Pak Chol-hui
Sijo is one of the genres of the Korean literary legacy which has had the longest history. It originated from the old Korean poetry, and passing through the middle and modern ages, has been developed and handed down as the most suitable, and hence traditional poetic form of the Korean people.
If we estimate that the poetic form of Sijo was completed as late as the last period of the Koryeo dynasty, it has a history of at least 800 years. During this period, it is estimated that innumerable Sijo works might have been written but we now have about 3,300 extant, written before the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910.
The number of Sijo can hardly be regarded as large, considering its long history. However, the number cannot be regarded as small, either, compared with that of the other genres of Korean classical literature. In this sense, Sijo can be regarded as the mainstream of Korean literature. It was during the Yi dynasty that most of Sijo poems were written. Hence Sijo was the dominant literary genre of the Yi dynasty.
Considering that Sijo was a lyrical verse form, written in Korean instead of Chinese, we can safely say that they count for much in the history of poetry. (Remember that during the Yi dynasty, most of the poems were written in Chinese.) In the long history of Korean poetry, many poetic forms have arisen made and died out but only the Sijo form has been used continuously from the last period of the Koryeo dynasty up to the present, and therefore is regarded as the only traditional poetic form of Korea. This accounts for the fact that the Sijo form has had the greatest appeal to the aesthetic sense of the Korean people. Hence it is the most important poetic form of Korean poetry.
The origin of the form of Sijo cannot be pointed out clearly, but we assume that it can be traced back to the tradition of the old Korean poetry. The Sijo form may have been made as a result of the development or transformation of the poetic form of old Korean folk songs, or hyangga the indigenous songs of the Silla dynasty. The Sijo form has a trace of the development from old Korean folk songs. An old Korean folk song consists of two lines, one line having 4 Korean feet, a Korean foot having 3, 4 or 5 syllables. (Remember that Korean is a syllabic language.) Now a Sijo form has 3 lines, each line having the same number of Korean feet as that of the old Korean folk songs. The last line includes both poetic transition and conclusion. Thus the peculiar feature of the Sijo is shown in the third line. It has a heightened concentration of emotion. It is because of this that a Sijo can achieve the same intensity of emotion in three lines that a hyangga the 10-line poem of the Silla dynasty, can convey in 10 lines. The third line of a Sijo has the equivalent poetic function to that of the 9th and 10th lines of a hyangga. Now a hyangga has 10 lines, which can be divided into 3 groups; the preceding 8 lines can be grouped into two, and the last 2 lines into one. The three-line division of Sijo may be derived from this partition. In this sense Sijo can be said to have the shortest form which is most neatly arranged. And also it can command more flexible maneuvering of the poetic images and have more definite conclusions than the two-line form of the old Korean folk songs and more compact condensation of poetic images than hyangga.
Sijo is a poetic form with definite number of Korean feet in three lines, the beginning, middle and end, and with definite and conclusive meaning in it. Especially when we take into account the melody accompanying each line the 3-line form has a great significance. The melody was sung, and accordingly, Sijo constitutes part of a song. Therefore the 3 or 4 syllables of a Korean foot which is the fundamental length of the traditional Korean foot are well suited to the breath-length of a Korean who sings Sijo.
The word Sijo originally means songs of the time which are the popular songs of the time concerned. So it is a musical rather than a poetic term. So Sijo is a popular song with melody dominating and poetry following. As I have pointed out, Sijo is composed of 3 lines, each line having 4 Korean poetic feet, and each foot comprising 3 or 4 syllables. A Korean foot in Sijo, however, has exceptions, such as 2 syllables in place of 3, or 3 syllables instead of 4. Thus the number of syllables of a Korean foot sometimes varies, but the number of Korean feet in each line is always the same, though there are a few exceptions. In rare cases, there are 3 Korean feet in a line instead of 4. Now a 3 Korean foot line is the basis of the folk songs of the Koryeo dynasty and also similar to the lines of modern Korean poems. Thus a 3-or 4-foot line is the basic rhythm of traditional Korean poetry. However, in Sijo, a 3-foot line did not play a more conspicuous part than a 4-foot line. Therefore Sijo can be said to be a short poetic form with 3 lines, each line having 4 Korean feet, and a Korean foot having 3, 4 or 5 syllables. This short poetic form has the concentrated aestheticism of the Korean people. Though the division of Sijo into 3 lines is generally accepted as pertinent nowadays, it was not so in the original texts. In most of old texts, with a few exceptions, such as Cheonggu-yeongeon, Sijo were written in lines without word or line divisions. In some texts, Sijo, were divided into 3 lines, but some were not. In modem Sijo, the poets made line divisions, but in older or traditional Sijo, the readers, not poets, copyists, or compilers, were forced to make the line division. Of course, the line-division on the part of readers, was not made according to the outward characteristics, but to the inner principles of Sijo. Hence the line-division of old Sijo attempted by Choi Nam-seon and others in recent times is not related to the line or foot division in old Sijo text books.
