Poetry
불놀이
Not translated into English
Chu Yo-han · 1919
Synopsis
On the evening of the festival of the eighth day of the fourth month, on the banks of the Taedong, in Pyongyang, the crowd enjoys the fires. Sitting apart, the poet mourns a dead lover and feels a stranger to these indifferent people and things; his desire to live passionately collides with his solitary grief. The poem moves from the festival to isolation, then to inner torment, in a language that at first seems to be prose.
Context
The poem appeared in February 1919 in the first issue of the journal Changjo, then in its author's first collection, in 1925. It has five stanzas and thirty-five lines: it reads at first like prose, but a close reading finds a ternary rhythm in it. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture sees in it the entry of symbolism into Korean poetry and a possible reading of national mourning under oppression; it is often held to be the first free verse in the language, a primacy that earlier poems dispute. The influence of Paul Fort can be traced in it.
Who it is for
A poem with a discreet rhythm, without apparent metre, which follows a thought from the festival to mourning.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the opening of modern Korean poetry, although its primacy is now debated.