Kim Jeong-hui: The Complete Poems, Volume 9, Part 5 — The Mountain Circuit, Two Exiles, and an Autumn Night

Poems 74–92 from the Wandang Jeonjip, Volume 9

This is Part 5 of the complete English translation of Kim Jeong-hui’s poems from the Wandang Jeonjip; it covers Volume 9, entries 74 through 92.

The 19 poem entries in this installment divide into three recognizable currents. The first runs through poems 74–77 and 80–83: mountain excursion poetry, the dominant form of this group — waterfall meditations, temple overnight stays, a cloud-clearing morning on Mt. Odae, a friend returning from Geumgangsan. These poems are almost exclusively pentasyllabic regulated verse in its most concentrated mode: eight lines, paired couplets, each image held to its exact weight. In this form Kim is at his most formally restrained, and the restraint produces its own intensity — the whole experience of a mountain visit compressed into the span of a regulated verse.

The second current, poems 78 and 79, is unusual. Both are written 代家尊作 (on behalf of Kim’s venerable father) for the Beijing correspondence network: farewell verse for a Beijing mission envoy and a poem addressed to Oh Nanseol, the Chinese poet who appears throughout this volume. Writing proxy poems for one’s father was common Joseon practice, but what strikes is how seamlessly Kim inhabits his father’s voice while still maintaining his characteristic concerns — the Beijing circle, the calligraphic tradition, the exchange of literary friendship across distances.

The third current, poems 82–92, returns to the Seoul literary circuit, but not without interruption. Poem 82, the farewell to Cho Hui-ryong (彝齋 / 이재) as he departs into exile, introduces a note of political gravity into what has otherwise been a sequence of elegant occasions. “In the new year, two banished persons” — the opening line carries weight: two men going into exile together, or two men whose fates rhyme. The installment then proceeds through temple gatherings, a painting inscription, and autumn hospitality; but the farewell to Cho Hui-ryong does not entirely dissolve into the pleasantness around it.

三釜淵 (Sambuyon — Three-Cauldron Pools)

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

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

Occasion: A poem written at Sambuyon (三釜淵 / 삼부연), a famous waterfall site where three cascading pools each drop into the next like water pouring between cauldrons. The final couplet addresses an unnamed hermit (淵翁 / Elder Yeon) who has established his dwelling here.

Original text:

趺坐亂山裏。閒看瀑布流。三窪連木末。雙壁起雲頭。吐納惟龍氣。尋常便雨愁。淵翁眞卓絶。能辦此居幽。

Translation: Cinemawords

Sitting cross-legged among the chaotic mountains — idly watching the waterfall flow. Three pools connected to the tree-tops; twin rock walls rising into the cloud-tops. Exhaling and inhaling — only dragon-breath; ordinarily producing rain-sorrow. Elder Yeon is truly outstanding: capable of arranging this secluded dwelling.

Reading notes:

The poem’s structure is deceptively simple: five images of the waterfall site, then two lines of praise for the hermit. The image sequence builds from the observer’s stationary position (sitting cross-legged) through the waterfall itself, the pools, the rock walls rising into clouds, and finally to the mist — here called “dragon-breath” (龍氣), the vaporous exhalation rising from water in deep stone pools, associated in classical poetry with hidden spiritual power.

“Ordinarily producing rain-sorrow” (尋常便雨愁): the constant mist from the pools means the hermit lives in a kind of perpetual drizzle, a condition that classical poetry associates with melancholy. Kim’s observation is neither complaint nor criticism — it simply notes the psychological weather of the place, in the same register as observing cloud cover.

Elder Yeon’s name contains the character for pool or abyss (淵 / 연), making the dwelling and its inhabitant share a name. The praise “capable of arranging this secluded dwelling” credits not just personal cultivation but a specific practical achievement — the hermit has found and maintained this particular place, which is its own form of mastery.

僧伽寺。與東籬會海鵬和尙。 (Seunggasa Temple: Meeting Haepung the Venerable Monk with Dongni)

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

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

Occasion: A poem written at Seunggasa Temple during a meeting with the monk Haepung Hwaesang (海鵬和尙 / “Sea Roc Venerable Monk,” unidentified) and Dongni (東籬 / “East Fence,” a literary companion who appears also in poems 29, 76, and 77 of this volume).

