Shijo are short traditional Korean songs. They are light, personal, and very often conversational. The language is simple, direct, and devoid of elaboration or ornamentation. The shijo poet gives a first-hand account of his own personal experience of life and emotion: the rise and fall of dynasties; loyalty to the king; friendship, love and parting; the pleasures of wine; the beauty and transience of human existence; the inexorable advance of old age etc.
The first generation of twentieth century shijo scholars regarded shijo as a 3-chang (section) poem, fourteen to sixteen syllables in each chang, distributed through four distinct umbo or breath groups, the total number of syllables not being more than forty-five. The first ku of the final chang was invariably 3 syllables; the second ku of the final chang not less than 5 syllables. This was the regular or ordinary shijo, called p’yong shijo. Two variations of the basic form were postulated: the ot shijo, in which the first or the second chang might be somewhat extended; and the sasol shijo, in which all three chang might be extended. These opinions held sway for a generation. By the 1950s, however, scholars were asking questions; in particular, they were questioning the enormous number of exceptions to the ideal count as postulated in the various syllable count systems. Consequently, several new theories of the rhythmic structure of shijo were introduced. The new theories ran the gamut of prosodic possibility, but none of them provided real satisfaction. Writing in the 1970s, Kim Chehyon summarized the confusion that persisted in shijo studies:
As yet, not only has the concept and function of chang, ku and umbo not been clarified, but the three-chang structural principle has not been adequately elucidated.
Ultimately, all that can be said with certainty about the rhythm of shijo is that the umbo or breath group is the fundamental unit and that the rhythm of all Korean writing, both prose and poetry, is 3, 4 rhythm.
The shijo originally was a song form. There were two modes of performance: the traditional kagok-ch’ang, a complex five-chang (section) sung accompaniment to which most extant shijo were originally performed; and the shijo-ch'ang, a much simpler accompaniment, which was not invented until the middle of the 19th century when shijo was already in decline, but which became totally dominant by the 1920s. This was when Ch’oe Namson introduced the 3-chang literary text that is accepted as standard today. Shijo today is primarily a literary text, a short lyric poem, read and contemplated rather than performed and heard. The 3-chang division of the shijo text is a dominant concept, so imbedded in the popular consciousness as to be virtually unassailable. Accordingly, the translations in this volume employ the 3-chang structure, but they do so in combination with a five-line English format that corresponds broadly with the five-part song structure of the kagok-ch’ang. Lines 1 and 2 in the translations are the opening chang; line 3 is the middle chang; and lines 4 and 5 are the final chang. The 5-line format is a visual device primarily. I developed the 5-line English format not just because it was warranted by the history of the shijo, but because it opens up huge possibilities in English; it is new and exciting, as the shijo itself should be to the English reader, a much superior vehicle to the traditional shijo English translation vehicle, the pretty 6-line lyric. The translations attempt to get something of the feel of the kagok back into the literary text, to approximate in English the Korean sense of hung that is at the heart of the shijo experience.
This little volume offers only the taste of shijo. It presents a selection from the work of a small number of outstanding poets, in the hope that the reader may be enticed to dig deeper into the treasure trove of traditional Korean poetry.