순간의 꽃

by Ko Un, 고은

피어나는 꽃처럼, 순간순간의 깨달음을 담아낸 고은의 시세계! 고은 시인의 짧은 시 185편을 묶은 신작 시집 『순간의 꽃』. 제목없이 단장들을 죽 잇대놓은 일종의 선시집으로, 시인의 몸을 통해 순간순간 다툰 감응과 깨달음의 정화, 그 순정한 관찰록을 담았다. 꽃 한 송이, 나무 한 그루, 파리 한 마리, 눈송이 등 매순간의 삼라만상에서 시인은 전체에 대한 직관과 통찰을 드러내며 삶의 무궁한 비의와 마주선다.

'작은 시편'들로 이루어진 이 책에서 시인은 ‘선’에 의한 시의 ‘무화(無化)’를 스스로 경계하며 조심스럽게, 그러나 거침없이 순간의 꽃들을 터뜨리고 있다. 다듬고 치장하지 않은 날 것 그대로의 원시언어로 짜여진 시들을 만나볼 수 있으며, ‘말해지는 순간 세계가 나타나고, 보는 순간 단박에 언어가 들러붙는 경지"에까지 이르른 시인의 시세계를 엿본다.

Genres: Poetry, Buddhism

118 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

In korean: 고 은

Ko was born Ko Untae in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province in 1933. He was at Gunsan Middle School when war broke out.
The Korean War emotionally and physically traumatized Ko and caused the death of many of his relatives and friends. Ko's hearing suffered from acid that he poured into his ears during an acute crisis in this time and it was further harmed by a police beating in 1979. In 1952, before the war had ended, Ko became a Buddhist monk. After a decade of monastic life, he chose to return to the active, secular world in 1962 to become a devoted poet. From 1963 to 1966 he lived on Jejudo, where he set up a charity school, and then moved back to Seoul. His life was not calm in the outer world, and he wound up attempting suicide (a second time) in 1970.
Around the time the South Korean government attempted to curb democracy by putting forward the Yusin Constitution in late 1972, Ko became very active in the democracy movement and led efforts to improve the political situation in South Korea, while still writing prolifically and being sent to prison four times (1974, 1979, 1980 and 1989). In May 1980, during the coup d'etat led by Chun Doo-hwan, Ko was accused of treason and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. He was released in August 1982 as part of a general pardon.
After his release, his life became calmer; however, he startled his large following by revising many of his previously published poems. Ko married Sang-Wha Lee on May 5, 1983, and moved to Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, where he still lives. He resumed writing and began to travel, his many visits providing fabric for the tapestry of his poems. Since 2007, he is a visiting scholar in Seoul National University, and teaches poetics and literature.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times I feel I am suffocating
Is there nothing but this world?
At best
is there nothing but the other world?

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treasure.

Ko Un was born in Korea in 1933 and became an activist, poet, and writer and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize 4 times. The Korean War traumatized him greatly, so sometime after he got out of the war, he entered a Buddhist monastery and became a monk. He remained a monk for the next ten years, then after leaving the monastery he became an activist, was arrested 4 times, tortured, and was finally released for the last time. He later obtained a passport and visited the various countries in which he has written.

What a beautiful man who has much to share with us. In the Preface of this book he writes: "I really don't know why, but tonight is still, so very still. It is so still I can almost hear the wind-borne sand singing on the slopes of Mount Mingsha in Dunhuang, far away on the Silk Road, penetrating all this way. Thousands of quiet miles!"

And a few of his poems:

Two beggars
sharing a meal of the food they've been given

The new moon shines intensely.
~~~~~~~~~

We went to Auschwitz
saw the mounds of glasses
saw the piles of shoes
On the way back
we each stared out of a different window

`````

Be like a dandelion seed
floating in the breeze
Be like a bearded late autumn reed seed

