Kim Jeong-hui: The Complete Poems, Volume 9, Part 4 — The Beijing Farewell, a Borrowed Book, and One Poem from Exile

Poems 56–73 from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 9

This is Part 4 of the complete English translation of Kim Jeong-hui’s poems from the Wandang Jeonjip; it covers Volume 9, entries 56 through 73.

The first is poem 57, in which Kim formally names his study 寶覃 (Treasuring Tanxi) — a deliberate echo of Weng Fanggang’s own 寶蘇齋 (Studio Treasuring Su Dongpo). The naming declares an inheritance: Su Dongpo → Weng Fanggang → Kim Jeong-hui. Korea becomes the place where the transmission arrives after crossing the sea, and the act of naming makes this arrival official.

The second is poem 62 — one of the most socially rich poems in the entire volume. Written at the moment of departing Beijing, it names each member of the circle Kim assembled there: Ruan Yuan, the painter Gai Qi, the Weng family brothers, Liu Sanshan, and Jieting, Weng Fanggang’s top disciple. No other poem in the Wandang Jeonjip documents this circle so completely or with such emotional weight. The poem does not simply mourn a departure — it performs an act of archival inscription, making permanent in verse what geography is about to scatter.

The third is poem 64 — a single poem that is unambiguously from the Jeju exile period (1840–1848), inserted into Volume 9 among pre-exile works. Its markers are explicit: island youth, sea fishermen, narcissus flowers in abundance, and a direct comparison of Kim’s situation to Su Dongpo’s exile in Huizhou. Whether the placement is a scribal anomaly or reflects an editorial decision by the compilers of the Wandang Jeonjip cannot be determined. What is clear is that the poem looks forward from the pre-exile world dominating the volume into the condition that would define the last decades of Kim’s life.

Between these three, poems 56–73 range through farewell verse, a fourteen-stanza complaint about an unreturned book, a Buddhist mountain meditation, an extended archaeological argument about Sushen stone implements, and paired excursion poems with unnamed companions. The voice throughout is consistently Kim’s: precise, allusive, capable of sharp humor and philosophical seriousness in a single breath.

送孔巢父韻。贈別雪公。 (Farewell to Seol Gong, Using the Rhyme of Du Fu’s “Farewell to Kong Chaofu”)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 18 lines.

Occasion: A farewell poem for an unidentified figure referred to as Seol Gong (雪公 / “Sir Snow”), written in the rhyme-scheme of Du Fu’s poem “Kong Chaofu Resigns Illness and Returns to Travel in Jiangdong, Also Presented to Li Bai” — one of Du Fu’s major farewell poems. The rhyme-choice positions this parting inside Du Fu’s most significant departure verse.

Original text:

君隨流水去不住。離思茫茫起烟霧。此時無別亦易愁。急鴻流霜葉飛樹。靑山一髮是江南。酒幔茶檣秋天暮。後期更展定何時。歸路蒼茫如去路。我自惆悵君返喜。還鄕况復足親故。酒醒夢斷感泥爪。空遣肝肺芒角露。蹄方輪角情幾餘。更願千里猶堦除。朝溯牛江暮渡漢。莫煩蒼雁頳鯉書。聞道山中多風雪。及時束駕今何如。

Translation: Cinemawords

You follow the flowing water — going without stopping; parting thoughts rise vast as smoke and mist. Even without a farewell at this moment, sadness comes easily; urgent geese, flowing frost, leaves flying from trees. The blue mountain — a single hair — is Jiangnam; wine curtains and tea masts, autumn sky at dusk. When will the next meeting definitely come? The homeward road is as vast and indistinct as the departing road. I myself am melancholy while you return with joy — how much more so, returning home with relatives and old friends. Wine sobered, dream ended, feeling the wild-goose tracks in mud: in vain the lungs and spleen bare their sharp and jagged points. Horse hooves, wagon wheels — how much feeling remains? I still wish a thousand li could be as easy as one step on a stairway. Morning tracing the Ox River, evening crossing the Han — do not trouble the gray goose or the red carp with letters. I hear the mountains are full of wind and snow — harnessing the horses in time — how does it go now?

Reading notes:

Using Du Fu’s farewell rhyme means Kim writes in a space already charged with the quality of parting, so any departure in this poem is also, implicitly, Du Fu’s. “The blue mountain, a single hair, is Jiangnam” — the mountain reduced to a thread at the horizon as the traveler recedes — applies Du Fu’s image of growing distance to a Korean geographical context. “Wine curtains and tea masts” (酒幔茶檣) are commercial harbor images: the fabric awnings of wine shops and the tea-cargo masts of trading vessels suggest the bustling material world the traveler enters while the person left behind remains in stillness.

“Wild-goose tracks in mud” (泥爪) comes from Su Dongpo’s poem on impermanence: geese land, leave prints in the mud, fly away. The prints remain; the geese are gone. “Wine sobered, dream ended, feeling the wild-goose tracks in mud” compresses the entire aftermath of parting into three short states. The “sharp jagged points of lungs and spleen” — the physical sensation of unexpressed feeling — follows immediately: feeling that cannot be spoken becomes a physical obstruction.

The final couplet — hearing about mountain wind and snow, asking after the horses — approaches the traveler’s safety through practical concern rather than direct feeling. Kim does not ask “are you well?” but “is the harnessing timely?” The indirection is characteristic: feeling reaches its addressee through the specific and material.

覃溪書藏之北簃。扁其齋曰寶覃。仍次覃溪寶蘇齋韻。 (Tanxi’s Books Stored in My Northern Study; I Named the Study “Treasuring Tanxi” and Rhymed the Verse of Tanxi’s “Studio Treasuring Su”)

Period: Post-1809 Beijing visit; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 28 lines.

Occasion: Weng Fanggang (覃溪 / Tanxi) left a collection of his books at Kim’s northern study (北簃). Kim named the study 寶覃齋 (Studio Treasuring Tanxi), consciously replicating Weng Fanggang’s famous naming of his own most celebrated study 寶蘇齋 (Studio Treasuring Su Dongpo). The poem rhymes Weng’s original verse for the Su Studio — a formal act of literary inheritance.

