 그 초월이겠고 겨울에서 싹트는 봄일 것이다. 또는 분단과 통일이고 빈곤과 풍요일수도 있다.
그러나 조금 더 들어가면 ‘빛괘(離卦)’의 핵심인 ‘그 빛이 검은 암소를 기르다’ (畜牧牛)의 암시에 가 닿을 수도 있다.
무엇을 뜻하는가?
여성성이 주도하는 새 시대를 들어올리는 남성성이기도 한 것이다. 세목으로 들어가면 ‘湧出(땅 밑에서 솟아오름)’ ‘複勝(숨은 차원에서 드러난 차원으로 문득 드러남) 또는 ’開闢(창조적 열림)‘ 등을 뜻하기도 한다.
쉽게 말해보자
‘고통 속을 헤매이며 밝은 내일을 꿈꾸는 지향’이 가장 정확한 뜻이겠다.
내 시 전체를 통괄할 수 있는 것인가?
그렇다.
그렇다면 ‘五賊’등의 여러 풍자시와 날카로운 문명비판들은 무엇인가?
그 역시 ‘흰 그늘’이다.
나는 오래전부터 ‘나홀로 東學黨’이요 동학의 제일 원리인 ‘모심’속에서 최고의 불교진리인 華嚴을 실현하고자 하는 華嚴開闢을 꿈꾸는 사람이다. 그리고 그 실현의 주체는 바로 여성이요 여성 안에서 자라는 아기이며 그 곁에 둘러선 쓸쓸한 사람들과 중생들이라고 믿는 사람이다.
바로 그 모심이 곧 흰 그늘이니 나의 시학은 흰 그늘일 수밖에 없다. 모심의 대상의 ‘산알’(생명의 씨이면서 생명의 빛)일 수밖에 없으니 아직 씨인 상태의 생명의 고통스러운 어둠과 그 씨 안에서만 움트는 생명의 하얀 광채를 동시에 표현하는 말이 흰 그늘일 수밖에 없지 않은가!
원하는 것은 아니었지만 나는 그렇게 살아왔다. 또 그렇게 희망해 왔다. 우리 민족도 그렇게 살아왔고 그렇게 희망해 왔다. 동아이사와 전 인류가 깊이 따져 들어간다면 사실은 그렇게 살아왔고 또 그렇게 희망하고 있다. 온갖 중생과 만물 또한 그렇다.
아닌가?
나는, 내 삶은, 그리고 내 시는 ‘흰 그늘’에서 한치도 벗어나 있지 않다. 그런 점에서 ‘하나안에 一切가 실현돼 있음’이라는 ‘상서로운 초월의 미학’에 조금은 가 닿아 있다고 자부한다. 그런 점에서 볼 때 나의 시가 비록 못나고 서툴고 밑바닥의 괴로움, 외로움에서 크게 못 벗어나있다하더라도 그 스스로 ‘山崇海深’ 즉 ‘산 같은 숭고와 바다 같은 심오’에로 다가가는 ‘瑞乘’ (상서로움)의 길에 아직도 서있는, 연약하고 늘었으나 질기고 고집 센 한 나그네라는 신념만은 잃지 않고 있다.
마지막 한마디 덧붙인다. 예부터 우리나라 전통사회에서는 五日場을 ‘喜悲籬’(籬:울타리 리), ‘기쁨과 슬픔을 넘나드는, 또는 함께 어우르는 한 울타리’라는 뜻이다. ‘흰 그늘’은 여기에서 시작된 것이다. 이른바 ‘互惠市場’이다. ‘비단 깔린 장바닥’이고 ‘神市’다. 그래서 喜悲籬위에는 반드시 瑞氣가 감돈다고 했다. 그 관계는 변증법인가? 천만의 말씀이다. 그러면 무엇인가? 그것을 찾는 과정이 곧 나의 ‘흰 그늘’의 詩學이고, ‘喜悲籬과 瑞氣의 美學’이다. 될까?
감사하다는 말 꼭 덧붙이고 싶다. 안녕.



