Word Wednesday
Seo Jeong Ju's (서정주) Poem "Leper" Translated into English
(Analysis and history included)
Seo Jeong Ju (서정주) is the poet I decided to analyze this week. I really liked his short poem "Leper" since it included a very interesting topic; lepers. Let's get started right away.
Original Version (Korean)
문둥이
서정주
해와 하늘빛이
문둥이는 서러워
보리밭에 달 뜨면
애기 하나 먹고
꽃처럼 붉은 울음을 밤새 울었다.
English Version
Leper
Seo Jeong Ju
By the sun and the light of the sky,
the leper grows sorrow
When the moon rises above the barley field
A child is eaten
Tears as red as a flower falls at night
Comments:
Another difficult thing about translating from Korean to English is that there are some Korean phrases that don't have subjects, yet readers know what the author is talking about. Let me show you an example so you can understand:
보리밭에 달 뜨면
애기 하나 먹고
Here, there is no subject. In English, it would be something along the lines of "he/she eats a child", but in Korean, it's "eat a child". We know the subject who is performing the action is a leper, but in Korean, you don't need to add "he/she" or "the leper". I didn't want to say "The leper eats a child", because it just didn't seem fitting. That's why I changed the sentence into past-tense ("A child is eaten"), since it seemed like the better option. Ah, the beauty of languages and how different yet similar they are.
Analysis/Explanation:
Leper History
Back in the days, Joseon (modern day Korea) was bustling with lepers. Lepers were people with an odd disease (leprosy or Hansen disease) that causes granulomas to develop on skin, eyes, nerves, etc.
Though this disease is not classified as being contagious, people back then thought the disease could spread. Therefore majority of the people were afraid of lepers. Their fear went to the point where many lepers were exiled and sent to a distant island called So Rok Do.
There was no cure for leprosy back in the time. Instead, there was a popular myth which many lepers believed. Apparently if a leper ate a special part of the human body, the disease could be cured. That's why whenever a group of lepers passed by a village, a baby or a child would go missing (so that the lepers could boil and eat the child).
If you know Heo Jun (허준), a really famous and important physician in Korea, you might find this story about lepers familiar (you can read more about Heo Jun in the Dongui Bogam, 동의보감). This physician is known for trying to help a village full of lepers despite all the bad talks that were going around about lepers. There is also a part in the Dongui Bogam where a man discovers that his son is missing, remembers that a group of lepers happened to pass by a while ago, and chases after the leper group. The man later finds out that a family had kidnapped his son and boiled him to feed their own sick son, who had leprosy. All the man is left with is his son's remains. The man goes insane and violently kills the family that kidnapped his son in front of the sick boy. Later, when the man's sanity returns, he realizes what a terrible thing he has done. He then takes the sick boy into custody and turns into a monk.
Go read the book, it's really interesting. Twisted, but really interesting.
Anyways, now that you know a bit about lepers, let's start with the analysis.
해와 하늘빛이
문둥이는 서러워
By the sun and the light of the sky,
the leper grows sorrow
Being a leper was a terrible thing for anyone back then (it still is now, I guess). Everything was and seemed miserable for the lepers. After all, everyone hated them, everyone was disgusted by them, and they were even exiled. To highlight their misery, the author says that the lepers grew sad even when they saw the sun and the sky.
보리밭에 달 뜨면
애기 하나 먹고
When the moon rises above the barley field
A child is eaten
This is where the slightly scary part comes. The kidnappings of the babies and children occurred at night "When the moon rises above the barley field". After that, the lepers eat the child. Sca-ry.
꽃처럼 붉은 울음을 밤새 울었다.
Tears as red as a flower falls at night
This is a beautiful simile, no? Usually when authors describe tears, they say things like "her teardrops fell like waterfalls" or "she cried buckets of tears" or "she augmented the sea", but this author compares teardrops with a red flower. Perhaps he meant to say that the leper cried so much (due to his/her sorrow) that it cried blood. In Korea, this "tears of blood" is a common phrase . It can have many connotations, too. In this case, I think it means that the tears of the leper(s) are extra sad and are full of more misery.
Author:
Seo Jeong Ju, 서정주
Born: May 18th, 1915 (North Jeolla flatulence, 전라북도 고창)
Died: December 24th, 2000
