Sample Translations
The Society of Korean Poets Blissful Korean Dishes Seasoned with Poetry E ng l i s h
Book Information
Blissful Korean Dishes Seasoned with Poetry (시로 맛을 낸 행복한 우리 한식) MUNHAK SEGYE-SA Publishing corp. / 2013 / 32 p. / ISBN 9788970755649 For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772 This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea. Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr
Blissful Korean Dishes Seasoned with Poetry Written by Compiled by the Society of Korean Poets (76 Poets) 1 Kalguksu (knife-cut noodles)
Kim Jong-gil
In my hometown of Andong They call guksu “guksi,” but Now, even in Seoul, there are Andong Kalguksi houses.
The prefix kal- is attached to guksu To distinguish the noodles from those made by machines, and so Kalguksu is a major traditional dish of our people.
We have countless memories of it. I did not like noodles as a child, but I enjoyed watching them being made.
On a wooden board, spread out by the rolling pin, The now paper-thin dough, when cut into noodles, created “guksi tails.” I enjoyed eating them far more baked on the flames of a brazier.
Kalguksu brings back special memories to me now because Of the women who used to make them on the wooden porch of the old country house. Because now, there is no way to find that old house and those old women.
2
Janchi Guksu (feast noodles)
Kim Jong-hae
Craving janchi guksu with the flavor of Mother’s cooking, Around this time I search everywhere in the traditional market. I often went without food in my childhood; then, After I finished the noodles And drank the anchovy broth that filled the bowl, Before I knew it, I would be full from the janchi guksu. People who have starved know that If you eat a bowl of janchi guksu, You will feel fuller and richer than one giving a feast, A bowl of janchi guksu makes the world happy. The freshly boiled and seasoned chives and spinach, Or the roughly chopped kimchi garnish, Once the seasonings saturated with the taste of Mother’s cooking are spread on top, The noodles coil around the chopsticks, And without a moment to linger in the mouth, Please the throat. For family members who have yet to return home, Lie mounds of noodles In a bamboo basket covered with a cloth While the anchovy broth in the nickel silver pot is still hot.
3
Steamed Buns (Jjinbbang)
Park Hyung-jun
One winter I transferred to a new school, and On my way back home from school that first day, Unable to find my house before the evening approached, I wandered among the alleys which all looked alike. In the countryside, when it was evening, Like the steam of the cooking rice jiggling the cast iron pot, Mother would open the kitchen door and call me. Through this sound alone, I could return home no matter where I was playing in the neighborhood. Now, I must return home by myself. Telling myself I must return, I watched the white steam rising in front of a store selling steamed buns. On winter evenings, when I pass by a steamed bun shop, like back then, I want to surrender myself to the foggy steam of the buns at the temperature of memory. Shoving the steaming buns filled with red bean paste down my throat, Standing in the white steam, just like that, I want to stop heading home and be still a moment.
4
Bibimbap
Oh Se-young
In the land of food Bibimbap is a democratic country. Bean sprouts and spinach and carrots and mushrooms and ferns and bellflower roots and Beef and eggs: they are all equal. No vegetables over meat, No meat over vegetables among the ingredients. In this country, everyone respects the right of the meal.
In the land of food Bibimbap is a republic. The bean sprouts with the spinach, the carrots with the ferns, The beef with the bean sprouts, they know how to live together. No vegetables without meat, No meat without vegetables in this recipe for a community. In this country, no one lives alone.
In the land of food Bibimbap is a welfare state. The ingredients each give a little; The seasonings each sacrifice a little To infuse with the five colors and aromas and flavors
5
The rich nutrients. In this country, no one goes against nature.
Ah, in the land of food South Korea is a democracy. The bibimbap of South Korea is a democracy.
6
Gimbap
Lee Byung-ryul
On certain days, gimbap Is rolled and rolled to become strength, Rolled and rolled to become joy.
Like a piece of sliced wood, it becomes a splendid day.
Gimbap is eating the cross section, Eating a round heart, Digging out and eating the flower within.
What about sick days? What about bad days?
The smell of the wind in the sea laver The smell of yesterday in the pickled radish The smell of flesh in the rice The smell of the earth in the carrots.