About my 'White Shadow' by Kim Chi-Ha

'White Shadow' is the name of my poetics. I have been writing since I was sixteen, for over fifty years now. In retrospect, that 'white shadow' has constantly been latent in my poetry.
So what can that 'white shadow' be?
In Chinese characters it is '白闇 paek'am' while in English it is 'white shadow,' in Carl Jung's psychopathology it is 'Religio-Schatten,' something close to Jacob Burckhardt's Renaissance esthetics of ‘a bright glimmer on a dark river at twilight.' [The poet calls this ‘invienttamentliche Ausbrachtheit,’ two words which do not exist in German, often explaining them as meaning ‘bright glimmer etc]
Or the oxymoron 'Not so, just so.'
Why?
How did this oxymoron come to be the name of my poetics?
If in order to explain we turn to one expression of East Asian wisdom, the I Ching, it corresponds to 'the light of the South, the darkness of the North.' If we pass beyond the South-North compass-points, surely we find a 'white shadow.'
It is that transcendence that begins with suffering, spring budding in winter. It may also be division and unity, poverty and plenty.
But if we seek a little more deeply, we may refer to the suggestion given for the central meaning of the light trigram 離卦 이괘 (one of the 8 trigrams used for divination) : 'that light raises a black cow.'
What does that mean?
It represents masculinity helping to bring about a new age in which femininity takes the lead. More specifically, it also means 湧出 용출 (water springing from below ground); 複勝 복승 (suddenly emerging from a hidden dimension into a visible dimension) or 開闢 'Kaebyok : a creative new beginning.'
To put things more simply, the most exact meaning is 'to advance dreaming of a bright future while wandering amidst suffering.
Just so.
In which case, what about satirical poems such as 'Five Bandits' and other poems sharply critical of society?
They too are 'white shadow'.
I have long since been a 'one-man Donghak Party,' eager to put into practice Huayan, Buddhism's highest truth, someone dreaming of a Huayan Kaebyok in 'veneration' (侍 시 / 모심), which is the chief principle of Donghak (Eastern Learning). I am someone who believes that the person who brings about the Huayan Kaebyok is female, and the babies she takes care of, also the lonely people and all living beings around her. That 'veneration' is a 'white shadow' so my poetics could not help but be white shadow. So surely, it was bound to be a 'san'al' (seed of life and light of life), so that the only term capable of expressing at the same time both the painful darkness of life when it is still in the state of seed and the white splendor of the life budding within that seed is surely none other than 'white shadow'! It was not what I wished, but that is how I have lived. And how I have hoped. Our nation's people, too, have lived thus and hoped thus. If we scrutinize deeply East Asia and all humanity, all have in fact lived thus and all hope thus. All living beings and all that exists, likewise.
Is it not so?
I, my life, and my poetry are not in the least bit detached from the 'white shadow'. In that respect, I dare to say I am approaching an 'esthetics of auspicious transcendence' expressed as 'unity practiced in oneness'. Seen in that way, even though my poetry is poor, clumsy, and cannot much rise above the lowest level of pain and loneliness, I have still not lost the conviction of being a determined, stubborn pilgrim, weaker now, and slowed-down perhaps, but still fortunate to be standing on the path headed for the 'loftiness of mountains, the profundity of the sea.'
One last word. In traditional Korean society, the fifth-day market has always signified 'the fence poised between and bringing together joys and sorrows'. That is where the white shadow begins. It is a market of exchanges. It is a 'marketplace carpeted in silk', and the archetypal spirit-town, the 'divinely founded city'. That is why I said that auspicious forces circle above the fence poised between joys and sorrows. Is theirs a dialectical relationship? To say that, is wide of the mark. What is it then? The process of seeking that is precisely the 'white shadow' of my poetics, the esthetics of the joy-sorrow-fence and the auspicious forces. Will that work?
 
Poems by Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)
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호저 해월 피체지에서
         - 원주시첩 중-

내가
그 쓰라린 외로움 속에서
유일하게 모셔온
선생님

海月 被逮地  
호저 고산리 원진녀 생가 오두막
약속대로

월정사에서 돌아오며 지은 약속대로 찾아간
흰 호랑이해 겨울
첫눈 내리는 날
이른 아침

길에서 오두막 마루 위까지 난
개 발자국

무엇을 뜻하나?

의혹에 차 내리던 길 저 건너편
삼방식당 간판에 크게 쓰여진

보신탕
닭도리탕

무엇을 뜻하나?

그뒤 사흘쯤 지나고부터

내리 강추위에 매일 폭설 쏟아지며
사백만마리
소 돼지
산채로 땅에 묻히고

오리며 닭이며
수수천마리 조류독감으로 묻히며

새들은 갑자기
하늘에서 떼로 떨어져 죽고 떼로
물고기들 바다에서 죽고

그 큰바다에
그 큰 물고기들 삼분의 이가 죽어 없어지고

화산 터지고
지진 터지고
반란이 반란이 반란이
이슬람을 휩쓸고
茉莉花 혁명 중국에서 터지고 말리화

낮과 밤
일교차는 10도.