What matters most is that each Sijo has the basic poetic logic of inception, exposition, transition and conclusion, which was originally that of the traditional Chinese poetry. The first line of Sijo is equivalent to an inception, the second line to an exposition, the first Korean foot of the third line to transition, and the remaining 3 Korean feet to a conclusion. This 3-line poem, Sijo, has a definite idea aesthetically expressed. So no part of a Sijo can be transposed or discarded, but every part is related to every other organically. Especially the transition part expresses the culmination of lyricism, the concentration of heightened emotion which begins to abate in the next stage. It is interesting to note that the first foot of the third line invariably consists of 3 syllables, and the following foot has 5 or more syllables. This is not the only characteristic of Sijo. Even in modem Korean poems, an exclamation is almost always followed by 5 or more syllables. This is a pattern of Korean poems, old and new.
Therefore I say without any hesitation, that the 3-line form of Sijo is not borrowed from any foreign literature, but an indigenous Korean poetic form. The spontaneous overflow of emotion of the Korean people tried to find out some poetic form most suitable to itself, until it acquired a compact poetic form of its own, which is Sijo. This form of poetic expression is not unrelated to the Confucian rationale which is based on the Golden Rule, because the 4-foot lines of Sijo give a sense of tranquility to listeners. The melody accompanying Sijo is not composed to be suitable to the poems themselves, but to Korean harps which were favorite instruments of the ruling class of the Yi dynasty, who were all confucian scholars.
Thus the fact that Sijo can be explained in terms of Confucian rationale shows their functions and characteristics. The main contents or meanings of Sijo are explications of Confucianism rather than expressions of personal emotions. The works of the major Sijo poets of the first half of the Yi dynasty, such as Maeng Sa-seung, Yi Hyeon-bo, Yi Yi, and Yi Hwang, are mainly the explications of Confucianism. So we can safely say that, in this period, Confucianism was the main subject matter or material of Sijo. So it is very important to see how each Sijo poet treated the same material in his own way, finding different motives of his own.
The reminiscences by surviving retainers of the fallen Koryeo dynasty, the eulogies of the foundation of the Yi dynasty, pastorals, Confucian songs, loyal poems, patriotic poems, these are all Sijo categorized differently according to the themes adopted, but have ultimately the same underlying subject matter, the Confusian rationale. So it is natural that, when everything can be explained in terms of the Confucian rationale, the very emotion expressed should exactly correspond to the a priori Confucian rationale. Therefore, as a Sijo poet was always forced to express the orthodox and unitary Confucianism in his poems, he could not afford to consider other various nuances of his own experiences. So there was a tendency of the Confucian Sijo poets to express their simple emotions concisely and yet exclamatorily. Thus Sijo are the poems of the ruling class who were immersed in the despotic Confucian rationale, but who, nevertheless, tried to make the most of it write to express themselves in poetry.
The world of Confucian ethics denies emotion. What dominated Sijo was not emotion, but ideas and images prevalent in Sijo were not realities but abstractions. Therefore, the dominant idea of Sijo poets was “ethics, first and art, next.” This is the way the Sijo poets conceived of their poems. It is because of this that most Sijo were expressions either of satisfaction resulting from sympathetic contact with nature or of resolutions made in accordance with the Confucian rationale.
On the other hand, we cannot overlook a group of other Sijo poets who, in revolt against the general tendency, tried to restore humanity by presentng real images. The fact that some, though not all, Sijo of Song Sun, Hwang Jin-i, Yun Seon-do and Chung Chol, represented concrete realities show that Sijo have the possibility of a great variety of expressions. The Sijo of Song Sun, Hwang Jin-i, Yun Seon-do and Chung Chol were the expressions of their personal perception of realities.