Child, There is no one who makes gimbap to eat alone; thus, You must make gimbap on days when you are in love.
7
Child, When you spread everything out smoothly and then roll it up, Good days will come.
8
Seonji Haejangguk (hangover soup with cow blood)
Shin Dal-ja
A man walks by stooping his itching back. The man, With the soju he had drunk into the early morning still smelling of despair over his entire body, Guzzled down curses, guzzled down the resentment of the world, And guzzled down his screaming wife and kids; He looked around to see who they were angry at, and then another glass; At last, he gulped down his dream before he had a chance to chew it; That man, Along the Cheongjin-dong road, where the icy wind rages, Walks coughing, hack hack, when, Like the wind, he is sucked into a place selling seonji haejangguk. Rubbing a peculiar smile, he holds a bowl of Hot haejangguk with a rich smell of hope; Into his mouth, a spoonful of squashy cow blood, seonji, Into his mouth open like the plains, a spoonful of cabbage leaves, He gulps down the stomach-comforting haejangguk at once; The man’s complexion sure is a vivid red. The wrinkles of poverty, the distortion of soju all disappear, Even the frustrating loneliness eases for a moment; Oh, that bowl of seonjiguk, it is the meal of true heaven.
9
Where did she spend the night drinking? In a corner table, A woman, biting back her tears, Tilts her head back drinking the last of the broth And again wipes away her dry tears; The festering stories in wrenching hearts nimbly disappear; and The woman folds her two hands over the empty earthen bowl Like a Buddha, ending her haejangguk asceticism With an oh-so-white smile...
10
Samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup)
Lee Eun-bong
After graduating from elementary school, I left home, and ever since I have lived my whole life wandering from this city to that. Boarding or living alone... I was always weak because I never ate well. In middle school and in high school, when I was a bit tired after school had started, about a month after I had left home, Slowly, Arbor Day arrived, hansik arrived, cheongmyeong arrived, and a holiday adjacent to the weekend arrived. When I staggered over the threshold of my home, the smell of samgyetang rushed out; Once again, Mother had cooked samgyetang on this year’s hansik for her eldest son going through hard times away from home. Bashful, sorry, guilty, I barely breathed the words “Thank you, Mother” in a low, small, tiny voice. Kill a chicken, fill its stomach with sticky rice, garlic, ginseng, jujubes, chestnuts, pumpkin seeds, and boil it well; once you eat a serving of this samgyetang, Your whole body heats up, energy bursts within you, and you are no longer afraid of the world. With such a heart, I walked around and inspected my ancestors’ graves to see how they had endured last winter’s snowstorm. Even if I return to the city after eating a bowl of samgyetang full of Mother’s love, an invisible personal battle still awaits me. I persistently underline again and again the letters that endlessly encroach.
11
Dried Radish Greens (Siregi)
Do Jong-hwan
They were the first leaves to break through the dark earth. It was they that changed into green shoots, while the body remained a seed; It was they that stood on the outside and endured the dust and the heavy rains, Increasing their size ten-fold, twenty-fold. It was also they that, to bear and guard the purer, more delicate leaves, Became battered day by day, facing the fierce winds for the longest time; And at last, when people chose just the heart, It was these leaves that were discarded first. At least they, which had long guarded the green days, Were gathered by the hands which remembered them, and passed the winter. When the people lose their picky appetites and their tastes diminish, To satisfy the short hunger which, for a moment, reminds them of the past Is that last commitment, wet from the frost, bearing the snow.
12
Gimjaban (dried laver)
Lee Uh-ryeong
Not knowing gim, Western people Call it carbon paper. They don’t know the half of it. Under the green sea, It is the darkness which secretly raised the black pearl.
Do you know the annual rings of the sea which The waves settle and stack up layer by layer?
On days when Mother creates layers of flavor, Coating each layer of gim with seasoned soy sauce, The stroke of her white hands coats it also with the light and the wind.
As if folding the blanket where I had slept, As if hanging my old clothes out to dry after a wash, After the gim are left by the crocks to dry in the sunlight for about ten days, The sun and the sea water enter and season it.
