White Village

This book contains the poems in classical Chinese composed by Yi Byŏng-ho (1870‒1943), born toward the end of the Chosŏn Dynasty, the last monarchy in Korea, to live through the period of privation of her national sovereignty. Yi Byŏng-ho composed poems that reveal the undying spirit of poesy reasserting the beauty of life, despite the spiritual torpor that inevitably devastated the life of the whole nation during the darkest age in all Korean history. One of the last Korean poets who composed in classical Chinese before modern Korean poetry started resorting to the vernacular and the national orthography, han-gŭl, Yi Byŏng-ho was a poet who excelled in poetic composition in classical Chinese, not only in strict conformity to the classical Chinese poetic tradition, but with a strong touch of uniquely Korean sentiments. Sung-Il Lee, a scholar of English literature, has rendered his grandfather's poems in classical Chinese into English. Though his field of study is far from the literary domain the original works belong to, he has overcome the linguistic chasm lying between classical Chinese and English, while attaining spiritual reunion with his grandfather.