Our study of the multidynastic reception of Ho Nansorhon’s poetry has brought to the foreground questions of authorship and authenticity as they were contested across boundaries of dynasty and gender. While Wang Duanshu seems to valorize women’s poetry precisely because it comes from the body of a woman—a body that is somehow purer and more suited to creative pursuits than that of a man, Liu Shi does just the opposite. She accuses Wang and others enamored with Nansorhon of forgoing any true consideration of aesthetics and instead finding her intriguing simply (and precisely) because she is both Korean and female and can nevertheless write poems in Chinese.

According to Liu Shi, the extent of Nansorhon’s achievement did not go beyond the practice copying or working off of other poets’ superior work. But Nansorhon, her brother, Ho Pong, and many other people—both Korean and Chinese—seem to have had a very different concept of authorship and the authentic. An inscription on a volume of Du Fu’s poetry that Ho Pong sends his sister recounts: “I now send [this volume] to you nicely re-bound so you can peruse it. If you do not reject my heartfelt wish, maybe Du Fu’s voice, which had become faint, will once again flow from my sister’s hand.”¹ And indeed, Nansorhon is not shy about working from examples of the Tang. It is worth noting not that Liu Shi’s accusations that Nansorhon has copied from earlier poets are accurate, but rather that Nansorhon herself seemed to have considered such an acceptable and necessary pursuit. A number of her poems are explicitly “styled after” such Tang poets as Cui Guofu, Shen Yazhi, and Li Yishan, exercises that attest to her attempt to let their fading voices flow from her own hand.

Although we are by no means searching for some authentic “Nansorhon” that centuries of Chinese and Korean readers overlooked, we do believe that closer consideration of the poems attributed to this contested figure in various anthologies will give us material with which to begin a discussion of the great posthumous influence of this new and strange Korean woman, this beloved sister who died too young.

In the paragraphs that follow, we will begin this discussion based on four poems, two of her most well-known, “Ancient Parting” and “The Song of the Zither by Xiang River,” and two that were only published in a single anthology in Korea, the Nansorhon jip, “Grieving my Children” and “Song on the Swing.” In this way, we will begin to listen to the voice that has long been called a talented or plagiarizing “Ho Nansorhon,” letting it be Du Fu, Ho Nansorhon, Ho Kyun, or someone else, letting it say what is on its mind, and letting the poems be poems, not absolute determinants of identity.

We mean for this to be an essay in collaboration; we welcome suggestions and comments, but especially readings and/or translations of Nansorhon's poems. Please send contributions to ho.nansorhon@gmail.com.

Ancient Parting

Rattling along, the wheels of a pair of carts,
Each day they turn a million times.
Same heart, not the same cart,
Since we parted, so much has changed.
Yet the cartwheels still leave tracks,
Thinking of you, alone, you don’t appear.

"Ancient Parting" was first printed and anthologized appearance is in the Chaoxian gushi (Old Poems of Chosŏn) in 1598, and it continued to reappear in late-Ming anthologies throughout the mid-seventeenth century. However, it is not included in any versions of the Nansŏrhŏn jip, which was probably based upon the manuscript that Hŏ Kyun began to compile shortly after his sister's death. What could account for this poem's lack of representation in these Chosŏn publications? Conversely, what could account for its popularity during the 1620s under the Ming?

The poem rests upon a sense of movement and separation, but also of the mundane passage of time that may render the once-familiar distant or unrecognizable. This figurative movement of time, emotions, and thoughts hinges upon three images: that of wheels turning daily "a million times," a "pair of carts," and the traces of tracks left behind by the movement of these wheels and carts.

The "rattling along" of wheels appeal to the sense of actually hearing the jumble and confusion of the daily almost ceaseless revolutions of wheels. This noise eventually causes separation; though of one heart, the textual "we" must be parted. The only reason given for this separation is that they are "not the same cart." It is further unclear whether this separation is due to inherent differences in nature or the unavoidable movement of time and lives. Whatever the origin of separation, the fact of distance has rendered irreversible changes.

One of the most poignant moments in the poem occurs in the second to last line: "Yet the cartwheels still leave tracks." It is as though the writer has accepted the conditions of change and separation from this "same heart" only to backpedal in the face of memory—thus, no matter in which other direction the other cart may divert to, the cartwheels still leave tracks. The poem concludes with a variation on the trope of the lonely woman, waiting for her beloved. Instead, the image of the woman is replaced by an image of a lone cart, bereft of its pair, yet still hoping for an impossible reunion.

The Song of the Zither (kŏmungo) by Xiang River

Plantain blossoms well up with dewy tears at the tune of Xiangjiang;
In nine directions, autumn smoke, beyond heaven is yellow green.
Cold waves run high in the Shui Fu*, the dragon sings through the night;
The savage maiden nimbly carves the lucid jade.
The parting pair, phoenix and her mate, separate at the Cangwu Mountain;
Rain and mist descend upon the river, muddling the pearly morning dews.
Leisurely plucked, the heavenly strings atop the stone cliff;
Wreathed-in blossoms, moon coiffeur, the beautiful girl cries by the river.
The Milky Way leaps suddenly into the marble sky;
The five clouds sink the feather blossoms and golden stems.
Outside the gate, the fisherman sings the “bamboo branch” melody;
In the silvery pond, half-suspended, the moon of mutual longing hangs.

