It’s not often that poets become household names, but acclaimed Korean poet Yoo An-Jin had help from her contribution to the immensely popular essay collection, “Dreaming of a Beautiful Friendship,” as well as from her first novel, Anemones do not Wither, adapted into a hit television series. In these poems, sensitively translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Yu Chang-Gong, we see the other side of that popularity: the sudden loneliness amid a crowd; the naked dread of age.
Aged Forty
Just as the place where a river ends is the sea,
do we reach the sea of tears
at the age when youth’s tears run dry?
Now my language is a roaring of waves
and if once I shout
ten million words resonate
while my gestures have turned into writhing waves.
Though it unravel ten million times,
it is all a knot of dancing steps
indeed, from forty onwards is an age of tears,
an age of tears
showing nothing but waterways.
Seoul Station
Like myself who live as not-myself
while yet being myself,
here, not Seoul while yet being Seoul,
is the center of the world.
Here, the voices of the eight provinces each whimper
in their own color like a stirred-up bee hive
in the center of the breast as wind rises and waves tangle.
Here ill fates crossed
on rails equally accompanying
meetings and partings, departures and returns,
the world’s logic suddenly comprehended,
Like myself who must be myself
while yet being not-myself to be able to live,
this nation’s heart which must be Seoul while not-being Seoul
is working out, Seoul station that is not Seoul
Yoo An-Jin is a senior Korean writer, a poet, essayist and novelist. In 1970 she published the first of the 17 collections of poetry she has published so far. Her poems have been included in a number of middle- and high-school textbooks. In 2006, she retired from Seoul National University and became an emeritus professor there. In 2012, she became a member of the National Academy of Arts. She has received many prestigious literary awards, including the Sowol Award, the Jeong Ji-Young Award, the Mokweol Award, the Ku Sang Award, the Yun Dong-Ju Award, the Kim Dal-Jin Award, and the Kim Sakkat Award.
Brother Anthony of Taizé has lived in Korea since 1980. He is currently Emeritus Professor, Sogang University, and Chair-Professor, Dankook University. He has published more than 40 volumes of translations of Korean poetry, and of several novels, for which he has received a number of awards. He has published 10 volumes of work by Ko Un, as well as recently published volumes of poetry by Jeong Ho-Seung and Do Jong-Hwan and an anthology of work by 44 Korean poets, The Colors of Dawn. His Korean name is An Sonjae.
Chang-Gon Yu graduated from Sogang University then studied in the Centre for English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (M.A. / M.Phil / Ph.D course). He has taught Korean literature and culture at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His major research is in Indian and Korean diasporic writers.
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