From the 18th century on, there was a tendency toward longer Sijo forms the abovementioned 3-line Sijo form was called a shorter Sijo. Lengthened Sijo were classified as medium and longer Sijo according to the length of their lines. A medium Sijo also has 3 lines, but a line is extended to include 6 Korean feet while a longer Sijo form has 8 Korean feet in each of 3 lines. Traditionally a medium Sijo form was called eot-Sijo and the longer Sijo form saseol Sijo, while the shorter Sijo form which has been examined above, was called pyeong-Sijo.
The advent of shorter Sijo forms in the first period of the Yi dynasty coincided with that of new dignitaries of a new dynasty, while the appearance of medium and longer Sijo forms was closely related to the awakening of the common or low class people in the latter period of the Yi dynasty. The Confucian rationale of the shorter Sijo form during the first part of the Yi dynasty was a strong revolt against the too soft humane emotion of the folk songs of the Koryeo dynasty, while the longer Sijo forms appeared as a revolt against the too rigid Confucian rationale.
The longer Sijo form, a saseol-Sijo, however, is not the extension of the shorter Sijo, pyeong-Sijo. It is a genre of poetry of its own. Of course it cannot be denied that saseol-Sijo inherited the legacy of the shorter Sijo form, pyeong-Sijo in form and content. But the saseol-Sijo form is derived from folk songs of the low class people with their free-wheeling forms and emotions, and yet it does not reject the stability of the previous form. What it rejects is artificiality which is characterstic of that form. The longer Sijo form, saseol-Sijo, retains the three-line form of pyeong-Sijo, the shorter Sijo, and only the lines lengthened to include more Korean feet in each of them. Therefore, saseol-Sijo is the most suitable poetic form for embracing the complexities of ordinary life. In this sense, it is as free a poetic form as modern free verse, and we may claim that the modern Korean free verse has not borrowed its freedom from any Western poetry, but has had its own antecedents in its own poetic history. The problem was that when the movement of Korean pragmatism of the 18th century, which was the background of saseol-Sijo, was frustrated because of the Japanese occupation of Korea before it was brought to fruition, the too prosaic prosody of saseol-Sijo was also denied by the revival of pyeong-Sijo during the enlightenment period, before its form was polished and firmly established.
Another important thing worthy of close attention in this period is that Sijo were written by the lower classes as well as the aristocracy, and several anthologies of Sijo were compiled. They are Kim Cheon-taek’s Cheonggu-yeongeon, Kim Su-jang’s Haedong-gayo, Songgyeyeon Weonlong’s Kaedong-gayo, and An Min-yeong and Pak Hyo-kwan’s Gagok-wonryu. Much work has been done to rearrange and systematize these works since the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, there have appeared many new anthologies of Sijo, such as, Choi Nam-seon’s Sijo-yuchwi, Shin Myeong-gyun’s Sijo-chanjip and, more recently, Jeong Byeong-uk’s Dictionary of Sijo and Shim Jae-wan’s Complete Collection of Historical Sijo in which almost all the known Sijo written until the end of the Yi dynasty are collected and classified.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the search for the traditional rhythm and poetic forms of Sijo has been carried on assiduously and a considerable number of Sijo poets have tried to reinvigorate the tradition of Sijo with attempts at shorter forms. It was in 1927 that Choi Nam-seon published his personal collection of Sijo, entitled One Hundred and Eight Carnal Desires (Baekpal-beonnoe), after having published Four Poems of Common People (Kukpung-sasu) in the Daehan-yuhaksaeng-hoebo (Journal of the Association of Korean Students Abroad) in 1909. Since then, Sijo have been reinvigorated and developed by such pioneers as Yi Kwang-su, Yi Eun-sang, An Ja-san, Jeong In-bo, Cho Wun and Yi Pyeng-gi, while the importance of Sijo has been claimed by many scholars, writers and poets.
Sijo can be said to be the only traditional Korean literary form surviving into modern times when every genre of literature has been greatly influenced by Western literature. It is true, however, that even Sijo have been influenced to some degree by Western poetry, but the influence has been mainly on the content. The form has not been influenced by any foreign poetic form. That the form of modern Sijo has not been changed or altered by any foreign influence is testimony that it is the most suitable poetic form to meet the aesthetic need of the Korean people, and that it has not been fossilized but is still a working medium to express our various experiences and inner desires.
Translated by
Cho Un-je