Original text:

寶覃何如稱寶蘇。嗜棗與芰同饞夫。世事因因百堪笑。杜十姨配伍髭鬚。我欲祭覃能無似。流派海外思沾濡。一世勝它七百年。明月萬里鑑區區。復有異事曠前輩。先甲後甲巧相俱。詩龕他日擬共拜。一席筍脯追歡娛。晝思耿耿夜仍夢。想入鬚眉幾作圖。凡係公蹟輒收拾。並珍周盤兼商盂。一洗胷中五斗棘。心眼恍然當通衢。龜顧鶴視神暗湊。地角天涯知也無。樝棃橘柚各酸醎。當時群論驚爲迂。回頭自顧亦足怪。頓覺行事與世殊。縱然吾身譬黃鳥。遷于喬木止邱隅。懶鳩痴燕終何識。嘔啞啁啾盡庸奴。

Translation: Cinemawords

Treasuring Tanxi — how does it compare to Treasuring Su? Craving dates and water-chestnuts — the same greedy man. The matters of the world, cause by cause — a hundred things to laugh at; Du Shiyi [Du Fu] paired with the mustached companion. I want to honor Tanxi — can I be worthy of it? The flow and lineage beyond the sea — longing to be touched by it. One generation surpassing all others by seven hundred years — the bright moon ten thousand li, reflecting what is small and humble. And there are further extraordinary coincidences, unprecedented in predecessors: “before Jia” and “after Jia” cleverly correspond. The Poetry Shrine — someday I plan to bow there with you; one feast of bamboo shoots and dried meat in pursuit of joy. Daytime thoughts burning bright, nighttime still dreaming — imagination entering eyebrows and beard — how many times painted. Everything connected to your traces I always collect; prizing together the Zhou bronze basin and the Shang bronze vessel. One washing of the five-peck-thorns within the chest — heart’s eye suddenly clear at the open crossroads. Turtle’s gaze and crane’s vision — spirit quietly gathering; at earth’s corner and heaven’s edge — do you know or not? Hawthorn, pear, mandarin, pomelo — each its own sour and sweet; at that time the assembled discussions were astonished as impractical. Turning back to look at myself — also sufficiently strange: I suddenly realize my conduct differs from the world’s. Even if my body be compared to the yellow bird — moving to the tall tree, stopping at the corner of the hill — what do lazy doves and foolish swallows know in the end? Their squawking and chirping — all of them common slaves.

Reading notes:

Among the most significant poems in Volume 9. Naming a study 寶覃 (Treasuring Tanxi) consciously replicates Weng Fanggang’s naming of 寶蘇齋 (Treasuring Su Dongpo). The chain is declared explicitly: Su Dongpo → Weng Fanggang → Kim Jeong-hui. The poem is the inscription that makes this inheritance official in writing.

“One generation surpassing all others by seven hundred years” (一世勝它七百年): Weng Fanggang, in the eighteenth century, surpasses all other post-Song interpreters of Su Dongpo — roughly seven hundred years after Su’s death in 1101. Kim’s claim to Weng’s lineage positions himself as the extension of this long transmission into Korean territory.

“Before Jia and after Jia” (先甲後甲): the Book of Changes hexagram Gu (蠱) advises action “three days before Jia, three days after Jia” — a phrase associated with renewal and correct timing. Here it refers to a cyclical-year coincidence in the significant dates of Weng Fanggang and Kim Jeong-hui, some shared heavenly-stem alignment that Kim reads as confirmation of a fated connection.

“Du Shiyi paired with the mustached companion” alludes to a Song dynasty story in which Du Fu’s spirit was paired with a mustached deity in a household shrine — an absurd coupling that became orthodox. Kim uses it to note that the world is full of such absurd conventional pairings, which makes serious devotion to a genuine lineage look eccentric by comparison.

The yellow bird (黃鳥) at the poem’s close quotes the Book of Songs: the migratory bird cannot stay permanently in foreign trees. Kim applies it to himself: he can perch in the tradition — collect the books, name the studio, honor the lineage — but as a Korean scholar he will always be somewhat foreign to it. The lazy doves and foolish swallows who squawk without understanding are those who cannot see the lineage for what it is.

公羊春秋。爲心湖物。久不還之。今乃見欺。寄此以嘲。兼博一粲。用毛氏通轉法。 (The Gongyang Commentary Belongs to Simho. He Borrowed It Long Ago and Has Not Returned It. Now I Find Myself Deceived. I Send This to Mock Him, Also Hoping to Get a Laugh. Using the Mao Clan’s Interchangeable-Reading Method.)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 16 lines.

Occasion: Kim’s copy of the Gongyang Chunqiu (公羊春秋 — the Gongyang commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, one of the three major classical commentaries) was borrowed by Simho (心湖, unidentified) and has not been returned. The poem deploys the Mao clan’s interchangeable-reading method (毛氏通轉法) — a phonological technique from the Mao commentary on the Book of Songs that permits interchangeable character readings — as a deliberately pompous comic apparatus for a complaint about a missing book.

Original text:

借書還書俱一癡。君旣借之肎還之。先生文饞辟啜墨。幹馬仇石久爭持。聖人妄意室中藏。豈知風雲在轉移。翻看有力夜壑徒。不意相如間道歸。珊瑚筆格已失去。袁家玉尺知何處。屋頭夜光減一丈。鬼狐捓揄來相侮。坐中鄭生能無怕。我欲爲君發墨守。美如冠玉何足恃。盜書猶勝盜其嫂。

Translation: Cinemawords

Lending books and returning books — both are a single foolishness; you, having already borrowed it, would you really return it? The master is text-greedy — said to drink ink; dry horse and antagonist stone — long contested. The sage’s foolish intention: to store it in a room — how would he know that winds and clouds are shifting? Looking back: the powerful night-gulch band — unexpectedly, Sima Xiangru slipped away by a side road. The coral pen-stand has already disappeared; the Yuan family’s jade ruler — where is it now? The rooftop night-glow has diminished by one zhang; ghosts and foxes, mocking, come to humiliate. The Zheng student seated in the gathering — can he be unafraid? I want to mount the Ink Defense on your behalf. Beautiful as cap jade — what is there to rely on? Stealing books is still better than stealing one’s sister-in-law.

Reading notes:

A polished comic poem in the tradition of mock-legalism. The scholarly apparatus invoked in the title — the Mao clan’s phonological technique from Confucian commentary — is deployed to authorize a complaint about a missing book. The gap between the gravity of the instrument and the triviality of the grievance is the poem’s basic comic register.

Sima Xiangru (司馬相如, 179–117 BCE) carried off the wealthy widow Zhuo Wenjun by stealth — “slipped away by a side road” applies this famous abduction to the book’s disappearance. The “coral pen-stand” and “jade ruler” are objects reportedly lost from notable households in classical anecdotes; Kim accumulates precedents for disappearing valuables. “The rooftop night-glow diminished” suggests something luminous has been surreptitiously removed from the household.

The “Ink Defense” (墨守) in the penultimate couplet invokes Mozi’s strategy of helping the state of Song hold off Chu for nine rounds in siege — applying this heroic defensive method to the recovery of a borrowed book achieves its comic effect through sheer incongruity.

The final line adapts a saying attributed to scholars: books, unlike property, should circulate freely among the learned. The comparison — stealing books versus stealing a sister-in-law (a reference to Cao Cao’s notorious conduct) — concedes that Simho’s offense, measured against the worst possible borrowing behavior, is at least not that bad. The poem ends by essentially defending its target.

次東坡風水洞韻。寄又淸道人。 (Rhyming Su Dongpo’s “Fengshui Grotto” Verse, Sent to Ucheon the Taoist)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 16 lines.

Occasion: A poem in the rhyme-scheme of Su Dongpo’s “Fengshui Grotto” poem, sent to an unidentified Taoist practitioner called Ucheon (又淸道人 / “The Taoist of Yet Another Purity”).