머지않아 괴질이 올 조짐이다

무엇을 뜻하나?

어제
호저 고산 오두막에 또 다시 가서
선생님께 묻는다

‘개벽입니까?’
‘그렇다. 그러나...’
‘그러나?’
‘화엄이다’
‘......’

돌아와 경전을 연다

枯木之逢春兮  時乎時乎
佛像之見性兮  誠乎誠乎

또 넘긴다
거의 마지막에

‘후천개벽은 북극태음의 물의 변동
물의 변동은 부인 몸 속의 用經의 변동‘

아아아
그렇다면......


 

        At the place in Hojŏ where Haewŏl was arrested
                --from a Wŏnju poetry notebook

Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)

My
one and only master,
whom I looked up to
even in my bitter solitude,

Haewŏl and the place he was arrested,
the hut of Wŏnjinyo at Kosan-ri in Hojŏ,
according to my promise,

according to the promise that I’d made on my way back from Wŏljŏng-sa temple,
I visited the hut early one morning
in the winter of the year of the white tiger,
when snow was falling.

The footmarks of a dog
leading from the road up onto the porch of the hut.

What does that mean?

On the opposite side of the road from where I got off, full of doubts,
written large on the board of the Sambang restaurant:

Posint’ang
Taktorit’ang.

What does that mean?

Some three days after that,

while day after constant freezing day thick snow fell,
four million
cows, pigs
were buried alive

ducks, chickens
were buried in thousands because of avian flu

Birds suddenly
fell from the sky in flocks and died, in flocks
fish died in the sea,

in the great oceans
two thirds of the large fish have vanished, dead,

Volcanoes erupt
earthquakes occur
uprisings, uprisings, uprisings
sweep through Islam,
a jasmine revolution erupts in China, jasmine,

Ten degrees difference
between day and night.

These are omens that very soon a strange epidemic will come.

What does it mean?

Yesterday
I went back again to the hut in Kosan in Hojŏ
and asked the Master:

“Is this a new creation?”
“Yes. But . . .”
“But?”
“It is Huayan, Flower Garland.”
“ . . . .”

Returning home I opened the Scriptures:

“A dry tree welcomes spring in due time, in nature’s course,
a statue of Buddha grasps its true nature by dint of effort.”

I turn over the pages,
and, nearly at the last:

“The New Foundation is a change in the water of the North Pole’s Great Yin,
a change in water is a change in the menstrual cycle within a wife’s body.”

Ah,
in that case . . .





經度

온난화
탄소 과잉 속에서
백인들의 과학 속에는
동아시아는 아직도
없다

없는 것 아니라 쫓아냈다
마치
‘아시아적 생산양식’처럼.

정역의
4천년 流璃世界도  
2009년 7월 22일의 大潤초  
윤달 없어진다는
大日蝕도  

赤道 黃道가 일치하는   
밤과 낮 똑같아지는
‘비비컴 • 나르발라돔 •하이예’라른
케냐의 예언도
없다

자기들 과학 이외엔
아무것도 없다

그리하여 2004년 인도네시아 쓰나미
大陸板 海洋板 대충돌의 원인이   
삼천년간 서쪽으로 기운 地球自轉軸이
북극 태음으로 돌아옴이란 주장도
코웃음쳤다

엘로우 • 보우넛도
酸性 테라니우볼도
코웃음쳤다

그러면서도 여전히 대학에서는
과학은 당파성을 초월한다고 가르쳐 왔다

위대한 백인들이여
캐플러와 갈릴레오와 뉴튼과 아인슈타인의
위대한 위대한 하아얀 과학이여

이제
經度를 보아야 할 때다   
八數와 五運六氣와  
正易의  
經度論을 연구해야 참다운
과학을 말하게 될 날이 가까워왔다

예수는
이천 년 전에 이미 말했다

    - 돈 가는 데에 마음도 간다

돈은 지금
동아시아로 몰리고 있다
마음은?

과학은 마음인가 돈인가?
돈이면서 마음인가?

   - 신비한 패러다임 없이
      참다운 과학 없다-

이 말은
아시아가 아닌
유럽 • 백인의 말

‘제프리  •  츄’
노벨화학상의 말씀이다.