"The Song of the Zither by Xiang River" was one of the most frequently anthologized poems in and during all three dynasties. A sense of longing and decay underlies the images and objects that describe conditions in immortal, abstract and physical worlds. The text seems to be desperately trying to make sense of these worlds while simultaneously creating a textual space in which to further represent them as muddled and indistinct.

The first two lines create a scene of intense and almost overwhelming heaviness and longing—plantain blossoms "well up with dewy tears" hearing the Xiang river's "tune," which we can only assume must be one that prompts sadness. This season of decay (autumn) has such force that even "beyond heaven" its colors of newness and freshness (green) are yellowing and decaying.The following text depicts a series of events and images that convey as sense of confusion and dislocation, expressed through the parting "phoenix and her mate," and the forces of nature that muddle "the pearly morning dew." In the center of this confusion cries a beautiful girl with 'moon coiffeur;" being next to the river, she echoes the plantain blossoms that also cry tears of dew next to the Xiang. The remaining lines emphasize the all-encompassing nature of the heaviness and confusion felt and seen next to the Xiang River.

The marbled night sky and Milky Way suddenly appear, expressing and affecting a sense of disorientation. Indeed, the entire poem arguably shifts back and forth among the spaces of the immortals, mundane, love, and materiality. The last image of the "moon of mutual longing" "half-suspended" in a silvery pond reiterates the topsy-turvy quality of the text: the moon, instead of hanging in the sky, is reflected below in a pond. The subdued moon is further only half-suspended, which connotes the unfulfilled, the absent, and desire.

Grieving My Children

Last year I lost my beloved daughter
This year I’ve lost my beloved son
Filling with sorrow, this ground is like Kangnŭng
Twin graves face each other, side by side

Wind weeps through white aspen branches
The goblin’s gleam flickers in the woods
Scattering paper money, I call to your spirits
And sprinkle wine across your graves

Ah! Roaming and lonely brother and sister
Are you still playing nightly like you did during your lives?
Even if I birth another child now
How can I raise it free from harm and difficulty?

Listlessly I sing the Yellow Terrace Tune
Swallowing my laments and tears of blood

The poem “Grieving My Children” in Nansŏrhŏnjip illuminates the broad range of Nanŏrhŏn’s poetic persona.  The thematic content of this poem, as opposed to that of poems that were more popular across different anthologies, is distinct in that it deals exclusively with the mother-child relationship.  The emotional persona illustrated throughout the poem is that of a mother grieving the loss of her two children.  The scenic imagery she sets up, where “goblin’s gleam flickers in the woods,” is eerie and empty - further amplifying the ghostly bleakness of the grave site. 

Juxtaposed with this eerie atmosphere is the emotional agony and maternal concerns that simultaneously resonates within the mother’s heart.  She consoles the spirits of her children and hopes that they will maintain their loyal siblinghood and companionship with one another.  Yet, even while she attempts to bring back her children’s spirits through her poignant memory of them, she is haunted by their ghosts.  The mother’s woe only grows deeper at the thought of the life growing inside her womb; there is absolutely no solace in the possible hope of another child.  Unable to digest her incomprehensively wretched state of heart, she can only “swallow [her] laments and tears of blood.”

Song on the Swing

When my female companion and I compete on the swings
Hair braided, hand-cloth on our heads, we are like nymphs
Wind lifts the five-colored ropes and we fly up to the skies
These willow branches sing like the tinkling together of pendants

After swinging, we arrange our embroidered slippers again
Returning without a word, we alight on the jade staircase
Thin beads of sweat appear on our cicada shirts
Who will retrieve my fallen golden hairpin?

The “Song of the Swing” likewise illuminates the wide spectrum of sentiments in Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn’s poems, this time in a playful and highly eroticized manner.  The running imagery is that of two female friends enjoying their leisure time together on swings.  The sexual connotations prevalent throughout the poem are heightened by the constant interchange between mystical verses that liken the maidens to nymphs and bodily ones that allude to their physical activities.  What would normally be considered overt sexual description is transformed into a joyous competition scene between two nymphs to determine who can swing higher into the far reaches of the skies. 

The first four lines of the poem echo of the girls’ feelings of liberation and exhilaration.  They leave it to the wind to take them to a place beyond the boundaries of the inner chamber.  In the latter half of the poem, the prevailing ambience bespeaks a conscious restoration of order and settling down.  The maidens “arrange [their] embroidered slippers” and “[return] without a word.”  There are no words exchanged between the female companions, but perhaps this hints at the secretive nature of what transpired between the girls during their swing competition.  The implicit reference to the erotic overtones of their activity can also be drawn from the last two lines of the poem: the maidens’ cicada shirts are beaded with sweat and their hair is disheveled and their hairpins have fallen out. 

1. Translated by Kichung Kim, “Ho Nansorhon and ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’” in Young-Key Kim-Renand ed., Creative Women of Korea, (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), 78-95. 82. back to text

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