Original text:

不事博物疏蟲禽。把酒靑天一豪吟。淸夢漫漫落江浦。盟鳧約鷗時讛語。自信胷中有此君。窓外蕭疎還更村。祗將山水範淸遠。古夫于圖幽且婉。焚香皷琴博時名。慙愧十年邯鄲行。老屋荒寒對雪萼。書燈吐芒幽蠧落。憐爾拜竹來苦遲。况阻倚樓多經時。回看歲月如梭走。休道歡樂明復有。

Translation: Cinemawords

Not concerned with encyclopedic learning, careless with insects and birds; holding wine under the blue sky, one heroic chant. Clear dreams falling wide over river shores; pledged ducks and sworn gulls — occasional false speech. Trusting that within the chest there is “this gentleman” [bamboo]; outside the window sparse and thin, even more secluded. Taking only mountains and waters as the model of clarity and distance; the ancient Fu Yu illustrations — secluded and graceful. Burning incense, playing the zither, seeking a timely reputation — ashamed: ten years of the Handan walk. Old house, desolate cold, facing snowy calyx-flowers; study lamp emitting rays — quiet bookworms falling. I pity you — coming to bow before bamboo too slowly; moreover, the obstacle of leaning on the tower for so much time. Looking back, years and months speed like a shuttle — do not say that joy will come again tomorrow.

Reading notes:

Su Dongpo’s “Fengshui Grotto” is a poem about a rocky mountain spring valued for stillness and clear water. Using that rhyme for a poem sent to a Taoist practitioner positions Ucheon’s life in the same contemplative space. “This gentleman” (此君) is Su Dongpo’s phrase for bamboo — from his essay arguing that one should not go a single day without bamboo. “Trusting that within the chest there is this gentleman” means trusting in one’s own bamboo-like cultivation rather than seeking external confirmation.

“Pledged ducks and sworn gulls” (盟鳧約鷗) draws on a folk tale: a man pledged to ducks that he would not harm them; so long as he kept the pledge privately, the ducks ate from his hand. When he told someone else, they flew away and never returned. The oath held only in silence. Applied to the Taoist’s life, it praises a commitment that does not advertise itself.

“The Handan walk” (邯鄲行) alludes to Zhuangzi: someone traveled to Handan to learn its famous walking style, forgot how to walk normally before mastering the new style, and crawled home. Kim applies it to ten years of pursuing fashionable literary reputation — an enterprise that risks losing what was natural in the attempt to acquire what is admired.

雨中留吳君戲贈 (Playfully Given to Mr. O, Detained by Rain)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 24 lines.

Occasion: A visitor named Mr. O (吳君) is prevented from leaving Kim’s house by rain. Kim produces a playful poem that performs a mock medical self-examination, diagnosing himself with the specific constitutional deficiency that makes him helplessly detain guests.

Original text:

大熱留人人欲去。會事天公爲下雨。琮沈橋邊泥滑滑。君行不得心獨苦。心獨苦盡甘隨來。請君每事只聽主。主人糊塗百無解。但解縶駒與鎩羽。非有關緊癖如此。此癖結癥成積聚。無以呴噓通心覈。安能鍼藥到肝戶。又有一病尤難醫。五行之中獨欠土。遇事忽忽歃如忘。不在分券與執簿。君之値我亦數存。郞當不得仰與俯。星奴巧黠善覘意。君雖百口難爲所。部將之家遂延害。聞此應悔君同譜。君且安坐但搖扇。烏頭白時吾當許。

Translation: Cinemawords

In the great heat, the person detained wants to leave — just right: heaven manages to send down rain. At Jongsim Bridge the mud slides and slips; you cannot go — your heart alone suffers. The heart’s sole suffering — willingly following to come in the end: please, sir, in every matter just listen to the host. The host is confused and can resolve nothing — he only knows how to tether horses and clip wings. It is not that I have some essential addiction to this; this addiction forms a tumor, becomes a massed accumulation. No way to warm-breathe through to the heart’s core — how could needles and medicine reach the liver’s door? There is another ailment even harder to cure: among the five elements, the one deficiency — earth. Encountering matters, hazily as if forgetting — not to be found in the dividing of vouchers or the holding of ledgers. Your being assigned to me also has its due; the fellow cannot look up or bow down. The star-servant is clever and cunning, good at reading intent — even with a hundred mouths, you cannot manage the situation. The lieutenant general’s house then extends the harm — hearing this, you should regret being in my category. Just sit easy, just wave the fan: when the raven’s head turns white, I will release you.

Reading notes:

The comic mechanics are precise. Kim sets up the situation, then turns inward to perform a medical self-examination that explains — and does not apologize for — why the guest is trapped. The “five-element deficiency” joke is pointed: in classical Chinese medicine, earth (土) governs reliability, creditworthiness, and follow-through on commitments. Kim diagnoses himself as lacking this element, which is why he cannot be trusted to let a visit conclude naturally.

“No way to warm-breathe through to the heart’s core; how could needles and medicine reach the liver’s door?” is mock-medical phrasing with vivid physical detail: the obstruction is so deep that conventional therapeutic access fails entirely. The condition is chronic and structural.

“When the raven’s head turns white” (烏頭白時) is the classical Chinese idiom equivalent to “when pigs fly.” Kim promises release at that point. The poem concedes that Mr. O is simply stuck, and the most honest counsel is to sit easy and fan himself. The host is unreachable, incorrigible, and transparently so — which is the premise of the joke and also, somehow, not uncharming.

七月六日。次杜七月六日苦炎熱韻。此詩本係古詩。僞本虞注杜律誤編。 (Seventh Month, Sixth Day: Rhyming Du Fu’s “Seventh Month, Sixth Day, Bitter Heat” Verse. This Poem Is Originally Ancient-Style Verse — the Forged Edition with Xu Yu’s Commentary Mistakenly Compiled It Among Regulated Verse.)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 8 lines. The title announces a textual-critical correction: Du Fu’s original was ancient-style verse mislabeled as regulated verse in the corrupt Xu Yu edition.

Occasion: A summer-heat poem written on the sixth day of the seventh lunar month, rhyming Du Fu’s poem of the same date. The title performs a quiet act of scholarship: Kim specifies the correct genre of Du Fu’s original against the misclassification in a circulating forged edition.

Original text:

雨天披雲曾無奈。熱處招風亦不能。雖未開幬進禮蚊。寧敎拔劒怒微蠅。灑竹纖凉稍可喜。射窓斜陽苦相仍。知是君來當辟暑。神若秋水眸如氷。

Translation: Cinemawords

On a rainy day, pushing through clouds — entirely helpless; in the heat, summoning wind — also impossible. Though we have not opened the net to ceremonially welcome mosquitoes — better to have drawn the sword in rage at tiny flies. Sprinkling water on the bamboo — a fine coolness, somewhat pleasing; the window-shot oblique sun persists in its suffering. Knowing you have come to provide relief from the heat: spirit like autumn water, eyes like ice.

Reading notes:

The textual note in the title is unusual: Kim signals he has read Du Fu’s poem in the correct ancient-style format rather than the misclassified regulated-verse version, and is rhyming accordingly. Correctly identifying a text’s genre is itself an act of loyalty to the author — the scholarship is not separate from the poem but embedded in its occasion.

