Poetry
해에게서 소년에게
Not translated into English
Choe Nam-seon · 1908
Synopsis
The sea, speaking in the first person, addresses the boy. Each stanza opens with the sound of the waves, transcribed in syllables and repeated like a refrain. The waves strike the mountains and the rocks and break them, and the sea boasts of its strength; the first four stanzas speak of the smallness of men, the last two of the hope of a renewal carried by the pure heart of youth.
Context
The poem opened the first issue of the monthly magazine that its author had just founded, in November 1908. It is given as the first poem of new form in the Korean language: the lines keep rhythms repeated from one stanza to the next, but move from the learned language to the spoken language. The encyclopaedia of the Academy of Korean Studies nevertheless judges that its author did not know how to go as far as free verse and makes him a figure of transition. Britannica sees in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage the model for the poem.
Who it is for
Six stanzas built on the same metres, set to a rhythm by a refrain that imitates the sound of the surf.
Prizes and reception
In 2008, events celebrated its centenary as that of modern Korean poetry.
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