his poems of the same period fail to achieve
full universality because of excessive personal
‘‘warmth’’ toward some political subjects. It is
said that a poem should be more cool than
warm; that it should not be the ‘‘lava of imagi-
nation,’’ let alone of indignation. Much of Pak’s
poetry written in those days seems to have been
singed by excessive warmth. To many of his
contemporaries who shared the same hardship,
his poetry is likely to serve as sharp reminder like
intimate diaries or memoirs. Pak Tu-jin himself
wrote in the Preface to the volume of poetry
published in that period:
My strong-willed stance and struggle against
such reactionary behaviors, exacerbated by my
personal sufferings, have been like those of a
fierce animal licking its bleeding wounds in the
sun or like those of a small bird struggling
through turbulent snow storms. They have
left undried traces on the pages.
He lays special emphasis on the ‘‘undried’’
traces of his struggle and suffering still smelling
of sweat and blood left on the pages of his
poetry. We all know that the pages of poetry
should be dry; otherwise, the letters will be
blurred and the pages soiled.
He says he had quite an inner struggle as to
whether to choose ‘‘The River of Loneliness’’ or
‘‘The Human Jungle’’ as the title of the next
volume (1963). Finally he decided on the latter,
because it represented the universal aspects of
his experience although the former appealed to
him with its strong tendency.
In the Preface toThe White Wing(1967),
the final volume of this period, Pak Tu-jin
speaks about the ‘‘true essence of poetry, the
self-enlightenment toward the true ‘tao’ of
poetry.’’ One gets the impression that Pak has
passed his crisis and attained heightened spiri-
tual calm. A crisis in the life of a poet may give
him a valuable experience but it can cause severe
dysfunction to his art. In 1973 Pak Tu-jin is able
to say that for him ‘‘the overall situation is now
not so urgent. Writing poetry need not be bound
to a realistic purpose.’’
The following poem shows his new phase.
The Alpine Plant
It lives on the sheer riven cliff,
This dagger in my breast, an orchid upward
growing.
It trembles in the wind enveloped by the dense
fog and rain.
In the cold mirror-like moonlight,The fierce bird nurses his wounded wing.
The flag once covered the slope like a dazzling
tide.
The tumult has fallen to silence now as a dumb
flower.
It lives high on this side of the abyss of the
silence.
Once again the dawn tempest will burst,
Revolution overrunning the earth east south
west north.
And the dagger will cut the chain, the net, and
the night,
And there will be the final whirl of flowers of
the newly created light.
You, orchid, live on a cliff where the fog
trembles.
The alpine plant here referred to is the
almost mythical oriental orchid which is said
to grow in deep mountains and on high cliffs
away from people. It is the symbol of the
noble-spirited person.
The orchid growing on the inaccessible cliff is
likened to the dagger hidden in the poet’s breast. A
man’s noble spirit is often compared to the sharp
edge of a knife. Quite naturally the dagger and the
orchid are brought together in this poem, though
they are almost in direct opposition to each other
in nature. The ‘‘dagger’’ is an inadequate trans-
lation of the original word which does not simply
mean a sharp-pointed weapon but a dagger hidden
on a person’s body, usually in the breast, to be used
secretly, suddenly, decisively on the enemy. It is
weapon charged with secret intention.
The poet reminisces about the past when the
righteous zeal soared like a fierce bird and cov-
ered the country like a tide. But they are all muted
now. The poet underwent the bitter experience of
defeat, but he has attained the state of the
‘‘orchid-dagger,’’ abiding his time, with the firm
belief in the future when the ‘‘orchid-dagger’’ will
be put to use to bring in a new world.
In the 1970’s Pak Tu-jin started several ser-
ies of sequential poems. The first of them isThe
Acts of the Apostles(1973), a series of religious
poems expressing his deep Christian faith. The
following is Number 8 in the series.
Love, how thy eyes disturb my mind!
Love, how thy words enkindle my soul!
Left alone is the wilderness, exhausted,
Drowsing in the wilderness, on this side of
death,
The sun and the moon blanching my body,
My soul astray between distant stars,River of August