“Ceremonially welcoming mosquitoes” (開幬進禮蚊) alludes to a figure so devoted to formal ceremony that he insists on proper protocol for even trivial events. Kim uses it as self-mocking comparison: at least he has not received mosquitoes with ceremony. The sword drawn in rage at flies (拔劒怒微蠅) names the other extreme — overreaction to small provocations — applied here with equal self-mockery.

The arrival of the visitor in the final couplet — “spirit like autumn water, eyes like ice” — turns everything. After the paralysis of heat and the comic failures of relief, the friend’s arrival is itself the coolness. “Eyes like ice” is from Han Yu’s praise of the quality qing (淸, clarity/coolness); Kim uses it as the highest compliment available in this season.

我入京。與諸公相交。未曾以詩訂契。臨歸不禁悵觸。漫筆口號。 (I Entered Beijing. I Formed Connections with the Assembled Gentlemen but Never Formally Contracted Those Relationships in Poetry. At the Moment of Departure, I Cannot Restrain the Sad Emotion. Freely Composed in Spoken Mode.)

Period: Written at the departure from the 1809 Beijing visit; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), approximately 44 lines, with prose annotations identifying specific individuals.

Occasion: Kim is about to leave Beijing, having formed bonds with the assembled scholars but never having formally inscribed those bonds in poetry. The poem names each major figure in order. Liu Sanshan (三山 / 劉三山, on first appearance: the Beijing scholar who later copied Kim’s “Jinghai Tower” poem and circulated it in his Kanzhixuan collection; his harmonizing poem survives), Jieting (介亭, on first appearance: identified in the source as Weng Fanggang’s “top disciple,” 覃門高足), Gai Qi (埜雲 / Wild Cloud, 1773–1828, on first appearance: major Qing figure painter celebrated for his copies of historical portraits, who gave multiple works to Kim), and Cao Yushui (曹玉水, on first appearance: son of a distinguished family in the Weng circle) appear here for the first time in the series. The annotations within the poem are Kim’s own supplementary identifications.

Original text:

我生九夷眞可鄙。多媿結交中原士。樓前紅日夢裏明。蘇齋門下瓣香呈。後五百年唯是日。閱千萬人見先生。[用聯語] 芸臺宛是畵中覩。[余曾藏芸臺小照] 經籍之海金石府。土華不蝕貞觀銅。腰間小碑千年古。[芸臺佩銅鑄貞觀碑] 化度始自螴蜳齋。[心葊號] 攀覃緣阮並作梯。君是碧海掣鯨手。我有靈心通點犀。埜雲墨妙天下聞。句竹圖曾海外見。[野雲善摹古人眞像。多贈我] 况復古人如明月。却從先生指端現。翁家兄弟聯雙璧。一生難遣愛錢癖。[蓄古錢屢巨萬] 靈芝有本醴有源。爾雅迭宕高一格。最憐劉伶作酒頌。[三山] 徐邈聊復時一中。[夢竹] 名家子弟曹玉水。秋水爲神玉爲髓。覃門高足劇淸眞。落筆長歌句有神。[介亭] 却憶當初相逢日。但知有逢不有別。我今旋踵卽萬里。地角天涯在一室。生憎化兒弄狡獪。人每喜圓輒示缺。烟雲過眼雪留爪。中有一段不磨滅。龍腦須引孔雀尾。琵琶相應蕤賓鐵。黯然銷魂別而已。鴨綠江水盃中渴。

Translation: Cinemawords

Born in the Eastern Barbarian lands — truly contemptible; greatly ashamed to have formed connections with Central Plains scholars. In front of the tower the red sun burns bright in a dream; at the gate of the Su Studio, offering incense petals. Five hundred years hence, only this day — through ten thousand people, meeting the Master. [Using couplet-inscription language] Yuntai [Ruan Yuan] seems as if seen in a painting. [I once kept a small portrait of Yuntai] The sea of classics, the treasury of metal-and-stone — earth-flowers do not corrode Zhenguan-era bronze. At the waist, a small stele a thousand years old. [Yuntai wore a bronze casting from a Zhenguan stele rubbing] Transformation begins from the Tandun Studio. [This is the studio name of Xingan] Climbing Tanxi, taking Ruan as the ladder — together they make a staircase. You are the hand that wrenches the whale from the blue sea; I have a spirit-heart that penetrates the marked rhinoceros horn. Yeyun’s [Gai Qi’s] ink-marvel is known throughout the world; the bamboo painting was once seen beyond the sea. [Yeyun excelled at copying true portraits of ancient figures and gave many to me] And moreover, the ancient figures are like the bright moon — appearing instead from the Master’s very fingertips. The Weng family brothers linked as a pair of jades — one lifetime’s impossible-to-dismiss addiction to loving old coins. [He amassed ancient coins, repeatedly in the tens of thousands] Sacred mushrooms have their root; sweet wine has its source — Erya in overlapping cadences, a notch above. Most pitying: the one who, like Liu Ling, composed the “Hymn to Wine.” [Sanshan] And Xu Miao — at leisure he achieves the mark each time. [Mengzhu / Dream Bamboo] From a famous family’s son — Cao Yushui: autumn water as spirit, jade as marrow. Tanxi’s top disciple — extremely pure and genuine; setting brush to paper, chanting long songs, verses with spirit. [Jieting] Recalling the day when we first met — then only knowing there is meeting, not that there is parting. I now, turning on my heel, will be ten thousand li away; earth’s corner and heaven’s edge — all in one room. How I hate the trickster child playing crafty games: people always love the full, so it always shows the lacking. Smoke and cloud pass the eye; snow retains the claw marks — within, there is a section that cannot be erased. Dragon’s brain [camphor] must draw the peacock’s tail; the pipa responds to the Ruibin iron note. In darkness, the soul dissolves — only parting. The Yalu River’s water — thirst in the cup.

Reading notes:

The longest poem in this installment and among the most significant in the volume. Its function is archival: to record in a single poem the names and qualities of every person who constituted Kim’s Beijing world. The structure moves from the most exalted (Weng Fanggang and Ruan Yuan) through painters, scholars, and disciples to the young (Cao Yushui, “son of a famous family”), before the final movement of grief.

“Five hundred years hence, only this day — through ten thousand people, meeting the Master” is identified in the source as “using couplet-inscription language” (用聯語). Kim is adapting a formal paired inscription, elevating the Beijing visit from personal event to historical moment: the meeting will be recoverable five centuries later as the day that mattered.

Ruan Yuan’s self-portrait (芸臺小照) in Kim’s possession, and the bronze casting of the Zhenguan-era stele that Ruan wore at his waist, are objects that anchor the poem’s network to physical reality. The painting and the bronze bring the absent persons into the room even as Kim departs.

“Smoke and cloud pass the eye; snow retains the claw marks” (烟雲過眼雪留爪) inverts Su Dongpo’s famous observation about impermanence. Most experience passes without trace — but “the section that cannot be erased” remains. That remainder is the poem itself.

The Yalu River thirst in the final line is the poem’s most compressed image: the river between Korea and China reduced to the width of a cup, and that cup empty of the water the person is thirsty for. Geography and longing become a single object.

走題李心葊梅花小幅詩後 (Quick Inscription After Li Xingan’s Plum Blossom Small-Format Painting-Poem)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 8 lines. Line 7 is an extended 9-character line.

