Poetry and Society

In the East, by the discipline of Confucian studies, literati acquired skills in formal styles of writing and address, together with the wisdom about life and ethical values contained in the poems they learned and the commentaries accompanying them. Poetry was not seen as a private act of individual "creation" but as one of the conventional forms in which virtue was expressed. The dominant mode was most often not overtly satiric, though it might be didactic and moralistic. The poet, however, required great delicacy in the choice of characters and the reader needed equal refinement in the interpretation of images, for much of the meaning of the poem was expressed in veiled allusions. The imagery of many poems is drawn from nature, even when the actual topic is a human situation.

Those who had received such difficult schooling often found intense pleasure in using the skills they had gained, and until recently formal poetry competitions were a popular activity in rural Korea. Gentlemen would quite regularly write poems in Chinese during excursions or in their leisure hours, and take real pleasure in the activity. It must be admitted that the civil-service was the only possible course in life for ambitious and talented high-class youths. As governors and administrators in rural areas, or very often holding mere sinecures in the capital, they had nothing much to do in the posts they obtained, otium (leisure) was an obligatory part of their "active life". Showing off their skills in poetry was one of the rare activities available to them. As in the English renaissance court, a scholar's poems were enjoyed during his lifetime by a small coterie of acquaintances; collection and publication would only come after his death, and rarely then.

Poetry in its more relaxed forms was part of a larger whole, involving outings to beautiful spots beside rivers or amidst hills, viewing the moon in lakes and ponds, drinking rice wine and eating good food, making conventionally elegant conversation, all this often in the company of professional female entertainers (kisaeng) who were educated enough to compose and recite poems themselves, or at least suggest themes and key "rhyme" words for their customers to develop. It was these women who, more than the men, wrote poetry on the topic of love. Certain high class women mastered the art of writing characters and produced notable poetry but most loved are the poems of such entertainers as Hwang Chin-i (1506-1544):


My wish to see you is fulfilled only in dreams;
Whenever I visit my joy, you visit me.
So let us dream again some future night,
Starting at the same time to meet on our way.
(Trans. Kim Jong-gil)


All around them, in Korea as in China, were the rural masses whose lives of utter poverty must have contrasted starkly with the affluence of the elite. They had their work-songs and their folk-songs, their shamans had a huge repertory of spirit-songs, but almost all has been lost for it was purely oral, not written. Written poetry was part of a life-style financed by crushing levels of taxation and extortion; the poor people frequently starved while their governors recited their latest gems about the sound of wind in the pine trees. Poetry and the classics do not seem to have had the power to regenerate society, although they offered enough questions for there always to have been an anxiety among the best minds.

If anyone tried to suggest concrete changes in society, corruption was so strong that they very often made powerful enemies and found themselves exiled to some remote area where they had plenty of time for poetry and reflection, but no chance to act. The theme of exile is far more important than the theme of love in Oriental poetry, it represented the ever-present risk of exclusion from the only activity that might make life interesting: the exercise of power. Factionalism was rife, and the many poems that celebrate the peace of the scholar's study are a reminder that the writers were rarely able to enjoy such peace unless they were being punished:

I have lived in the mountains forty years,
Safe from involvement in the broils of the world.
I relax leisurely at my cottage in the spring breeze,
With smiling flowers and willows dozing.
(Song Hon (1535-1598), trans. Kim Jong- gil)

In contrast we might quote this poem by the great early nineteenth century scholar, Chong Yak-yong (pen-name Tasan) who lived for many years in exile beside the sea in the far south and wrote many important books in favour of reform of the state as well as suggesting a new vision of the human person perhaps inspired in part by his contacts with the Catholic faith in his youth:


You may have grain, but nobody to eat it,
And worry about hunger, if you have sons.
When you're promoted, you must become a fool,
While the talented cannot find a place.
A household can seldom enjoy perfect bliss,
And the best principles always collapse.
A miserly father has always a prodigal son
An intelligent wife a stupid husband.
When the moon is full, clouds often come;
When flowers bloom, the wind often blows.
This is the way of things.
So I laugh by myself, but nobody knows.
(trans. Kim Jong-gil)

Poetry cannot be separated from the conventions and theories that produce it, and this is especially the case of such a vast body of texts as the Korean and Chinese scholars of the last two thousand years produced.

http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/Outline.htm