Prelude to “Dance of Agony”, and: Memories, and: With Moon, and: Three Flower Songs, and: Nights in Andong, and: When It Snows

Abstract

Prelude to “Dance of Agony”, and: Memories, and: With Moon, and: Three Flower Songs, and: Nights in Andong, and: When It Snows Kim Ok Translated from the Korean & Introduced by Ryan Choi Born in 1896 in the North when it was just the “north,” in the twilight of the Joseon Dynasty, which had thrived for over five centuries as the last in a long line of kingdoms, Kim Ok was an early Modernist poet, literary translator, and editor. Beyond these endeavors he was known as a secondary school teacher, freelance lecturer, and administrator at the Gyeongseong Central Broadcasting Company (the predecessor of the modern Korean Broadcasting System). A gifted linguist who lived through Korea’s modernization, as well as its colonization and eventual liberation from Japan at the end of the Second World War, he was sent to study at Keio University in Tokyo in 1913, which was common for the Korean academic elite of the time. Notable for being among the first literary translators to work from original texts, Kim was capable in a range of languages beyond his own—Japanese, Chinese, English, French, and even Esperanto—introducing to the Korean language Western literary theory in his essays, as well as English and French Symbolist poetry in Dance in Agony (1921), a landmark anthology of 84 translations of poems by Paul Verlaine, Remy de Gourmont, Charles Baudelaire, W. B. Yeats, and more. This volume, together with Kim’s essays and foreign-inspired poetry, would become a catalyst for the Modernist movement in Korean poetry, which was defined as much by the assimilation of Western aesthetics like free verse and the extension of subject matter beyond Chinese-influenced folk themes (of love and nature, moral and historical pedagogy) as by the rise of Japan, which— having replaced China as the portal to the outer world—would act as both model and foe for Korea, being on the one hand the occupying power but on the other the first country in the region to modernize successfully. Many of the Korean intellectual luminaries who had gone, like Kim, to study in Japan during this era were impressed by Japan’s achievements in everything from basic infrastructure to university academics, and returned home with a vision for the same in their homeland. (By this point in time, Japan had translated a substantial amount of the Western canon, both classical and contemporary. Japan was also up to date in the physical and social sciences, mathematics, medicine, architecture, engineering, law, philosophy, and most other standard areas of academic study.) Although Kim is classified as a Modernist, the label is most appropriate for the early part of his career. After a stint translating Rabindranath Tagore and Sarojini Naidu, Kim—circa 1925, under the sway of an increasingly complicated political scene—deserted the theories and aesthetics of the West that defined his early work, and turned to classical Chinese literature and the folk songs of his country, at which point his own poetry transitioned from the overtly innovative rhythms of [End Page 66] his youth (represented in the following selection by “Prelude to ‘Dance in Agony,’” “Memories,” “With Moon”) to styles and themes indebted to tradition (see: “Cosmos,” “When It Snows”). Also key to this change in subject and tone was a relationship Kim had made as a teacher at the Osan Middle School, where his pupil was Kim Sowol (1902–1934), another gifted student sent to study in Japan, who would posthumously become one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century in Korea, famous for his only book Azaleas (1925), which is still taught in schools today as an exemplar of modern Korean verse. Osan Middle School was a Christian school, eventually closed by the Empire of Japan (but later reopened and still standing today) for the purpose of limiting the influence of Christianity and inculcating in the Koreans a reverence for the Japanese emperor. In these circumstances, Christianity became a key point of cohesion for the Korean Independence Movement, and it is partly for this reason that it maintains until this day a foothold in South Korean society and identity. Relatedly, during this same period, communism was also making its own inroads...