Occasion: Li Xingan (李心葊, the Beijing scholar in Weng Fanggang’s circle whose studio was the Tandun Study / 螴蜳齋, identified in poem 62 above) produced a small-format plum blossom painting-poem. Kim writes a quick inscription after it. The source note indicates that Li Xingan himself and Xu Mengzhu (徐夢竹) both wrote harmonizing poems in response.

Original text:

看花要須作畵看。畵可能久花易殘。况復梅花質輕薄。和風並雪飄闌珊。此畵可壽五百歲。看到此梅應復仙。君不見詩中香是畵中香。休道畵花畵香難。

[此詩。李心葊。徐夢竹。俱有和詩。]

Translation: Cinemawords

Looking at flowers requires looking as if looking at a painting; a painting can endure, but flowers easily perish. And moreover, plum blossoms are light and thin in substance — in gentle wind and snow they scatter wearily. This painting can live five hundred years; looking at this plum, one should become an immortal again. Do you not see: the fragrance in poetry is the fragrance in painting — do not say it is hard to paint a flower and paint its fragrance.

Reading notes:

A compact argument about painting, poetry, and their shared objects. Plum blossoms are named explicitly as fragile and impermanent — precisely the quality that makes their preservation in painting urgent. The painting survives five hundred years by substituting permanence for the original’s transience; the poem does the same.

The most interesting move is line 7: “the fragrance in poetry is the fragrance in painting.” This dissolves the usual hierarchy — that poetry captures what painting cannot (scent), or vice versa (color and line). Kim argues that both media access the same quality through different means. “Do not say it is hard to paint fragrance” is not about technical difficulty but about the aesthetic fact that fragrance, when communicated through any medium skillfully, is equally real regardless of the medium’s material nature.

That Li Xingan and Xu Mengzhu both wrote harmonizing poems in response confirms the argument was engaging enough to constitute active critical exchange — a small Beijing conversation about plum representation conducted across distance, between China and Korea, with Kim’s inscription as the initiating gesture.

偶作 (Improvised Verse)

Period: Jeju exile period (1840–1848). The poem’s markers — island youth (島童), sea fishermen (海丁), narcissus flowers in abundance, and an explicit parallel between Kim’s exile and Su Dongpo’s banishment to Huizhou — place it unambiguously in the exile years. Its presence in Volume 9 rather than Volume 10 appears to be a sequencing anomaly in the source text.

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 16 lines.

Occasion: An undated improvised verse from the Jeju exile. The poem renders the island landscape, the daily social world of confinement, and the exile’s accommodation to his circumstances, organized through the frame of Su Dongpo’s Huizhou exile — the most celebrated precedent for the scholar-official banished to a subtropical, geographically extreme posting.

Original text:

朱鳥天邊大海湄。神山蜿蜒走西支。野中小治僅如斗。靑石郭連短竹籬。汞鉛寶氣靑霞碣。松竹勁節東門祠。人家盡依壽星下。水仙千朶復萬枝。元祐罪人惠州飯。笠屐風雨忘居夷。島童海丁近相熟。有時叩玄兼問奇。獨豹勝似花豬肉。麥麯新醅酒一鴟。五雲多處夢如縷。破悶春山橫翠眉。

Translation: Cinemawords

At the edge of the red bird’s sky, the great sea’s shore; the sacred mountain winds along, running to its western branch. The small administration in the field barely as large as a dipper; blue stone walls connected with short bamboo fences. Mercury and lead, precious energy, blue-haze steles; pine and bamboo, hard-jointed, the East Gate Shrine. All households settled beneath the Longevity Star; narcissus — a thousand blossoms and ten thousand branches. The Yuanyou exile’s food in Huizhou — in hat and clogs through wind and rain, forgetting the settlement among barbarians. Island youth and sea fishermen have grown familiar to me; sometimes I knock on the mysterious and ask about the strange. Lone leopard meat surpasses the decorated pig’s flesh; barley yeast, fresh-brewed ale — one jug. Where five-colored clouds are many, dreams are like threads; breaking boredom, spring mountains lie like green eyebrows.

Reading notes:

Every major element of this poem points to Jeju. The “red bird’s sky” marks the south (the Red Bird is the celestial guardian of the south in classical cosmology); the “sacred mountain winding to its western branch” is Hallasan, Jeju’s volcanic center, whose ridgeline extends westward; the “blue stone walls” are Jeju’s distinctive volcanic basalt dry-stone walls, whose appearance nowhere else in Korea is diagnostic; the abundant narcissus are the flowers most closely identified with Kim’s exile writings.

“The Yuanyou exile’s food in Huizhou” (元祐罪人惠州飯): Su Dongpo was exiled to Huizhou in 1094 under the Yuanyou faction purge, the subtropical posting treated as a humiliation by the court. Kim positions his Jeju exile explicitly in that tradition — the same political logic, the same subtropical geography, the same insistence that displacement produces observation rather than defeat. Su Dongpo famously wrote about the unexpected pleasures of Huizhou food; Kim finds his equivalent in Jeju’s barley ale.

“Island youth and sea fishermen have grown familiar to me” (島童海丁近相熟) is the single line that most decisively marks the exile period. The social world of the island — described in fuller detail in the Volume 10 poems — is compressed here. The familiarity is not condescension; “sometimes knocking on the mysterious and asking about the strange” suggests genuine intellectual exchange with the island’s people.

The poem’s final movement is relaxed and sensory: simple food, simple drink, five-colored clouds, spring mountains like eyebrows. It is the poem of someone who has accepted his circumstances and found them adequate.

銀魚爲鼠偸。示艸衣。 (Silver Fish Stolen by a Mouse — Shown to Cho-ui)

Period: Exact date unestablished. The “distant guest” framing and Cho-ui’s presence as witness are consistent with exile context, but no explicit Jeju markers appear. Per Volume 9 convention, assigned to the pre-exile period with that uncertainty noted.

Form: Heptasyllabic ancient-style verse (七言古詩), 16 lines.

Occasion: Kim has received fifty dried silver fish as a gift from a fisherman who sent them to him as a “distant guest.” A mouse steals the entire gift overnight. Kim shows the story to Cho-ui (草衣 / 초의, the Buddhist monk, tea master, and close lifelong friend, 1786–1866), who was present and, as a vegetarian, watched the drama with equanimity.

Original text:

五十銀條針生花。來自江亭漁子家。漁子得魚不自食。包裹珍重寄遠客。槎牙枯肺因麻苓。口角屢拭饞津零。冷落厨人喜動色。將見食單登珍錯。夜來穴隙壯哉鼠。偸盡了無遺寸許。不知鼠嗜與人似。拖腸能解魚之美。鼠食人食將無同。平等觀來理則公。草衣老師適在傍。彼自茹素看尋常。

Translation: Cinemawords

Fifty silver-stripe fish — needles blooming into flowers; come from the riverside pavilion fisherman’s home. The fisherman, having caught the fish, did not eat them himself — packaged them carefully, sent them to a distant guest. Parched and rough — dry lungs because of hemp and poria; at the corner of the mouth, repeatedly wiping at drooling saliva. The neglected kitchen staff showing joyful color — soon to see the food register enter rare delicacies. In the night, from a gap in the wall — mighty indeed, the mouse! Stole everything — not a single inch remaining. Not knowing: the mouse’s tastes resemble human tastes; dragging its guts, it can appreciate the fish’s beauty. Mouse food and human food — will they not be the same? From the perspective of equal observation, the principle is fair. Venerable Teacher Cho-ui happened to be nearby; he himself eats vegetarian and views it as quite ordinary.

