VOL.69/2024.04

Professor of Korean Language and
Literature & Literary Critic’s Pick

2023.07.03

There are two poetry books that I read often - Baengnokdam by Jeong Ji-Yong (included in Full Collection of Jeong Ji-Yong 1: Poem (Minumsa)) and Sky, Wind, and Stars (Yonsei University Press) by Yoon Dong-Ju. The poems in these two books demonstrate the depth of linguistic expression and breadth of poetic emotion.

The poem collection Baengnokdam by Jeong Ji-Yong was first published by Munjangsa (文章社) in 1941. The collection includes 25 poems, including Jangsusan (長壽山), Baengnokdam, Birobong (毘盧峰), Chunseol (春雪), Sogok (小曲), Star, and Glass Window 1, as well as 8 pieces of prose.
The moderate emotion and symmetrical beauty of language in Jeong’s poetry almost reach their peak in the poem collection Baengnokdam. In particular, included pieces like Jangsusan or Baengnokdam exclude any dynamic elements in their poetic imagery. The poem Jangsusan precisely depicts the silence of the winter mountains through visual imagery. By masterfully blending a tranquil natural scene with a deep inner consciousness, this work represents another achievement that poetic imagery can reach. Meanwhile, the work Baengnokdam chooses to show its poetic achievement through its unconventional formal setting. The poetic persona describes the ecstatic scenery seen from the top of the mountain, Baengnokdam, where the flowers on the ground and stars in the sky blend as one, through poetic imagery.
Jeong Ji-Yong pursues the order and beauty of nature. This new world of poetry, created by Jeong’s contemplation of poetic objects while suppressing subjective emotions, deviates from the traditional view of nature, where people hoped to assimilate or merge with it. Jeong creates a new image of nature as it is, by objectifying nature and reconstructing it figuratively. That’s the point where Jeong’s poems have reached.

The poem collection Sky, Wind, and Stars by Yoon Dong-Ju was first published by Jungeumsa (正音社) in 1948. Yoon planned to publish the collection in commemoration of his graduation from Yonhee College in 1941, but it was not permitted, as it was the time when Japan prohibited books in Korean from being published under a policy to erase the Korean language. So, Yoon handed over the manuscript to Jung Byung-Wook, a junior he had become close to while boarding with him, and set out to study in Japan. However, he could never return to Korea.
Yoon studied English literature at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Not many people recognized the passionate voice that this pure literary young man carried in his heart. It wasn’t until he was arrested by the Japanese police on suspicion of supporting the independence movement and died tragically in Fukuoka Prison in February 1945, just days away from liberation, that people realized he was a poet of destiny. His poems, which sang the dawn in a time of darkness, shone like the last pride of Korean people at the end of the tragic colonization.
His poem collection Sky, Wind, and Stars came to the surface with the wish of his family, along with the lead of Jung Byung-Wook, who had been keeping the manuscript. Yoon became a poet as the collection was released. It was only after his tragic death that he became a brilliant poet. The collection includes Prologue (序詩), The Self-Portrait, Another Homeland, Night of Counting the Stars, A Poem Written Easily, and A Confession. They express a sense of longing that stems from the loss of one’s mother country, an orientation toward innocence and philanthropy, an idyllic imagery, a negative perception of reality, a tragic worldview, and a sense of atonement and resistance.
Poet Jeong Ji-Yong, Yoon’s senior at Doshisha University, wrote in the preface, “You died in dreadful solitude, without a single poem published until you turned 29!”

Written by Kwon Young-Min (Professor of Korean literature and a literary critic)