Original text:

陰洞尋常雨。危峯一朶靑。松風吹掃榻。星斗汲歸甁。石燈本來面。鳥參無字經。苔趺空剝落。虬篆復誰銘。

Translation: Cinemawords

In the shaded grotto, rain as always; the precipitous peak — one brushstroke of green. Pine wind blowing, sweeping the couch; stars and the Dipper drawn back into the vessel. The stone lamp — the original face; birds participating in the wordless sutra. The moss-covered lotus seat, empty, peeling off — the dragon-scroll seal script: who will inscribe it again?

Reading notes:

The poem’s opening establishes the temple’s particular quality — perpetual shade and rain, one green peak visible through the grey, pine wind sufficient to sweep the meditation couch. The world of the temple is reduced to these few coordinates, and the reduction is the point: the mountain temple pares away everything that is not essential.

“Stars and the Dipper drawn back into the vessel” (星斗汲歸甁): the nightly water-drawing ritual, in which the monk draws water under the stars, becomes a figure for something larger — the cosmos gathered into a single vessel, the macrocosm contained in the microcosm of daily practice.

“The stone lamp — the original face” (石燈本來面): in Chan Buddhist teaching, the “original face before your parents were born” (父母未生前本來面目) is the state of unborn Buddha-nature, which each person already possesses. Identifying the stone lamp with this original face asserts that the lamp’s permanence and impassivity embody what meditation practice approaches. “Birds participating in the wordless sutra” — birds join the teaching that cannot be spoken or written.

The closing couplet turns from the living to the deteriorating: the lotus seat (趺) where monks have sat for meditation is now empty and peeling; the temple’s carved inscriptions need renewal. The question is genuine: who will maintain this place? The question unanswered is the poem’s real subject.

與黃山，東籬。宿石瓊樓。 (Staying Overnight at Seongnyou Tower with Hwangsan and Dongni)

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

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

Occasion: An overnight stay at Seongnyou Tower (石瓊樓 / 석경루) with Hwangsan (黃山 / “Yellow Mountain,” a literary companion who appears also in poems 29, 77, and 90) and Dongni.

Original text:

入室常疑雨。無煩繪水聲。晴林朝合爽。陰壑夜生明。鄭重名山業。飄然不世情。松風凉到骨。詩夢百般淸。

Translation: Cinemawords

Entering the room, one always suspects rain — no need to paint water sounds. Sunlit forest in morning — unified and fresh; shaded ravine at night — brightness arising. The weighty enterprise of the famous mountain; the floating, unworldly feeling. Pine wind cools to the bone; poetry dreams — every kind clear and pure.

Reading notes:

The poem’s opening observation is precisely calibrated: the mountain stream is so constant and close that entering the room always produces the impression of rain. “No need to paint water sounds” is both a compliment to the location (reality exceeds what art could add) and a statement about the relationship between representation and experience: the pavilion already achieves what a poem about water would attempt.

“Sunlit forest in morning — unified and fresh; shaded ravine at night — brightness arising”: the poem’s middle couplets follow the mountain’s daily transformation. The sunlit forest in morning is 合爽 (unified and fresh) — the whole forest speaking with one light. The shaded ravine at night paradoxically 生明 (gives birth to brightness) — the darkness itself, or the moon rising, producing a radiance specific to shade.

“The weighty enterprise of the famous mountain” (鄭重名山業): Kim has in view the scholarly project of documenting famous mountains — the gazetteer tradition, the temple inscriptions, the accumulated literary associations that make a mountain “famous.” His overnight stay participates in that enterprise. “The floating, unworldly feeling” (飄然不世情): the same visit is simultaneously otherworldly, outside ordinary social concerns. The two qualities coexist.

同雲石，芝園。偕遊水落山寺。到石峴拈韻。 (With Unseok and Jiwon, Excursion to Suraksan Temple; Arriving at Seokcheon to Pick up the Rhyme)

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

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

Occasion: An excursion to the temple complex of Suraksan (水落山 / 수락산) with Unseok (雲石 / “Cloud-Stone”) and Jiwon (芝園 / “Mushroom Garden”), pen names of unidentified companions. The poem was composed at Seokcheon (石峴 / 석현 — Stone Pass).

Original text:

琅玕芝艸想。歲月忽侵尋。殘雪留鴻爪。閒雲引鶴心。雙南慚自比。一笛許君任。小帘橋頭出。茅柴下馬斟。

Translation: Cinemawords

Jade-bamboo, mushroom, and herb — thoughts rising; years and months suddenly passing. Remnant snow retaining wild-goose prints; idle clouds guiding the crane-heart. “Both southern men” — ashamed to claim the comparison; one flute — I leave entirely to your discretion. From the small curtain, at the bridge-head, emerging — at the thatched-wood inn, dismounting to pour wine.