Set out alone, create a great new world

```
Go to Somalia
and look at your capitalism
looks at your socialism
Look in the eyes of the starving children.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warum nur ist der Himmel so weit?

Ich bin ganz still, allein.

-------------------------

Ich lebe, ohne zu wissen, was morgen sein wird.

Eines Abends, als ich ziemlich besoffen war,
zuckte ein Blitz auf,
und der erklärte mir die ganze Welt.

--------------------------

"Deshalb
bin ich viele Gräber"

--------------------------

Mit den Händen streifen wir Bäume,
mit den Füßen laufen wir über Gras,
das heißt:
Wir sind Nachbarn der Bäume,
Nachbarn auch dem Gras.

--------------------------

Ich meine, das ist der wärmste Ausdruck von Trost
in der Welt:
der Klang des Schnees, der, angesammelt
auf einem grünen Kiefernzweig,
herunterrutscht.

--------------------------

Zarter Schnee legt sich sanft
auf das nackte Fleisch frisch gehackten Feuerholzes.

Wie fremd sie einander sind.

--------------------------

Irgendwo am Soyang-See,
eins wird zwei,
irgendwie,
eins wird drei,
der See
und du und ich.

--------------------------

Weidensamen,
geboren am Rand eines eiligen Bachs,
sie sprießen auf,
wo sie den Boden berühren.

Versuch du's doch auch mal so!

--------------------------

Die ganze Nacht über, im frisch bepflanzten Reisfeld,
waren tausende von Fröschen an der Arbeit.

--------------------------

Singen und sprechen –
alle Dinge tun das.
Die Vögel singen ihre Lieder,
die Felsen sprechen stumm.
Und was ist mit mir?

Was für einen Unsinn ich lalle.

--------------------------

Im Regen tanzt das Gras,
im Regen – die Steine schlafen.

--------------------------

Für ein ganzes Jahrzehnt
wollte mein Unglück einfach nicht zu Asche werden.

Im späten Herbst verbrannte ich einen Haufen trockener Blätter
– ich möchte weinen.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the old days a poet once said
our nation is destroyed
yet the mountains and rivers survive

Today's poet says
the mountains and rivers are destroyed
yet our nation survives

Tomorrow's poet will say
the mountains and rivers are destroyed
our nation is destroyed and Alas!
you and I are completely destroyed

순간 의 꽃 by 고 은 (Ko Un) was reverently translated into English, as Flowers of a Moment, by the prolific Brother Anthony of Taizé together with Young-moo Kim and Gary Gach, and the translators also provide a helpful afterword.

Ko Un is a former Buddhist monk and pro-democracy political prisoner but now better known as Korea's foremost poet, and a perennial contender, at least per the pundits, for the Nobel Prize for literature.

Flowers of a Moment consists of 185 brief Zen poems, illustrated by some simple but powerful ink-brush calligraphy (wordless poems) by Ko Un himself.

The poems range over a large number of themes, but if one common thread emerged in my reading it was Ko Un using the diminutive in nature as a comparison to human passions and struggles. One poem starts: "What labour is there to equal nature?". Two brief examples :

The beak of a chick pecking at feed
My studies too are far from complete

Cobweb drenched all day long by monsoon rains
you too are enduring great trials

The poems are un-punctuated, at least by comma and full-stop, and there is even a neat poem about that:

Comma
period
after forty-five sloppy years of mine
thank you
I promise never to put you to shame again

While some poems touch on politics, particularly the plight of prisoners, others are relatively obscure and Zen-like and and would presumably repay meditative contemplation:

Remorse! Without it, what truth can there be?
Mid-November
Someone is standing by the sea at Taebu Island
at low tide
Scraps of trash drift by

although even there the poet has a poem about the futility of struggling too hard with understanding:

Once you have cracked all 1700 koans
In the sky there will still be clouds

My personal favourite, because I love Jeju Island, at whose centre the dormant Hallasan lies, was this:

Longing to explode once more
Longing to be a sea of fire

Paeknok Lake in the crater of Halla Mountain

Although here I feel the translators may have missed a trick. The lake is called 백록담 and the literal translation, White Deer Lake, would have been more poetic than the translators' choice to render the name in English phonetically.

But my personal favourite of all Korean poems is from the frustratingly undertranslated (I can't find any English language collection) 류시화 (Ryu Shi-Hwa) and his lovely line 그대가 곁에 있어도 나는 그대가 그립다 (my translation - "Even when you are at my side, I still miss you").

[Oliver · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inte min typ av poesi... Kändes inte som att det fanns någon substans bakom orden

[Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who'd have believed the Holocaust could be covered in a haiku-length poem? Ko Un does this and more.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

In kurzen und knappen Sätzen vermag es Ko Un, ganze Geschichten, Erlebnisse, Universen zu erzählen. Er nimmt den Alltag in all seiner Intensität wahr, ob dieser nun aus Beobachtungen im Garten besteht oder dem Krieg. Ko Un hat beides erlebt und dies vermittelt er uns in diesem Band. Worte, Gedichte, Sätze, die unter die Haut gehen.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

one hundred eighty five
brief poems
each setting off in an unpredictable direction
plus illustrations

[Joon-Q · Rating 2 out of 5]

시집을 읽고 감성을 늦길 정도의 수준에는 아직 내가 미치지 못하는지 몇개의 시를 제외하고는 크게 닿지 않는 그런 느낌이었다. 그 이상을 적기에는 어려움이 있을 듯 하다.

[Woozi]

It will be a very interesting book because the works are Mr. Ko Un; which seems to me of great interest because their poems seem wonderful

[Judih Weinstein Haggai · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautiful step to another mindset.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 1 out of 5]

This. Is.
Bad poetry.

[Arwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ko un is often regarded as one of the most significant literary figures in modern Korean literature. Born in 1933, he has lived through Korea's tumultuous history, including the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and the country's division. His experiences have deeply influenced his work.
His poetry is known for its wide-ranging themes, from the deeply personal to the historical and political. His works often explore the human condition, suffering, and the search for meaning. His style is often characterized by its simplicity, directness, and deep empathy. Despite facing political repression and imprisonment during South Korea's authoritarian regimes, he has remained a steadfast advocate for peace, democracy, and human rights.
:

New as a debt repaid today
New as a tomb dug today
How often does it happen?
There are lives that start anew like this
Over there
A butterfly—maybe one maybe two

**
You might well call it the paradox of paradoxes
Truly I tell you
Ask poor people about today
Ask poor countries about tomorrow
Ask Native Americans
or Somalian women
about the new century
Not rich Americans

[Leonardo Muñoz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es interesante ver que con un montón de poemas cortos escritos durante toda la vida con gran simpleza logra grandes imagenes, muchas de ellas mediante la antítesis o una frase que las exhalta al final. Lamento no tener alguna referencia sobre poesía zen para poder identificar lo más característico: lo más que sé son las frases clichés de películas. En todo caso, con algo se empieza.
Pero viendo el problema de forma global, son poemas de gran calidad y me sorprendieron algunos que se salían de la onda de solo sabiduría y nada de opiniones. Hay algunos poemas con un fuerte tono político, derivado de su paso por la cárcel y las protestas contra los regímenes coreanos, y otros en los que existe un fuerte pesimismo que lo aleja de la posición mítica de un monje y demuestra su condición ordinaria de ser humano.

[MKF]

DNF

[Erik Olsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

En frisk fläkt. Varken skriven på rim eller vers, utan innehåll före formgivning. Väldigt vacker samling som framkallade väldiga mängder bilder!

[Iulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ko Un wrote one of my favourite little poems of all time:

"What is this world?

Here's a butterfly fluttering by
and there's a spider's web."