When I chew the gimjaban, between my teeth rupture The strata of flavor, the reaction of the multiple layers of gim, The surface of flavor, in which the square sky and sea are torn.
13
Now, it is something no one makes because it requires too much hard work: Mother’s food.
When I close my eyes before the empty crocks, I can still hear the sound of waves even in the yard in the mountains; The square glitter of the sun, round as the wicker tray, The fields of home follow and ripen.
14
Live Octopus (Sannakji)
Jeong Ho-seung
Even if we go drinking in the backstreets of Sinchon, Let’s not eat raw octopus in sesame oil anymore. On an old plastic plate, While the chopped-up tentacles of the live octopus wriggle, How sad the ocean must be. As we put a raw octopus tentacle into our mouths And chew and chew, How many cliffs The ocean must have jumped from. Even the death of the live octopus requires dignity. The live octopus longs for the sea even as it is dying. Its body all mutilated, The live octopus makes every effort to wriggle away, because For one last time, It yearns to see the mother of the sea.
15
Maemil Jeonbyeong (Buckwheat pancakes)
Jeon Yun-ho
If you go to the market in Jeongseon, Gangwon-do, which opens every five days, There is an alley where old women withered as the yew in Hambaek Mountain Sell pan-fried hotcakes. In the greasy pan, the frivolous time Cooks the buckwheat pancakes as thin as luck, and On a cutting board, finely chops The kimchi well fermented with deeply buried sorrow To make jeonbyeong. In the shape of a truly ugly and Curt husband Rolled up in a blanket asleep, One bite of it and You experience the piquant taste of life. Friends who used to drink corn makgeolli Listening to the rain shower falling on the tin roof Have disappeared one by one, and The maidens who used to flee allowing glimpses of just the back of their heads Are no more; Below the Taebaek Mountains holding up the sky above this land, Between the rivers flowing spaciously, The old women cooking maemil jeonbyeong
16
Still remain in that spot, Exuding the smell of the savory oil.
17
Seaweed Soup
Yi Gyu-ri
The taste of motherhood 18 When my mother ate seaweed soup after giving birth to me, When her sweat fell like tears after she drank the hot soup, At last the long and dark birth pangs washed away, she said.
After pouring out the life they had carried for ten months, A mother's mother, a grandmother's grandmother, the women of this land, ate seaweed soup; From the seaweed soup which filled the hollow womb and healed the flesh Came a mother.
It was a soup like tears which healed the lonely mothers.
How strange! When you eat seaweed soup, the anger, the pain, disappear, and A gentle calm fills and rolls in the body. It is a soup that makes you believe that the body is the soul.
On days when my heart feels empty, I cook seaweed soup: The blue sea softly embracing my mouth.
After eating seaweed soup, I became a mother. I came to know motherhood.
19
Tteokguk (Rice cake soup)
Lee Keun-bae
On New Year's Eve, in our neighborhood, the hemp blossom village, A motor in the yard of our village head Gim Vibrated breathlessly. On their heads and shoulders, members from every house brought their rice cooked in a steamer, Bustled putting the rice through the machine and returned home with sticks of rice cake. My husband, Bak, brought home the rice cake, and It was my job to cut it with a knife. Late into the night, Mother, who was the head of the household as the wife of the eldest son, Prepared for the ancestral rites the food To be set on a table for five generations, and Stayed up the whole night sewing and finishing The cotton-padded pants, jacket, and even the vest: her only son's New Year's dress. After the ancestral rites and after the bowing to the elders, The bowl of tteokguk that we each ate seated around the table Was a wondrously tasty treat of the festive ritual, One, which we could only taste on New Year's Day morning, our most major holiday. "If you eat a lot of tteokguk, you will die."* Like Grandmother's joke, a bowl of tteokguk added a year to your age; We ate tteokguk, we aged; we ate tteokguk, we grew tall; As I went to bed I looked forward to
20
New Year's Day, the day we ate tteokguk. If only I could lay down all the years I have eaten and return To that morning when I bowed to our ancestors Wearing the new hanbok my mother had made me.
* In Korea, everyone ages a year on New Year’s Day and not on their birthdays. Since tteokguk is a dish which Koreans traditionally eat on New Year’s Day morning, there is a saying in Korea that if you eat tteokguk, you will age a year. Thus Koreans often joke that if you eat a lot of tteokguk, you will get older more quickly.