Reading notes:

The poem’s opening images — jade-bamboo, mushrooms, fragrant herbs — are the classical materials of the hermit’s landscape and also the pen names’ own register: Cloud-Stone and Mushroom-Garden are already presences in this vocabulary. The thought “years and months suddenly passing” is not simply elegiac; it notes the particular sensation of excursion — how quickly a mountain day moves.

“Remnant snow retaining wild-goose prints” (殘雪留鴻爪): this image of snow-footprints was famously used by Su Dongpo in a poem about the impermanence of meeting — geese land in snow, leave traces, fly on. Here Kim places it not elegiacally but observationally: the prints are simply there, in the residual snow, at the mountain pass.

“Both southern men” (雙南): a phrase from the Shishuo Xinyu (世說新語) used to describe two men of exceptional talent from the southern tradition. “Ashamed to claim this comparison” — the compliment deflected with genuine modesty. “One flute — I leave to your discretion” (一笛許君任): at the famous Keting pass (柯亭), a flute was discovered hidden inside the bamboo of the eaves — the person who found and played it would be revealed as the right recipient. Kim is saying: you are the one who can play; I only acknowledge it.

贐燕京使行 三首○代家尊作 (Farewell Gifts for the Beijing Mission Envoy — Three Poems, Written on Behalf of My Venerable Father)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840). The poems were written 代家尊作 (on behalf of Kim’s father, Kim No-gyeong / 김노경 / 金魯敬, 1766–1840, a senior official), as farewell verse for an envoy departing on a Beijing mission.

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

Occasion: Three farewell poems addressed to a Beijing mission envoy, written in Kim’s father’s voice. The missions to Yanjing (燕京 — Beijing) were formal diplomatic affairs; the poems navigate official and literary concerns simultaneously. Kim Myeong-hui (김명희 / 金命喜, Kim Jeong-hui’s younger brother) appears to be mentioned obliquely in the family-lineage references of the third poem.

Original text:

其一 三千里遠道。尙可忘其勞。始識靑邱小。無如白塔高。梅時開芍藥。雪臘賣蒲桃。名士多於鯽。誰傅魏子刀。

其二 上价雖自重。堂堂恣所之。正陽門外過。夕照寺中期。參訂筠廊筆。傳訛栗谷詩。忽如尋舊夢。何處不相思。

其三 文章家世舊。書畵出天然。皇華纔北去。藩節又南旋。豈有經冬別。還仍數歲連。波沙池上柳。春日定堪憐。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Three thousand li of distant road — one can still forget the toil. Now knowing how small Korea [Cheonggyu] is: nothing compares to the White Pagoda’s height. In plum season, peonies blooming; in the snowy twelfth month, grapes for sale. Famous scholars more numerous than crucian carp — who will transmit Master Wei’s blade-method?

II

The senior envoy, though highly self-regarding, goes imposingly wherever he will. Passing outside Zhengyang Gate; the appointed meeting at a temple in evening light. Participating in verifying the Yunlang brushwork; transmitting and correcting the corrupted Yulgok poems. Suddenly as if seeking an old dream — everywhere there is longing.

III

The literary tradition of the family runs old; calligraphy and painting come from nature’s gift. The imperial envoy just departed northward; the provincial pennant already turning southward again. How could there be a parting that lasts through winter? It will still be connected for several more years. The willow on Bosa Pond — on a spring day, certainly fondly recalled.

Reading notes:

These three poems exemplify the proxy poem (代作) at its most functional: Kim adopts his father’s official persona and social relationships while bringing his own concerns through. The White Pagoda of poem I is the famous Yuan-dynasty stupa at Miaoying Temple in Beijing (distinct from the poem 86 White Pagoda, though likely the same landmark approached from different angles). “Famous scholars more numerous than crucian carp” — a classical comparison for the density of talent in the capital — followed by “who will transmit Master Wei’s blade-method” (誰傅魏子刀): the question asks whether the envoy will find, among all those scholars, the rare person who can transmit genuine skill rather than fashionable learning. 魏子刀 likely alludes to a legendary craftsman’s transmission of refined technique through direct example rather than verbal instruction.

