Title: Three Korean poets
Description: Baek Seok (or Paek Sok), Park Mogwol (or Pak Mogw(51), and Yun Dongju (or Yun Tongju), wrote poems that can flourish in another language. This scholarly edition composed of translations, annotations, and commentary is a structure designed to respect the native power of their poetry. The annotations describe what is added, omitted and transformed in negotiating the perilous passages between two languages, and function as an ongoing improvisation called forth by the need to balance the intrinsic partiality of translation. In the case of some of the poems, a commentary will elaborate matters that cannot be dealt with sufficiently in the annotations. The goal is not a definitive explanation of the poems, but on the contrary a suggestion of their inexhaustibility and an incentive toward their savoring. The three poets selected for this edition are more deviations from than exemplifications of the pattern of overt political and didactic emphasis prevalent in Korean literature, but they were received in accordance with the pattern, as critics and general readers alike found in their works political meanings whether or not they were intended. Each poet contributes in his own way to the freeing of art from the political, so that it can function autonomously. Such art can enjoy its self-sufficient aesthetic achievement, or be placed in the service of new modes of political lucidity that build upon the human depths the art has helped to establish.