Reading notes:

A comic narrative structured around the Buddhist principle of equal observation (平等觀 / pyeondeunggwan). The setup is precise: the fisherman’s generous gift, Kim’s parched anticipation, the kitchen staff’s excitement — and then the mouse’s complete nocturnal annihilation. The philosophical pivot is exact: if a mouse can appreciate silver fish with the same physiological depth that a human does, the Buddhist principle of impartial treatment for all sentient beings applies even here.

“Dragging its guts, it can appreciate the fish’s beauty” is the poem’s most unsettling image. The mouse, pulling itself through a narrow wall gap while carrying its stolen fish, has the same relationship to appetite that Kim does — the body’s desire drives both equally. This observation neither sentimentalizes the mouse nor mourns the fish: it notes a parallel that the Buddhist framework makes morally relevant.

Cho-ui as silent witness is the poem’s final comic element. The monk, who eats vegetarian and has no stake in the outcome, watches Kim’s grief and the kitchen staff’s disappointment with perfect equanimity — exactly the state the “equal observation” principle prescribes. He is the living embodiment of the attitude Kim is trying to adopt toward the stolen fish, and his presence makes the Buddhist argument simultaneously more convincing and more embarrassing.

石砮詩 (石斧石鏃。每出於靑海之土城。土人以土城爲肅愼古蹟。作此。) (Stone Arrowhead Poem — Stone Axes and Stone Arrowheads Are Frequently Found at the Earthen Fortress at Cheonghai. The Local People Take This Earthen Fortress to Be an Ancient Sushen Site. Written for This Reason.)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Ancient-style verse (古詩) with predominantly 7-character lines and several extended 9–10-character lines in the argumentative passages, approximately 36 lines.

Occasion: An archaeological-epigraphic poem about stone implements found at an earthen fortress near Cheonghai (靑海, a lake region in northern Korea). Kim investigates whether these axes and arrowheads can be identified as artifacts of the ancient Sushen (肅愼 / Susin) — the ethnonym in classical Chinese texts for the northernmost people who, according to the Zuo Zhuan and the Analects, once sent stone arrowhead tribute to the Zhou court via a falcon carrying the missiles.

Original text:

荊梁舊貢皆貢砮。禹時以石爲兵無。肅愼石砮盖仍禹。禹砮遂無傳中土。距末左戈處處得。未覩愕作羊告石。孔子之世亦無之。有隼帶砮人不知。此事荒渺最難證。帶砮何以飛遠爲。盖馬山南一千里。樂浪眞番互非是。山川圖記摠無徵。又沿稱之肅愼氏。大抵石斧並石鏃。尋常得於靑海曲。斧乃似是異黼形。鏃若分明出魚服。石性銛利當金剛。石紋作作暈古綠。有三百枚或充貢。充貢而已非作用。渤海大氏尹侍中。未聞此斧此鏃收戰功。可笑當時烏雅束。雉羽葫蘆兒戲同。此斧此鏃斷爲肅愼物。更想東夷能大弓。土城舊蹟殊未定。得此孤訂猶强通。石不自言又不欵。耶賴山色空濛濛。長爪疾書亦不錯。長平箭頭古血紅。勝似朝天麒麟石。江光如練訛朱蒙。

Translation: Cinemawords

The old tribute of the Jing and Liang regions — all tribute was stone arrowheads; in Yu the Great’s time there were no stone weapons as such. The Sushen stone arrowheads probably continue from Yu’s era; Yu’s stone arrowheads then left no record in the Central Plains. Stone blade implements found at various sites everywhere; without seeing them, one cannot identify them from mere report. Even in Confucius’s time they were absent from the Central Plains; a falcon carrying stone arrowheads — and people did not know what they were. This matter is remote and vague — the hardest to verify: why would a falcon, bearing arrowheads, fly so far? One thousand li south of Gaema Mountain — Lelang and Zhenfan are mutually not the answer. Geographical records have no verification; and yet the site continues to be called by the Sushen name. In general: stone axes alongside stone arrowheads are commonly found at the bend of the Blue Lake. The axe resembles the shape of the unusual black-and-white embroidery pattern; the arrowhead, distinctly, comes from a fish-quiver sheath. The stone’s nature: sharp and hard as diamond; stone grain making its mark — halos of ancient green. Three hundred pieces that perhaps served as tribute — tribute only; not made for actual use in battle. The Balhae Great Clan’s Senior Official [Yun] — these axes and arrowheads were never heard to have won battle-merit. Laughable: the [Jurchen] chieftain of that era — pheasant feathers and bottle gourds — identical to children’s play. These axes and arrowheads I definitively identify as Sushen artifacts; and further I think: the Eastern Yi peoples could make great bows. The old traces of the earthen fortress are not yet definitively established — having these items alone as verification — still somewhat defensible. The stone does not speak for itself, nor does it boast; the mountain color in the misty void alone bears witness. Long-nailed fast writing — also not wrong; Changping’s arrowheads — ancient blood red. Surpassing the unicorn stone presented at court; river light like silk — misidentified as Jumong.

Reading notes:

Kim’s most explicitly archaeological poem in Volume 9, applying epigraphic methods to a problem in prehistoric East Asian ethnology. The Sushen (肅愼) appear in the Zuo Zhuan (Duke Zhao, 17th year) and in the Analects (17.9) — in the Analects passage, Confucius sees a falcon brought as tribute carrying a stone arrowhead and identifies it as Sushen work, because Zhou King Wu had distributed such arrowheads to vassal states. The episode defines the Sushen as the northernmost people known to the Zhou world.

Kim’s argument runs carefully: the Cheonghai site’s implements are consistent with classical descriptions — the stone’s hardness (diamond-like), the forms (fish-quiver arrowheads, unusually shaped axes), and the position (south of Gaema Mountain, which marks the northern Korean ranges). He marshals the Zuo Zhuan account, the Analects passage, and geographical texts, noting where each source fails to resolve the identification fully.

The acknowledgment of limits is characteristic: “the old traces of the earthen fortress are not yet definitively established — having these items alone to consult — still somewhat defensible.” Kim refuses to overstate the case. “The mountain color in the misty void alone bears witness” — the landscape holds evidence the texts cannot confirm.

The closing images place the Cheonghai stones in a long East Asian continuum: the Changping battlefield (where Qin forces massacred hundreds of thousands in 260 BCE, the site still red with old blood in Kim’s era), and the river misidentified as Jumong’s legendary archery ground. Kim is reaching back before myth into material evidence, and finding it barely adequate but still worth defending.