Poem II’s specific tasks — verifying the Yunlang (筠廊) calligraphic text and correcting corrupted versions of Yulgok (Yi I’s / 이이, 1536–1584) poems circulating in Beijing — are real diplomatic-scholarly errands embedded in the farewell. The Yulgok poems were apparently being misattributed or textually corrupted in their Beijing circulation; the envoy was to carry accurate Korean versions for comparison.

Poem III closes with an unusually intimate image: the willow at Bosa Pond in Beijing, which a spring-day traveler will certainly find beautiful and will remember long after. The poem is the elder official’s voice imagining what the departing envoy will carry back in feeling.

次寄吳蘭雪 代家尊作 (Rhyming a Poem to Send to Oh Nanseol — Written on Behalf of My Venerable Father)

Period: Exact date unestablished; before Oh Nanseol’s death in 1834; pre-exile period (before 1840). Written on behalf of Kim’s father.

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

Occasion: A poem in Kim’s father’s voice addressed to Oh Nanseol (吳蘭雪 / 吳嵩梁, 1766–1834), the prominent Chinese poet who appears in poems 51, 119, and 145 of this volume. This is a rhyming companion piece sent via the Beijing network.

Original text:

紅袗懷舊雨。白髮愧雌辰。雙屐匡廬偈。千壺淨業春。金門梅大隱。鐵篴鶴前身。知有天涯夢。東峰一角巾.

Translation: Cinemawords

Red-robed garment, cherishing old friends; white hair — ashamed of an inferior star. Two clogs — the Kuanglu sutra verse; a thousand vessels — the Jingye spring. At the Golden Gate, plum — the great recluse; iron flute — the crane’s former life. Knowing there is a heaven’s-edge dream: East Peak, a corner of the headcloth.

Reading notes:

A dense poem of literary-social reference, each image a compressed allusion shared between the two correspondents. “Old friends” (舊雨) is a Tang pun — rain that one was accustomed to (old rain = old friends), from Du Fu’s usage. “White hair ashamed of an inferior star” (白髮愧雌辰): writing in the elder Kim’s voice, Kim expresses his father’s awareness of aging against the background of Oh Nanseol’s greater renown.

“Two clogs — the Kuanglu sutra verse” invokes Su Dongpo’s famous poem about Mt. Kuanglu (廬山), which ends by questioning whether one can truly see the mountain one is inside. The wooden mountain-clogs (double 屐) belong to Xie Lingyun; but the Kuanglu verse is Su Dongpo’s — the two figures compressed into one image.

Jingye (淨業) refers to Jingye Lake in Beijing, where the Poetry Shrine (詩龕) of Fa Shitan was located and where the plum trees bloomed famously. “A thousand vessels — the Jingye spring” means the spring wine-gathering at the lake, where the Poetry Shrine and plum trees provided the setting for the Beijing literary world’s most refined gatherings.

“East Peak, a corner of the headcloth” is the closing image of modest withdrawal: not the full mountain but a glimpse of one peak, not elaborate dress but a corner of plain cloth. The elder Kim (in whose voice this is written) presents himself as content with partial views and simple attire — the classic gesture of the official who has stepped back from ambition.

曝史。登五臺山。 (History-Airing: Climbing Mt. Odae)

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

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

Occasion: A poem written while climbing Mt. Odae (五臺山 / 오대산), one of Korea’s four sacred Buddhist mountains in Gangwon Province, associated with Manjushri Bodhisattva. The occasion 曝史 (history-airing) may refer to the practice of taking historical records out for airing on dry days, used here as a playful self-designation for the occasion.

Original text:

俯看來路近。不覺入幽冥。峰半全沈白。林端遠錯靑。法雲呈外護。仙火攝幽聽。巖洞饒餘地。何緣結小亭。

Translation: Cinemawords

Looking down, the road one came by seems near; without realizing, having entered deep obscurity. The mid-peak entirely sunk in white; at the forest’s edge, distant green woven in. Dharma-cloud presenting outer protection; celestial fire capturing the hidden sounds. Rock caves with room to spare — what reason to build a small pavilion?

Reading notes:

The poem registers the disorientation of high-altitude climbing: looking back down the path, it seems short; but the climber has entered “deep obscurity” (幽冥) without noticing — the transition from the ordinary world has happened gradually. This is both literal (cloud-mist on a mountain) and metaphysical (the loss of ordinary reference points).

“The mid-peak entirely sunk in white” (峰半全沈白): the cloud line covers exactly the mid-section of the peaks, leaving their bases visible in green forest and their tops clear or absent. The visual geometry is precise: the mountain cut in half by cloud.

