Ko Ŭn's "Maninbo": History as Poem, Poem as History

Abstract

Ko ?n's Moninbo History as Poem, Poem as History Brother AnthonyofToize SPECIAL SECTION Ko ?n is without doubt thebest-known Korean writer in theworld. This is mainly due to his personal vitality and to the impact he makes when he speaks or reads, even though his audience may not know a word of Korean. He is one of the very rareKorean poets able to read his works with a charismatic passion and communicate warmly with those around him. His exceptional poetic sensitivity is the key.We who translatehis work cannot hope tomatch his intensity, though we strive tokeep up with him. I first met Ko On in 1991when Ibegan trans lating some of his poems. I had been living in Korea formore than ten years by then. In 1993 Cornell University's East Asia Series published those translations, the firstvolume of English translations ofKo ?n's work, as The Sound of My Waves. The selection ended with several poems from the firstthreevolumes ofManinbo. In 1996 Beyond Self a translation of 108 Zen poems, was produced by Parallax Press, with a preface by Allen Ginsberg. In 2005 Green Integerproduced a selection of our translations from volumes 1-10 of Maninbo as Ten Thousand Lives. Also in 2005, Parallax published my co-translation of Ko ?n's great Buddhist novel, Little Pilgrim.Other verse collections include Flowers of a Moment, What?, and Songs for Tomorrozu,and Himalaya Poems is forthcoming fromGreen Integer. Ko ?n's work has been translated into at least fifteenother languages, with a total of over thirtytranslated volumes published worldwide so far,and many more have been announced. The genesis ofManinbo (Ten Thousand Lives) arose at a key moment of Ko ?n's life.He was born in a small village near Kunsan in the south western Ch?lla region of Korea in 1933. During the Korean War, overwhelmed by the atrocities and violence he had witnessed, he became a Bud dhist monk. His firstpoems were published in the late 1950s in the BuddhistNezvspaper he had helped found.They provoked intense admiration. In the 1960s,having leftthe monastic life, he went throughyears of intensenihilistic anguish. After a failed suicide attempt in 1970,he discovered a new vocation in the campaigns for a return to democ racy and recognition ofworkers' rights,becoming a leading spokesman forthedissident movements and a familiar figure at demonstrations. In May 1980, when the military staged a new coup, he was taken tomilitary prison along with hundreds of other opposition figures and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment by a court martial. During long periods of solitary confinement in prison, unsure ifhemight not finallybe simply takenout and shot,he began to recall all thepeople he had met in his eventful life?people poor and rich, unknown and famous?and formulated a vow that if he survived hewould write poems celebrat ingeach of them,convinced thatevery human life deserves to be recorded and memorialized. These poems would be known as the Maninbo project. InAugust 1982Ko On was freed fromprison. The following year he began a new life, marry ing and moving away fromSeoul to a quiet rural home. He radically revised all thepoems he had so farpublished fora volume of collected poems, ask ingpeople not toread theearlier versions. Then he began writingManinbo. When the first volume of Maninbo was published in November 1986,Ko On was fifty-three years old; twenty-threeyears have passed since then. In the meantime, in addition to twenty-six volumes of Maninbo, he has produced a steady streamof collections ofpoetry ofdifferent kinds, as well as several novels and other works. Until 1993,when hewas formallypardoned by the first civilian government of Korea, he had rarely been allowed to travel overseas. From then on, able to travel freely, he began to accept invitations Ko On iswithout a doubt the best-known Korean writer in theworld. His thirty-volume masterpiece, Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives), isan unprecedented poetic project that not only contains the history ofmodern Korea but makes history itself. above Writer Ko Cln January February 2010 i43 ESSAY Brother Anthony of Taize was born inEngland in 1942 and completed studies inmedieval and modern languages at Oxford. He isa member of the Community of...