21
Seolleongtang
Jeong Jin-gyu
They say the name comes from seonnongtang; in the spring, when the king first demonstrated how to plow, the meat soup was cooked for the people who gathered like clouds; that is seonnongtang (先農湯 a soup eaten after pre-farming rituals); a long time is buried in the name. Once you hear how it became seolleongtang after the pronunciation of the word, you feel more affection toward the soup; it tastes better. It is a name with a body. The names of our dishes have bodies. At the half-century-old Imun Seolleongtang House, even today, I added some salt, chopped green onions, and kkakdugi along with its seasoning, and dipped in my brass spoon, all with a glass of soju. Even today, the old seolleongtang restaurant is crowded with the palates of aged tongues. I gulped down a dish of boiled beef with liver, spleen, and tongue. I emptied the glass of soju. The damp rain continued and I ate my seolleongtang; by my side was a first edition of Cho Chi-hun's first collection of poems, Blades of Grass (pullip danjang), which I had found with some difficulty at Tongmungwan, a used bookstore in the nearby Insa-dong. I think about Cho Chi-hun. Cho came to this restaurant for the first time in his life with me. He really enjoyed this dish. In particular, I can't forget the way he gulped down the broth to the last drop. He was like the rickshaw driver in Hyun Jin-gun's “A Lucky Day” (wunsu joeun nal).* When one comes to this place, everyone becomes a commoner, the same person as everyone else. In Korean food, both hunger and abundance coexist, commoners and nobility coexist. Even the king heartily emptied a bowl of seolleongtang after plowing that spring day.
22
* The rickshaw driver is the protagonist in Hyun Jin-gun’s short story “A Lucky Day.” Utterly poor, he leaves his starving wife and newborn child, heads to work despite his wife’s urging him to stay, and enjoys an unusually lucky day in the dreary rain. With the money he’s earned, he gulps down a bowl of seolleongtang and takes some to his wife only to find the baby sucking on her lifeless breast. 23
Sinseollo
Choi Mun-ja
Muosahwa*, under the shadow of that horrible death Minister Jeong Hui-ryang retreated into the woods and Built a fire in the fancy brass brazier. He opened the garden gate made of twigs, picked his vegetables, and Boiled the leftovers he had collected from this house and that To create a mouth-pleasing dish, A taste he enjoyed, as a Taoist hermit would, with no desires, The very taste of tangpyeongchaek.**
After the massacre of scholars ended, Jeong Hui-ryang returned to the palace, but could not forget that taste And requested sinseollo at a feast. Meat pancakes, sea cucumbers, abalones, ginko nuts, beef omasa, mussels, carp: They boiled all these over a charcoal fire, but it wasn't the taste; It was not the taste of the dish boiled in the dented brass bowl. Neither was it the taste he had enjoyed like a Taoist hermit.
* Muosahwa is the name of a massacre of scholars (sahwa) which occurred in 1498, the Year of the Horse (muo). ** Tangpyeongchaek is the name of a policy implemented in the Joseon Dynasty to promote harmony and unity among the divided political powers.
24
Gujeolpan
Gim Yu-seon
Upon receiving word of your visit My heart first becomes a flowerbed of five colors. Balancing the yin and the yang, preparing the five flavors, Selecting only the most precious and beautiful, Avoiding ten for it is too full, avoiding excess and lack I treat you with the lucky nine. I cover lame talk with peonies embroidered with mother-of-pearl, so Just lay the five-colored clouds on top of the wheat pancakes like the bare skin. I will wrap every little petal of a woman’s ardent heart with the full moon.
They say that Pearl Buck, the novelist who wrote The Good Earth, was surprised at the lid of the gujeolpan dish—lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl—and was again mesmerized after she opened the lid. They say she couldn't raise her chopsticks for fear of ruining the dish. My aunt who used to live next to Changgyeonggung had a figure like the spring sunlight; her cooking was also attractive, so they called her a woman with nothing to waste. On days when my delicate uncle invited his ruddy friend from the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, my aunt, her two cheeks rosy, would julienne the ingredients as if measuring with a ruler and would slide along the edge of the moonlight with the smell of the stir-frying sesame oil late into the night. The piper couldn't lift his chopsticks and just blew the pipe. It was a night when my aunt covered the flowery lid over the heart of a flower barely visible.
