1,200-page long Cheong (Story of Sim Cheong), with the design of cover page by himself, was published last November
By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Korean poet KO Un’s new monumental grand epic of 1,200-page long Cheong (Story of Sim Cheong), with the book design of cover page by himself, was published last November.
The book has been much lauded and celebrated by many poets and literary critics and intellectuals. One critic even confirms that ‘if the book is well translated into several other languages, then world literature will be greatly moved and rocked by the appearance of it,’ and calls it a kind of ‘scripture.’
It is Ko Un’s version of Story of Sim Cheong, one of the two most popular and beloved Korean tales. Sim Cheong-jeon is a story about the titular Sim Cheong, who throws herself into the Indang Sea as a sacrifice so that her blind father can regain his eyesight. This selfless act of filial piety causes her to be resurrected and become an empress, and her father’s blindness is cured.
With the original story as the spine, Ko Un tires to intertwine the history of several kingdoms of Korea from the ancient, world history, history of the commons and of the lowest class people, history of the suffered women, anthropology, philosophy, Buddhism, etc, with such a beautiful rhythm and style, which eventually makes it a high, deep and vast, very complicated as well as beautiful architecture, as they say, leading to ‘scripture.’
Readers say that it is something marvelous that neither Korean literature nor world literature has ever seen and experienced, utterly unprecedented.
KO Un doesn’t like to have any public events for it, and actually he didn’t allow it to go to the media nor to the market (bookshop).
However, in honor of the publication of Cheong there have been several private celebration parties, small and big, gatherings of poets, philosophers, publishers, professors, intellectuals, artists and musicians. The book has been read widely among the poets and intellectuals.
From this spring season KO Un’s new poetry books will be out under the title of Poems of the World, 3 volumes each year, which will, hopefully!, continue for the next 10 years. What Ko Un wants to do with the poems is to write ‘an encyclopedia of poems’.
Last summer Last summer I celebrated Ko Un’s ninetieth birthday, and dedicated a poem for him published in a volume of world poet’s poems for the iconic poet. Ko Un keeps reading and writing, 7-9 hours every day, which is an amazing phenomenon at his age, and he is now preparing to work on a new big poetic project that he has had in mind for tens of years.
Ko Un and his wife Professor Sang Wha plan to travel in some countries this year, too. They haven’t decided what places to go, but there are always so many places to go as Ko Un sings in one of his poems:
Places I Want to Go
Thirty years ago
I had places I wanted to go.
I was everywhere on a map
Of a scale of 1,000,000: one.
Twenty years ago
I had places I really wanted to go.
The blue sky that kept returning to me through the bars of my cell window
was my road.
Thus far I have managed to plod here and there.
But I have set a few places aside.
After I have quit this world
The places I want to go
will keep on waiting for someone to come.
I had places I wanted to go.
When flowers fell,
When flowers fell in the evening,
I straightened up, closed my eyes.
___________________
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is an eminent poet, writer and journalist of Egypt. He is author of some three dozen books.