春日約赴北隣 (Spring Day: An Arrangement to Visit the Northern Neighbor)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A short spring poem about an arrangement to visit the “northern neighbor” (北隣) — the prolific poet who appears in poems 47–48 of this volume — on a day when rain, wind, and blooming flowers have all arrived in proper season.

Original text:

百花開次第。春事未暫閒。好雨知時至。番風逐日還。酒車楊子宅。蠟屐謝公山。不有尋芳去。何緣啓竹關。

Translation: Cinemawords

The hundred flowers bloom in succession; spring’s business never pauses for a moment. Good rain knows the right time to arrive; seasonal wind returns day by day. Wine cart at Yang Xiong’s house; wax-coated clogs on Xie An’s mountain. If one were not going out in search of fragrance — what reason to open the bamboo gate?

Reading notes:

“Good rain knows the right time to arrive” (好雨知時至) quotes directly from Du Fu’s spring poem Nocturnal Spring Rain (春夜喜雨). Using Du Fu’s line converts the literary tradition into occasion: the good rain that knows its timing is also the friend one visits, whose presence arrives at exactly the right moment.

Yang Xiong (楊子, 53 BCE–18 CE), the Han dynasty philosopher who resigned from court, received visitors at his modest home with excellent wine — the image of a scholar’s quiet domestic life combining withdrawal from official ambition with warm hospitality. Xie An (謝公, 320–385), the Eastern Jin statesman, was known for mountain excursions in wax-coated wooden clogs. The planned visit belongs to the tradition of the cultivated official’s walk, not formal courtesy.

The closing question — “what reason to open the bamboo gate?” — makes the motivation explicit: the gate opens because there is fragrance to seek. Not for social obligation; not for courtesy; but for the same reason plum blossoms open and rain falls. This is the logic of the ink bond as Kim consistently understands it: connection made necessary by quality, not circumstance.

靑石嶺。與李直內題石壁。 (Cheongseoknyeong Pass: Inscribed on a Stone Wall with Yi Jiknae)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: Kim and Yi Jiknae (李直內 — likely a courtesy name or official designation) jointly inscribe a poem on a stone wall while crossing Cheongseoknyeong Pass (靑石嶺 / Blue Stone Pass), a mountain pass on the road between provinces.

Original text:

屐底白雲起。嶺平身更高。蹄愁緘欲脫。輪感析爲勞。路訝東西阻。人翻上下遭。及時沾渴肺。寺茗勝村醪。

Translation: Cinemawords

Beneath the clogs, white clouds arise; the pass levels out, the body stands yet higher. Hooves anxious, the binding wanting to slip; wheels feeling, splitting into toil. The road surprises: east and west are blocked; people tumble — encountering what lies above and below. Timely: moistening the parched lungs — temple tea surpasses village wine.

Reading notes:

A travel poem about crossing a high mountain pass, structured entirely through the body’s registered discomforts: clouds appearing below the feet (the summit above the cloud line), the paradox of the path leveling while the body stands higher, horse hooves straining, cart wheels groaning, the road turning without warning. The poem gives the experience of mountain travel through accumulating physical sensation rather than visual landscape description.

The resolution in the final couplet — “timely, moistening the parched lungs; temple tea surpasses village wine” — arrives as a complete surprise. After six lines of accumulated difficulty, the discovery of a mountain temple offering tea makes everything retroactively worthwhile. The “timely” (及時) echoes the seasonal logic of poems 67 and 70 in this installment: what arrives at the right moment is always better than what is sought at the wrong one. Temple tea’s superiority over village wine is not about quality in the abstract but about necessity met at exactly the right point on the road.

咏鴈 (Song of the Wild Geese)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines, with a three-character gap (缺三字) in the source text at line 7.

Occasion: A lyric on wild geese — their seasonal migration, their cry in cold clouds, and the poet’s desire to join them. The three missing characters in line 7 are preserved faithfully from the source.

Original text:

上世證遺紀。名山創異聞。鄕時隨暖候。唳處洩寒雲。誰見無人態。吾將入爾群。今宵 缺三字。留看雲裏紋。

Translation: Cinemawords

Upper generations verified the remaining records; famous mountains created unusual tales. In the home season, following the warm weather; the place of calling, releasing cold clouds. Who sees the manner of the self-sufficient? I will enter your flock. Tonight [three characters missing in source] — staying to look at the patterns in the clouds.

Reading notes:

A poem about the desire to dissolve into the geese — to follow seasonal migrations, to call in cold clouds without audience, to exist in the “manner when no one is watching” (無人態, literally the comportment of those with no human observers) that wild geese embody. The regulated verse form’s strict symmetry holds this wish inside a fixed structure, which itself is a form of irony: the desire for freedom is expressed in verse’s most constrained mode.

The three missing characters (缺三字) at line 7 fall between “Tonight” (今宵) and “staying to look at the patterns in the clouds” — the gap sits precisely where the poem’s decisive night action was announced. Whatever was lost would have completed the scene: a specific moment when something either happens or is released. The gap now carries its own resonance. A poem about joining the geese — about disappearing into migration — has a hole in the place where the key action was supposed to be. The missing words enact the departure they described.

“The patterns in the clouds” (雲裏紋) are both the wave-patterns left by geese passing through cloud and the visual texture of the night sky. Looking at these patterns is the substitute for following them: the scholar who cannot migrate watches the evidence of migration instead.

春日 (Spring Day)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A spring day poem without specific occasion — one of this installment’s purely lyrical pieces.

Original text:

翰墨情緣重。彌深竹柏眞。梅花銅坑雪。杯酒玉山春。明月千金夜。靑眸萬里人。篆烟曾結就。槎屐不迷津。

Translation: Cinemawords

The bond of brush and ink runs deep; growing deeper: the genuineness of bamboo and cypress. Plum blossoms — the copper-pit snow; wine cups — the jade mountain spring. The bright moon — a night worth a thousand gold pieces; blue eyes — the person ten thousand li away. Seal-script smoke — once formed and completed; raft-shoes do not miss the ford.

Reading notes:

A poem assembled from classical images treated as compressed references rather than narrative allusions. “Copper-pit snow” (銅坑雪) — snowfall at the bronze-mine mountains — becomes in the context of plum blossoms pure color: white on winter’s dark ground. “Jade mountain spring” (玉山春) alludes to the Tang gathering described by Li Bai, where the finest poets drank until they “toppled like jade mountains” — the wine cup is connected to a tradition of brilliant spring sociality.

“Blue eyes” (靑眸), from Han Yu’s praise of qing (淸, clarity/coolness), paired with “the person ten thousand li away”: the absent friend is evoked through a quality rather than a name. This is the consistent logic of the ink bond — the distant person is present in the poem through the characteristic he or she embodies, not through description.

“Seal-script smoke” (篆烟) — incense smoke curling in patterns resembling seal characters — is the atmosphere of the scholar’s study compressed into an image. “Raft-shoes do not miss the ford” (槎屐不迷津) returns to the Buddhist ferry image from poem 2 of this series, here reduced to a single comfortable phrase: the raft that carries people across does not lose its way. The poem closes on assurance.