        Longitude

Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)

When it comes to (global) warming,
surplus carbon,
in the white men’s science
East Asia
does not so far exist.

Not that it does not exist, it’s been excluded.
Just like
the ‘Asian mode of production.’

The 4,000-year Era of Perfect Harmony
of Chongyŏk, the Book of Right Change,
or the Great Eclipse
of July 22, 2009,
as the start of the Great Dissolution
abolishing intercalary months,

or Kenya’s prophecy
of equator and ecliptic becoming one
of night and day identical,
“bibicom narbalatom haye.”
none of them exist.

Apart from their own kind of science,
nothing exists.

Likewise, the claim that the reason for the Indonesian tsunami in 2004,
the collision of the continental plate and oceanic plate,
was that the terrestrial magnetic rotation axis
that for three thousand years has been tilted toward the west
is moving toward the North Pole’s great Yin,
was scorned.

Yellow Boanut too,
Acidic Teraniyubol too,
all were scorned.

Yet still universities taught
that science transcends partiality.

Great white men!
Great great white science of
Keppler and Galileo and Newton and Einstein!

Now
is a time when longitude must be considered.
The day is approaching when true science will only be expounded
after study of the Eight Numbers, the Five Un Motions and the Six Ki Forces,
and the Theory of Longitude
of the Book of Right Change.

Jesus
already said 2,000 years ago:

“Where money goes, there hearts go too.”

Now money
is pouring into East Asia.
And hearts?

Is science hearts or money?

“Without a mysterious paradigm
there is no science.”

Those are the words,
not of an Asian
but of a European white man.

They were spoken by Geoffrey Chew,
winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
[poetic liberty: Chew is an American physicist who has not received a Nobel Prize]




七情

오늘 아침
화엄경을 공부하다
입법계품 童子所 어느 목  
꼭
재작년 시청 앞 첫 촛불 비슷한 데서
海雲比丘 가르침   
그 안에서

바다에
大蓮花가 떠오른다   
거기
슬픔이 가장 큰 지혜였다
七情 중의 守心正氣
七情중의 四端인 仁, 바로  
그 大悲海가 곧  
大法海라!  

점심때

나 열세 살에 고향에서 쫓겨나
울며 울며 떠나와 엎드려 살던 시커먼
원주 봉천 냇가
그 시궁창 판잣집촌
平原洞 거기
요즘에 서는 五日場에 갔다  

참으로 오랜만에
아내와 함께 가 장을 보는데
이것저것 사고 보니
꼭
일곱 가지.
칼국수 먹으며 둘이 웃고 놀란다

오징어젖
고추무침
무말랭이무침
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다시마튀김
시래기
가자미새끼들

허허허
七情의 근원
내일모레가 설날이니
사단의 중생들이다

아내가 말한다
‘우리 늙어가며 이리
오일장이나 함께 장 보러 다니며
그리 삽시다‘

그렇다 아내를 내내 고생만 시켜온 내게
이 말은 커다란 연꽃 한 송이
나 살던
바로 그 납작 시궁창 위 판잣집 바로 그 자리에
CD가게 하나 서 있다
‘태양음반’에서
아득한 옛쩍 늙은 여가수의
골옛쩍 뽕짝이 흘러나온다 순 신파쪼다

한없는 눈물이
슬픔이 복받친다

그 슬픔이
그 연꽃.

돌아오는 길에 비로서 생애 처음으로
啐啄이 무엇인지를 깨닫는다  

오늘 아침 내 공부하던
화엄경 거기 이리 써 있었던 것 화들짝 기억난다

바다 속 大蓮花는
如來의 善根

法海가 곧 悲海니
大悲法을 觀하면  
二利의 行이 發함이다  

.
.
.

눈물난다

나의 기쁨은 감히
화엄경이 아니라

오래 화가 나 침묵했던
아내의 한 마디와

마지막 좌판의
한 젊은 아줌마가 내 좋아하는 오징어절임을 듬뿍 싸주며
‘선생님이 특별히
벼룩장에 오셨으니
특별히 많이 드려요‘
그 한 마디

아아

이것이
초라한 밑바닥
金地下의 금빛 나는  
꽃 한 송이 金英一의  
귀향이요
啐啄임을  
깨닫고

아하
이것이 다아
七情의
위대함임을 울며 불며
슬며시
깨우친다

나는 살았다!





