With My Brother on My Mind

This piece by Kim Hoyeonjae is translated from Chinese into English by Suphil Lee Park

Translator’s Note

Kim Hoyeonjae 김호연재 / 金浩然齋 (1681–1722) is a Korean poet. Her work, like others of the mid-Joseon dynasty, is composed of Chinese characters, reflective of Korea’s history of diglossia. This divide between the vernacular Korean and the Chinese characters used for writing created widespread illiteracy among the middle and lower classes, and deprived and isolated women in particular. Even many years after the invention of Hangul, Korea’s independent alphabet, many still rejected it as 암클, female language, literally translated, because women benefited from this easier, compatible alphabet. In particular, women who could afford to master Chinese characters enough to write poems of their own were either aristocrats or courtesans, the highest and the lowest of the castes. Different as they were in their social stations, they both had no say in their fate.

Kim is unique in that despite her aristocratic background, she lived a life of poverty and openly wrote about her financial struggles. Her husband was an often-absent philanderer who kept failing kwageo (Joseon’s civil exam) and was without scholarly or political talents. Kim struggled with the irony of having her own talents but no possibility of a paying career. “With My Brother on My Mind” and “Nighttime Rambler” are exemplary poems about this internal conflict.

I first translated the original poems (written in Hanja, Old Korean/ Chinese characters) into Hangul, modern Korean, then finally into English. For both of Kim’s poems, I offer a sequential translation that consists of three versions, from the most articulate, to the one faithful to the original syllable count, then finally to the word-for-word interpretation, in order to showcase each poem’s contextual interpretive possibilities that stem from Korea’s complex multilingual history.

With My Brother on My Mind

Willows are blue in the valley 
Yet the spring alone is delayed
The mountain radiates with flowers 
Yet water flows in vain
All my life I had much ambition 
But no land to serve it
Combing and grooming forgotten 
I’m ashamed to look in the mirror

Blue willow, why is spring late 
Flowers bloom, water in vain 
No land saw my life’s purpose 
Mirror, I let myself go

ValleyWillowBlueBlueSpringSelfDelay 
MountainFlowerBlazeBlazeWaterVainFlow FlatLifeExistentAmbitionActNonexistentLand OpenStrip1CombGroomWallMirrorShame

有懷仲氏四郡之遊
金浩然齋

峽柳靑靑春自晩
山花灼灼水空流
平生有志行無地
擺脫梳粧壁鏡羞

둘째  형제가  사군을  노니는  것을  생각하며 
김호연재

골짜기  버드나무  청청하니  봄  홀로  지체하고 
산에  꽃이  작작하니  물은  헛되이  흐르네 
평생  뜻은  있었으나  행할  땅이  없었으니 
빗질과  단장을  파탈하여  벽거울이  부끄럽네

The first stanza of this poem was omitted to improve the flow; Kim hereby places images emblematic of her elder brother, politically successful (willow and flower), in contrast with those of her position as a woman (spring and water). So even when the willow is blue and it must be spring, the spring is delayed. And even though flowers are in full bloom, which means a much-needed high supply of water, water still flows in vain. This imagistic irony continues to the scene in which she holds up a mirror to her present and feels the futility of her ambition, unhappy with what is required of her.

1. 擺 and 脫, put together, mean to neglect proper etiquette. In this poem, Kim suggests that because of her ambition, which women are not allowed to pursue, she stopped caring about what women of her time are supposed to do: groom their appearance.

Read more from Issue 19.2.