Poetic turn of mind transcending time

“Though the one who leaves says she will come back, the left behind shed tears. When will the small boat come back? The one sending her off returns home alone.” This is the last part of an epitaph written by Park Ji-won, a Joseon Dynasty scholar who used the pen name Yeonam, wrote for his eldest sister, who died at age 43. An epitaph is a writing of the name, status and deed of a deceased person. It consists of two parts: one is prose that describes the dead`s history and the other is a verse that honors him or her. Why does the “small boat” in the verse attract attention?

Yeonam wrote the epitaph when he saw a boat carrying his sister’s bier going away. His brother-in-law left Seoul with his family after losing his wife. The boat left the ferry in present-day Oksu in Seoul, a place where the Han River and Joongrang Stream meet, to Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province. After saying goodbye to the boat early in the morning, Yeonam stopped his horse by the river before heading home, and recalled his memories with his sister until the ship faded away.

At his 16-year-old sister’s wedding, Yeonam at age 8 makes fun of her as if he were a bridegroom. In embarrassment, his sister drops her comb on Yeonam’s forehead. The young boy cries out loud. He mixes Chinese ink with her powder and spits on her mirror. She tries to calm him down with her cherished ornament. His sense of loss on her wedding day overlaps with his sorrow on the riverside. “The dark blue in the mountain over the river was like my sister’s hair bun on her wedding day, the river was like a mirror, and the pale morning moon was like her pretty eyebrows.”

The original version of the “Half-moon (1926),” the first Korean collection of children’s songs, was recently found. The first page of the book reads, “For my late sister Deok-yoon.” The lyric of the “Half-moon,” which starts with “blue sky, galaxy, and a white small boat,” contains the sorrow of the writer Yoon Geuk-young after his sister died. As Yeonam thought of his sister’s comb from a small boat carrying her bier and her eyebrows from a pale morning moon, Yoon also thought of a small boat carrying his sister to the west from a half-moon. The poetic turn of mind resonates, transcending the ages.

Kwon Jae-hyeon (confetti@donga.com)