        Love’s Seven Feelings

Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)

This morning
I was studying the Avatamsaka Sutra
and somewhere in the Gandavyuha’s tale of Sudhana
was something just like
the year before last’s first candlelight rally at City Hall
in the teaching
of the monk Sagaramegha.

In the ocean
a great lotus blossom rises.
There
sorrow was the highest wisdom.
The perfect way among love’s seven feelings,
the virtue of the four hearts among love’s seven feelings,
that great compassion is precisely
the great dharma ocean.

At lunch time

I went to the recently opened fifth-day market
at P’yŏngwŏn-dong,
that sewer-like village of hovels,
along the black Pongch’ŏn stream in Wŏnju,
where I used to live lying prostrate, weeping, weeping,
after having been forced to leave my home village aged thirteen.

After a really long while
I visit the market with my wife,
buy this and that,
exactly
seven kinds.
As we eat noodles, the two of us laugh and marvel.

Squid chŏtkal
pepper muchim
dried radish muchim
dried pollack
deep-fried kelp
dried radish greens
baby flatfish

Ha ha ha
the roots of love’s seven feelings,
the day after tomorrow will be the Lunar New Year,
all living beings with four hearts.

My wife speaks:
“Now we’re growing old
let’s live here,
shopping at the fifth-day market”

Indeed. To me who have all the time been a burden to my wife
those words were a vast lotus blossom.
In place of the hovel where I used to live
in that base sewer
stands a CD store.
From that “Sun Records” store
floats an old ‘trot’-style pop song
sung by a female singer of remote old times. Really cheap stuff.

Endless tears
and sorrow well up.

That sorrow,
that lotus,

on the way back home, for the first time in my life,
reveal what Zen’s unified breathing is.

In a flash I recall what was written here and there
in the Avatamsaka Sutra I studied that morning.

The great lotus in the sea
is the Buddha’s good roots.

The Dharma Ocean is the Ocean of Compassion.
Beholding the great dharma of compassion
is to set out toward a life benefitting self and others.

.
.
.
Sorrow is the highest form of Wisdom.
Tears well.

My joy is not after all
the Avatamsaka Sutra

but that one word from my wife
who for so long kept her anger silent

and a young woman at the last stall who,
wrapping the pickled squid I particularly like, said:
“Since you’ve bothered to come to our poor market
I’ve given you a lot,”
those words.

Ah!

This
shabby spot
is the return home
of Kim Yŏng-Il, Kim Chi-Ha’s flower
shedding golden rays.
We have attained
unified breathing

and aha,
this all awakens gently,
weeping, crying,
a sense of the greatness
of love’s seven feelings.

I have lived!






서시序詩

남쪽의 남쪽

땅끝

또는 강진 또는 무안과
고하도 앞바다

그
중간 거리 목포 하당 언저리

유달산儒達山
승달산僧達山
선달산仙達山
모이는
웅덩이
한반도의 회음
시커먼 사타구니로부터 이곳

북극 태음 근처
스톡홀름

물 흥건한 이곳

이 에스플라나다 호텔
31호실

한밤
쌔하연 산알

6조 개의 세포로부터다

아,
남신원만북하회南辰圓滿北河回





        Prologue

Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (안선재)

To the south of the south

Ttangkkŭt

or Kangjin or Muan
and the sea off Koha Island,

those
halfway distant outskirts of Hadang, Mokp’o.

The puddle contained within
Yudal-san,
Sŭngdal-san
Sŏndal-san,
Korea’s peritoneum
and from that black groin, here

the North Pole’s great Yin,
Stockholm,

soaked with water

Room 31
in this Esplanada Hotel

late at night
is a ‘San’al,’ a pure white source of life

derived from six trillion cells.

Aha,
as Ch’oi Che-U wrote in the 1860s
“the southern constellations must be compliant
before the Milky Way in the North can move.”





타는 목마름으로

신새벽 뒷골목에
네 이름을 쓴다 민주주의여
내 머리는 너를 잊은 지 오래
내 발길은 너를 잊은 지 너무도 너무도 오래
오직 한 가닥 있어
타는 가슴 속 목마름의 기억이
네 이름을 남몰래 쓴다 민주주의여.