“Dharma-cloud presenting outer protection; celestial fire capturing the hidden sounds”: at Mt. Odae, the five peaks were traditionally associated with five Buddhas, each commanding different forms of protection. The Dharma-cloud and celestial fire are specific sacred phenomena associated with the mountain’s status as a Bodhisattva residence. “Capturing the hidden sounds” — the mountain’s invisible life absorbed into the fires of the lamp-offerings at the shrines.

The closing question — “rock caves with room to spare; what reason to build a small pavilion?” — gently implies that the natural rock formations already serve every purpose a pavilion would, and that imposing a human structure would be redundant. The rock caves are already perfectly situated.

睡起霧罷。萬象呈露。又用前韻。二首 (Waking to Find the Fog Cleared, All Phenomena Revealed — Again Using the Previous Rhyme — Two Poems)

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

Form: Pentasyllabic regulated verse (五言律詩), 8 lines each; two poems. The rhyme-scheme continues from poem 80.

Occasion: Two poems written at the same mountain location as poem 80, after waking to find the fog has lifted. The note 又用前韻 (again using the previous rhyme) indicates these follow poem 80 as a single compositional sequence.

Original text:

其一 重理醒前事。依依墮渺冥。斜陽忽生色。萬綠與千靑。庭栢參空悟。巖流入遠聽。天然堪畵處。雲縷下亭亭。

其二 澹澹崇朝雨。俄然變晦冥。僧尋一逕黑。山入四圍靑。金匱雲常擁。蓮函鳥自聽。洞天多福地。我欲結茆亭。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Gathering again the things before waking — lingering, falling back into vast obscurity. Slanting sun suddenly bringing color; ten thousand greens and a thousand blues. Courtyard cypress participating in sky-awakening; rock-stream entering distant hearing. Naturally a place worthy of painting — cloud threads descending, graceful and still.

II

Tranquil morning rain — suddenly turning dark and obscure. A monk following a single dark path; the mountain entering four-sided green. The golden casket, clouds always embracing; the lotus sutra-box, birds listening naturally. Cave heaven with many blessed lands — I want to build a thatched pavilion.

Reading notes:

The two poems turn in opposite directions from the same starting point. The first records the aftermath of waking into cleared fog: the slanting sun suddenly producing color — “ten thousand greens and a thousand blues” is among the most sensory images in this installment — and the cypress in the courtyard “participating” in sky-awakening, as if the tree itself is engaged in the meditation the mountain demands.

The second poem inverts the sequence: morning rain returns, the mountain darkens, a single monk moves through a single dark path. But the darkening is not loss — “the mountain entering four-sided green” means the cloud cover brings all the surrounding mountains into a single undifferentiated green, a wholeness that the clear morning had made multiple.

“The golden casket, clouds always embracing; the lotus sutra-box, birds listening naturally” refers to the sacred storage objects at Mt. Odae’s shrines — the golden reliquary and the box housing the Lotus Sutra. Both are described as having their own natural attendants: clouds and birds who are indifferent to the human distinction between sacred and secular.

“I want to build a thatched pavilion” closes the pair and echoes poem 80’s closing question. There, the question was rhetorical (caves are already sufficient). Here the desire is genuine: after two days in the mountain, the wish to stay permanently has become concrete. The thatched pavilion would not impose on the rock caves but add a human complement to them.

送彝齋嚴譴之行 (Farewell to Yijae on His Journey of Severe Reprimand)

Period: Exact date unestablished; pre-exile period (before 1840), though the mention of “two banished persons” may indicate proximity to a period of shared political difficulty.

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

Occasion: A farewell poem for Cho Hui-ryong (조희룡 / 趙熙龍, 1789–1866, on first appearance: painter and man of letters, a central figure of the late Joseon literary world and frequent companion in both volumes of the Wandang Jeonjip; pen name Yijae / 彝齋), who is being sent away under a severe official reprimand (嚴譴).

Original text:

新年兩逐客。至道一匡君。馬踏河中雪。烏啼城上雲。邊山何日盡。塞篴不堪聞。蕭颯雙衰鬢 還添幾白紛。

Translation: Cinemawords

In the new year, two banished persons; the supreme Way, guiding you straight. Horse treading through snow on the frozen river; crows calling from clouds above the wall. Border mountains — when will they end? Frontier flute — unbearable to hear. Desolately, two aging temples — further adding several white strands.

