Marilynne Robinson awarded Park Kyung-Ri (박경리) International Literary Award.

Marilynne Robinson receives awardA really good idea in Wonju. The Park Kyung-Ri (Authoritative Romanization according to LTI Korea, although not what the locals use) Literary Museum is giving an international literature award, and this year they gave it to Marilynne Robinson.

Why is this a good idea?

Because in a country that gives a  hoot about how it is perceived in international literature, it is probably a good idea to be international to be cared about.

And this is what the Park Kyung-ni award is about, looking outward from Korea to find literature to bring in.

The event itself was aweseome, a credit to the Literary Museum and to Wonju (a national representative of Wonju was at the event, and it is not to my credit that I have forgotten his name^^).

The attendees were a who’s who of literature including the redoubtable Brother Anthony and Kim Jiha (The authoritative Romanization according to LTI Korea), a true Korean literary hero and bit of an eccentric. Kim Jiha.. well..  no one can do him as much justice as Brother Anthony, so if you’re interested in Kim Chi-ha, scroll down to the bottom of this page for a condensed bio from Brother Anthony’s page.

Fall in WonjuThe site is absolutely beautiful, and I will talk about this a bit more when I have had a chance to go down to Wonju again to see the Park Kyung-ri Park (that sounds weird!) which is downtown, and where Park’s house has been moved.

The event began with some music, you may hear a clip here (and it uses some instruments I’d not seen before, a 5-sting guitar and the mulish offspring of harmonica, bagpipe, and pipe-organ – I m sure some Korean music officianado can hep me to what they are called). The first song was kind of traditional, but the second one featured guitar thumping and atonalities that would have fit in to a hashish-soaked coffee-shop open-mic in the 1960’s.

Then it was time for the speeches, which focused on Park Kyung-ri, Robinson, and international literature. All very nicely done and well translated and, again, mercifully short.

This was all ended with an excellent buffet reception at which many of the important figures of Korean culture and literature who were present were introduced and gave short toasts. The wine I drank during these toasts kept me quite sleepy on the bus ride home.^^

On the way, I listened to my recording of the classical music, and so you can also, here is a clip:

right here

A really great event that I look forward to attending again next year, and the logical next step in the evolution of Korean Literature’s attempt to jump to the international stage.

 

BROTHER ANTHONY’S SHORT BIO OF OF KIM JIHA:

Kim JihaKim Chi-Ha (chiha means ‘underground’) was born in 1941 in Mŏkp’o and originally received the name Yŏng-Il. He was a student activist and spent 4 months in prison in 1964 for demonstrating against the establishment of diplomatic relations with Japan.  On the publication of 오적 (ojŏk, five bandits) in 1970, he was charged under the anti-communist law and imprisoned. In 1974, he was condemned to death as an accomplice in the People’s Revolutionary Party Incident, this was then commuted to life imprisonment but the sentence was suspended and he was released in February 1975. Re-arrested a month later on further charges, he was again sentenced and was only released in December 1980.

His physical and mental health were seriously compromised by his prolonged imprisonment and in the years following 1980 he began to develop a new synthesis of Christian and oriental thought centered on respect for life. Intensely individual, he refused to play the politically dissident role many expected of him and became increasingly isolated. While his prose writings mystified many by their strange terminology, his poems lost the earlier note of intense satire and often seemed facile or sentimental. With the passage of time he has become a revered but remote senior writer, and there seems to be little that unites the prophetic, satirical writer of the 1970s with the “one-man Donghak Party” of the new century, whose writings are loaded with unfamiliar Chinese terms often drawn from abstruse metaphysical treatises of earlier times. In recent years he has begun to write extensively in a visionary vein, using a non-scientific eco-biological / life-science terminology and inventing a vast new vocabulary related to his central notion of “san’al,” the central cell-like seed and source of life within each being.