아직 동트지 않은 뒷골목의 어딘가
발자욱 소리 호루락소리 문 두드리는 소리
외마디 길고 긴 누군가의 비명소리
신음소리 통곡소리 탄식소리 그 속에 내 가슴팍 속에
깊이깊이 새겨지는 네 이름 위에
네 이름의 외로운 눈부심 위에
살아오는 삶의 아픔
살아오는 저 푸르른 자유의 추억
되살아오는 끌려가던 벗들의 피묻은 얼굴
떨리는 손 떨리는 가슴
떨리는 치떨리는 노여움으로 나무판자에
백묵으로 서툰 솜씨로
쓴다.

숨죽여 흐느끼며
네 이름을 남 몰래 쓴다.
타는 목마름으로
타는 목마름으로
민주주의여 만세.




        With Burning Thirst

by Kim Chi-ha
Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé


In a back alley at dawn
I write your name: Democracy!
So long since my head forgot you.
So very very long since my steps forgot you.
Only one scrap remains,
the memory of thirst in my burning breast
secretly writes your name: Democracy!

Somewhere in a back alley before dawn.
A sound of footsteps, sound of whistles, sound of pounding on doors
cries, the sound of someone’s long, unending scream,
sounds of groaning, sounds of wailing, a sound of sighing, and there, in my breast,
above your name engraved so deeply deeply there,
above the solitary splendor of your name,
the agony of still living on,
the memory of green freedom still living on,
the blood-stained faces of friends arrested, returning still living.

With shaking hand, with shaking breast,
with shaking, trembling indignation, on a wooden board
in white chalk, awkwardly
I write.

Holding my breath, sobbing,
secretly I write your name.
With a burning thirst.
With a burning thirst.
Democracy! Mansei!


Note: Mansei! (Live ten thousand years!) is the shout by which Koreans have long acclaimed the person or value, usually identified with the Nation itself, for which they are prepared to die. It is intimately associated with the March 1st Independence Movement of 1919.


 

        Magnolia

Opening eyes, a black stump;
eyes closing with death
a dazzling magnolia.
Somewhere inside me, faintly,
pain of new flesh forming,
that dazzling dazzling magnolia.




        Barley Shoots

Old haunts are blurred;
hardened, I have become a stone.

Birds never come
to a winter tree

death ever remains at my side

The eyes that once could even see stars at midday
now have grown dim, old haunts are blurred

My heart is dark.
Hardened, I have become a stone.

Arising within my memories:
black earth,
verdant green
shoots of barley.


 

        Notes

'서시'는 "산알 모란꽃, 시학 2010"에 수록된 시고
'칠정'과 '경도'는 "흰그늘의 산알 소식과 산알의 흰그늘 노래, 천년의 시학 2010"에 수록되어 있습니다.
나머지 한 편은 이번 행사를 위해 직접 쓴 시입니다.

“Prologue” is taken from the volume “San’al Peony” (산알 모란꽃) (2010)
“Love’s Seven Feelings” and “Longitude” are taken from the volume “News of White Shadow’s San’al and Song of San’al’s White Shadow” (흰그늘의 산알 소식과 산알의 흰그늘 노래) 2010
The poem “At the place in Hojŏ where Haewŏl was arrested” has been composed for today’s event.

Haewŏl: Haewŏl Ch’oi Si-Hyŏng was the son and successor of Su-un Ch’oi Je-U, the founder of the Donghak system of thought, he was executed in July 1898 after being arrested.

Chongyŏk, the Book of Right Change is the title of a visionary book completed by Kim Hang in 1885. Its title indicates that it is a corrected version of the Chinese I Ching.

Kenya’s prophecy:
See [http://beopbo.com/news/view.html?section=93&category=171&no=58155]

A long Korean text by Kim Chi-ha developing many of the themes found in these poems can be read at http://easternhumanity.com/zbxe/1800

김지하의 글 중에서 : "달의 윤달 없는 360일. 밤과 낮이 똑같고 적도(赤道)와 황도(黃道)가 일치하며 춘분(春分) 추분(秋分)중심의 여름엔 서늘하고 겨울엔 따뜻한 유리(琉璃)의 세월이 앞으로 다가 온다고 하자. 실제 우주생명학의 흐름이 그 방향임엔 틀림이 없다.” Kim Chi-Ha writes: “We may say that an Era of Perfect Harmony is coming where the year will last 360 days without intercalary leap-months, where day and night will be of equal length, equator and ecliptic will become one, the seasons will center on spring and autumn, with summers cool, winters warm. There can be no doubt that that is the direction in which cosmic life science is moving.”