By Kim Heung-sook
Dear Mr. Miyazaki, how are you doing? Have you done some reading of the sijo poems I sent to you? We Koreans usually have the best time to ``spill the moon by tilting the jar” on and around Chuseok, the Autumnal Full Moon Day, but the moon was hidden or washed away by an unprecedented torrential rain on this year’s Chuseok that fell on Wednesday.
The Gwanghwamun streets in the heart of Seoul, where you walked a while to visit the book café of our encounter, turned into a vast lake and rain water flowed into the shops along the boulevard. As a resident of Ibaraki, the prefecture of many lakes, you must be quite familiar with the beauty of lakes, but the ``Gwanghwamun Lake” was far from beautiful. It only made many hearts ache and I was one of them.
It was even more painful to see King Sejong, one of the greatest kings of Joseon Kingdom, sit in the pounding rain in the makeshift lake. You may not know this, but scores of old, deep-rooted ginkgo and plane trees inhabited the area before the present Gwanghwamun Plaza was opened last year. More than a few people regretted uprooting of those trees with a belief that the area wouldn’t have become a lake had they remained.
Mr. Miyazaki, since you like the traditional Korean poetry of sijo very much, you may be interested in learning that King Sejong was a great lover of poetry, too. He was Joseon’s fourth king who, along with his scholars, created the Korean alphabet, Hangeul, in 1443. Two years later, he had his scholars write a lengthy epic lauding his predecessors, entitled ``Yongbieocheon-ga” in Hangeul. You may find it ironic that the most popular line from the epic reads: ``Deep-rooted trees are not swayed by wind; their flowers are beautiful; their fruits are abundant.”
Now, let me stop lamenting about the flooding of Gwanghwamun streets and talk about why I had to send ``Tilting the Jar, Spilling the Moon,” the sijo book, to you. On that day, when you and Mrs. Miyazaki came into the book café, I was sipping a nice hot café latte there along with the proprietor and a few others. You went through the shelves and asked us if there were any English translation of Korean sijo. The owner said ``no” matter-of-factly, but I felt ashamed as I wondered if the absence of sijo translations reflected the lack of contemporary Koreans’ respect for time-honored cultural values.
So, I volunteered to obtain a copy of such for you. You said you were returning home the next day and I promised to send it to your home in Japan. I have a copy of ``Tilting the Jar, Spilling the Moon,” a collection of sijo poems by Goryeo and Joseon poets, and I was resolved to get one for you. The title comes from a poem by Goryeo nobleman Yi Kyu-bo (1168~1241). The translation was done by Kevin O’Rourke, an Irish priest and honorary professor of Kyung Hee University in Seoul. The poem’s original title is ``井中月,” which literally means ``moon in the well.” Professor O’Rourke’s translation reads like this:
``A mountain monk coveted the moon; he drew water, a whole jar full; but when he reached his temple, he discovered that tilting the jar meant spilling the moon.”
Mr. Miyazaki, tilting the jar and watching the moon spill will be easier for you than me, as you live in Tsukuba, a city much quieter and scholarly than Seoul. You mentioned that you read Hermann Hesse most of the time. Perhaps it will be easier also to read Hesse in your town than in Seoul, although his works will do better for Seoulites.
As I read your e-mail statement that you have resumed Korean language studies which you had stopped 13 years ago, I felt the urge to reciprocate. I tried to learn Japanese when I was a collegian but failed to do so because I couldn’t memorize Hiragana and Katakana. I will try to learn Japanese so that we can converse in our languages instead of English when we meet again.
Now that the world outside dries, it is autumn suddenly. I hope your skies are as blue as the skies here. The 17th century poet Yun Son-do wrote in a river village: “I look back on the world of men; the farther off the better.” I believe that we can say the same thing without going to a river village but simply by looking up at the high skies. May your autumn be full of sheer happiness!