瓊樓詠懷 (Qionglou: Expressing Thought)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A meditation written at Qionglou (石瓊樓 / Seongnyou Tower), the mountain pavilion that served as a gathering point for Kim’s Seoul literary circle. The fourth line references Kim’s own studio name — 廿四泉草堂 (Twenty-Four Springs Thatched Hall), inspired by Weng Fanggang’s use of the same name in Beijing.

Original text:

混涵元氣處。返照一樓邊。硏笈三千偈。茆堂廿四泉。白雲簷受滃。朱李水沈圓。貞白尋山誌。知應有續篇。

Translation: Cinemawords

The place where primordial energy is mixed and contained — reflected light along one tower’s edge. Study box: three thousand Buddhist verses; thatched hall: the twenty-four springs. White clouds at the eaves receiving the mist; vermilion plums — water-settling-perfect rounds. Zheng Bai’s mountain-seeking gazetteer — I know there should be a sequel installment.

Reading notes:

“Twenty-four springs” (廿四泉) in the fourth line is Kim’s own studio name — 廿四泉草堂 (Twenty-Four Springs Thatched Hall) — which was itself adopted from Weng Fanggang’s use of the same name in Beijing. The meditation at Qionglou therefore connects the Korean mountain pavilion directly to Weng Fanggang’s studio through the shared name: the same twenty-four springs, one a continuation of the other across the sea.

“Three thousand Buddhist verses” (三千偈) — the study box full of sutras — appears throughout Kim’s poetry as the image of accumulated textual devotion, counterbalanced here by the “twenty-four springs” of the natural world. The poem holds both without resolving them: scholarship and landscape, indoors and outdoors, the desk and the spring.

Tao Hongjing (陶弘景, 456–536), whose Taoist title was Master Zhengbai (貞白先生), compiled a Records of Famous Mountains that became a standard reference for Taoist sacred geography. Kim’s wish for “a sequel installment” implicitly positions himself as the person who might write it — a Korean scholar extending the Chinese mountain-gazetteer tradition into Korean geography, exactly as he extended the Weng-Su calligraphic tradition through the naming of his studio. The ambition is consistent and understated.

夏日客至 (Summer Day: A Guest Arrives)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines.

Occasion: A poem on the arrival of a guest on a summer day, combining motifs of heat-escape, wine-sharing, and literary allusion.

Original text:

始知逃暑法。靜極致心虛。淥酒傾三雅。晴巒似六如。聊酬靑玉案。閒試綠天書。製錦傳佳句。風流笠澤漁。

Translation: Cinemawords

Just learned the method of escaping the summer heat: stillness to the extreme leads the heart to emptiness. Clear wine poured for the Three Elegancies; sunlit peaks — like the Six Analogies. Casually responding to the “Green Jade Dish”; idly trying the “Green Heaven Calligraphy.” Making brocade — transmitting fine phrases: the romantic style of the Li Ze fisherman.

Reading notes:

The “Three Elegancies” (三雅) are the three graduated sizes of Han dynasty wine cups named after the three sections of the Book of Songs’ Great Odes. The “Six Analogies” (六如) are the six similes for impermanence from the Diamond Sutra — dream, illusion, bubble, shadow, dew, lightning. Applied to sunlit mountain peaks seen through the window on a hot summer day, they suggest the peaks’ beautiful insubstantiality: real, brilliant, passing.

“Green Jade Dish” (靑玉案) is both a type of ancient lacquerware and the title of a famous ci-form poem by He Zhu (賀鑄, 1052–1125). “Green Heaven Calligraphy” (綠天書) refers to calligraphy written on bamboo — the Tang calligrapher Zhang Xu’s bamboo-grove script whose leaves created a “green sky.” These allusions bring the summer afternoon’s idleness into contact with the full weight of the classical tradition: even casual summer verse is part of a very long conversation.

Lu Guimeng (陸龜蒙, d. 881), called the “Fisherman of Lize” (笠澤漁) from his retirement beside Lake Taihu, was known for his eccentric scholarly independence and practical life of farming, fishing, and writing. Kim invokes his “romantic style” (風流) as the afternoon’s presiding spirit — the scholar who found his own way outside official categories.

與泊翁，菊人。約遊東峽出郭。二首 (With Poktong and Gukin, an Arrangement to Walk through the East Gorge Outside the City Gates — Two Poems)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840).

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines each; two poems.

Occasion: An excursion with two literary friends — Poktong (泊翁 / “Anchored Elder”) and Gukin (菊人 / “Chrysanthemum Person”), pen names of unidentified companions — walking through a mountain gorge east of the city walls. The source note after line 3 of the first poem clarifies: 今宵應白月 — the note reads 今夜月圓 (“tonight is the full moon”).

Original text:

其一 晴雨曾無較。筇鞋到底閒。今宵應白月。[今夜月圓] 前路盡靑山。過矚皆堪畵。行吟合就刪。從知褦襶子。於此判醎酸。

其二 漸入空濛內。吟鞭不暫閒。烟雲皆處處。靑綠盡山山。夕景終難駐。長程輒欲刪。村醪逢着飮。那復計甘酸。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Sunny or rainy — never comparing the two; bamboo staff and shoes — ultimately at leisure. Tonight the moon should be full. The road ahead is all blue mountains. Everything seen can be painted; poems improvised while walking should be cut down. Here one learns to know the neidai type — and right here, judges the difference between salt and sour.

II

Gradually entering the misty emptiness; the chanting-whip never momentarily still. Smoke and clouds everywhere throughout; green and emerald across every mountain. Evening scenery — in the end, hard to linger in; the long journey — repeatedly wanting to be shortened. Village wine encountered and drunk: no need again to calculate the sweet and the sour.

Reading notes:

The two poems form a small sequence: the first establishes the excursion’s spirit (weather irrelevant, full moon ahead, everything paintable), while the second registers the day’s actual experience (mist, continuous poetry, difficulty of stopping, the solution of village wine). The arc is aspiration and fulfillment — a miniature version of Kim’s characteristic two-poem structure.

The neidai (褦襶) type in the first poem’s penultimate couplet is a term from the Shishuo Xinyu for a person grossly unsophisticated, ignorant of good taste. Kim says this excursion teaches one to identify such a type — “judges salt from sour,” the classical phrase for the ability to distinguish good from bad. Direct contact with mountain beauty sharpens the critical faculty: what is excellent and what is crude become easier to separate after a day in genuine landscape.

The salt and sour judgment reappears in the second poem’s closing line, now dissolved: “no need again to calculate the sweet and the sour.” By the end of the day, after village wine and mountain mist, the critical apparatus has been pleasantly suspended. The discriminating mind earns its rest through the exertion that preceded it. This relaxation is presented as legitimate — not as a failure of judgment but as judgment’s natural aftermath.

The exile poem among the pre-exile works — poem 64 — reframes everything around it. The Beijing circle documented in 57 and 62, the borrowed book complained about in 58, the summer and spring occasions of 67 through 73: all of these belong to a life that will be interrupted. Eight years on a volcanic island, growing familiar with island youth and sea fishermen, lie ahead. Volume 9’s remaining installments continue among the pre-exile poems without returning to this note — but the reader, having encountered poem 64, cannot entirely forget what is coming. The exile proper begins in Volume 10.