25
Kimchi
Kim Huran
In the corner turning into winter, The pure skin, The richly colored napa cabbage was fragrant.
The flesh wilted soft with the salt; Julienned radish, green onions, garlic, leaf mustard, water parsley, The fermented jeotgal, the zesty pepper powder Are mixed pungently with the dialect of my hometown, And used to coat the leaves layer by layer; the cabbage then placed in a crock.
Kimchi made in preparation for the winter, kimchi made with whole cabbages, bossam kimchi, and white kimchi: When it ripens to a delicious crunch, As if walking with the hem of my mother's skirt in my hands as a child, I cannot let go of that hand even when I live away from my homeland.
Mother, my mother, the warm taste of her cooking; The tasty kimchi with fresh crispness Proudly sits amidst a sumptuous feast; It is surely the representative dish of our people.
26
Kkakdugi (Cubed Radish Kimchi)
Lee Su-ik
With rice in soup and seolleongtang There is something that should naturally accompany the meal. Yes, kkakdugi. Slide a spoonful of the meal into your mouth and In the hot expectation, waiting for the next moment, lies Kkakdugi, dyed red; I am reminded of that blissful taste. Crisp, When I bite into it, the resounding pleasure spreads richly through my mouth, and I am at a loss for words and once again blunder, because of that taste Which has already reached its height. Perhaps that is why The Kim Sisters, who went to the United States in the 1960s and performed songs, Said, “At breakfast or dinner, they can boast of the delicious beef steak they had for lunch, But it is no match for Korean kimchi and kkakdugi,�* Spreading the song of praise for kkakdugi Far and wide in the world. Kkakdugi, Anyone can easily make it, but Because of the folk talent embedded in the taste, Which not anyone can make easily, I breathe sweet whispers, as if writing a love letter, of the most delicious
27
And cold delicacy!
* Lyrics from “Kimchi Kkakdugi,” a song by The Kim Sisters
28
Raw Flounder
Kim Kwang-kyu
We believed early on That we were similar to God or That God resembled us.
A mouth that wanted to talk and genitals we wanted to cover, On the left and on the right, or on the right and on the left, We have an eye, an ear, an arm, and a leg on each side; Always comparing the left to the right, We made scales and wheels and built walls.
Unable to bear not dividing, We divided into the right and into the left The liberally scattered mountains, fields, and seas; and
In images exactly like our bodies, We made dolls, medals, and weapons; We mimicked our head And built churches, government offices, and schools. At last, even sound, light and stars We divided into the left and into the right; and
29
Now with no choice but to divide our head and our body, We drink while snacking on strips of raw fish. We are so unfamiliar with our image that We tear off and eat the flesh of the flounder while it is still alive, Flopping its whole body, And we laugh at how the two eyes are oddly driven to the right; but
We still do not know What on earth the flounder, which we can never divide Into the right or into the left, into the left or into the right, Resembles.
30
Bulgogi
Lee Ga-rim
Ask a Korean What his favorite food is and Bulgogi will always rank within the top five. No matter which country people are from, Once they taste bulgogi, They say it is by far the best. Foreigners sometimes call bulgogi Korean barbecue, but We should have them call it By its proper name, bulgogi. On a winter day when a cat made a sound scratching at the door frame And the soft sleet fell against the window, I would call a handful of friends, who liked to joke around; We would gather in a warm, linoleum-covered room, And eat bulgogi, pouring the broth over the grill; Ah the taste of it! When I told my French friend, Patrick, That you don't just grill the meat and eat it, But that you have to grill it after letting it marinate in soy sauce with various seasonings To enjoy the true flavor, He asked how we could put meat to sleep,* making us
31
Hahaha, hahaha, hahaha... I remember grasping my belly laughing. How to enjoy the delicious taste of bulgogi, Is there anyone who can explain it simply?
* In Korean, the words for “marinate” and “to put to sleep” are homonyms.
32