Reading notes:

The poem’s first line — “in the new year, two banished persons” (新年兩逐客) — is the most politically charged opening in this volume. “Two” could mean Cho Hui-ryong and another person being punished simultaneously, or it could be Kim positioning himself alongside Cho Hui-ryong as a fellow political suspect, or it could be a more general acknowledgment that exile-punishment is the shared condition of their generation of scholars. All three readings are available and none can be closed.

“The supreme Way, guiding you straight” (至道一匡君): the conventional farewell consolation — the scholar’s moral integrity will guide him through the punishment — restated with characteristic compression. It is not empty: in Kim’s world, the Way is the only reliable navigation system when official roads run out.

The poem’s two middle couplets draw from the classical repertoire of border-exile imagery: horse in snow, crows at the city wall, mountains that never end, a frontier flute too painful to hear. These images belong to the tradition of poems written for officials sent to remote postings, but applied here to what is clearly a punishment rather than an appointment.

“Two aging temples” (雙衰鬢): both men’s hair at the temples is going grey and “further adding several white strands” — the exile produces visible physical aging. This is Kim’s final observation: not what the punishment signifies politically but what it does to the bodies of the people who undergo it.

客自楓嶽遊歸。共賦。 (A Guest Returns from His Geumgangsan Excursion — Written Together)

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

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

Occasion: A friend returns from traveling to Geumgangsan (楓嶽 / 풍악 — the mountain’s autumn name, when it is covered in maples). Kim and the friend compose together on the occasion of the return. The source note indicates that at the time there was discussion of a specific controversy about a bell at Moon Pond (月支) in the Geumgangsan area.

Original text:

君自仙區到。芝眉綠染雲。平生山水友。脫落語言文。老石長留約。閒鷗不亂群。錦囊披舊句。緗素補奇聞。[時說楓嶽月支鍾事]

Translation: Cinemawords

You have arrived from the immortal realm; mushroom-brow — green dyeing the clouds. A lifelong friend of mountains and waters, freed from words and written language. Old stone — the long-kept agreement; idle gull not mingling with the flock. From the brocade bag, opening old verses; pale silk adding unusual tales. [At the time, there was talk of the bell matter at Moon Pond, Geumgangsan.]

Reading notes:

The returning traveler is transformed: the Geumgangsan excursion has left the “mushroom-brow” (芝眉 — the green-tinged quality of someone who has spent time in a mountain sacred to mushroom-growing immortals, a Daoist figure for absorption into the landscape). He arrives as if from another world, carrying the mountain’s quality in his face.

“Freed from words and written language” (脫落語言文): a standard Buddhist-Taoist phrase for the state beyond conceptual categorization, but here grounded in the specific experience of days in the mountain — language becomes irrelevant when the landscape is sufficiently overwhelming. “Old stone — the long-kept agreement” (老石長留約): an engraved stone pledge to return, in the epigraphic tradition Kim maintained throughout this volume. The promise inscribed in stone is permanent even when the person is absent.

“Idle gull not mingling with the flock” (閒鷗不亂群): from the Liezi story — a man watched gulls on the water without desiring to catch them; the gulls came and landed on his arms. Later, when he planned to catch one, they would not approach. The gull’s trust measures the human’s freedom from desire. Kim applies it to the friend’s travel: having gone to Geumgangsan without agenda, without the scholar’s typical desire to document or collect, he has been received as a genuine guest.

The source note about the bell controversy at Moon Pond (月支鍾事) is a reminder that even mountain excursions have a material-historical context — temple property disputes were real and ongoing.

觀音閣。與硯雲，沁雪。作詩禪會。 (Gwaneumgak Hall: A Poetry-Chan Gathering with Yeungun and Simseol)

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

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

Occasion: A poetry-meditation gathering (詩禪會 / 시선회) at Gwaneumgak (觀音閣 — Guanyin Hall), a temple hall, with Yeungun (硯雲 / “Inkstone Cloud,” on first appearance: unidentified literary companion) and Simseol (沁雪 / “Clear-Snow,” a companion who appears also in poems 4, 26, 96, and 106 of this volume).

Original text:

久緣君不到。逕蘚尺成堆。愛是如豊玉。思之似渴梅。堂襟榴火逬。缸面酒霞開。回首紛華域。誰爲古洗罍。

Translation: Cinemawords

Long since, on your account, I have not come here — path moss piled a foot deep. My fondness: like Fengyu jade; my longing: like thirsting for plum. The hall’s opening — pomegranate fire shooting forth; the vat surface — wine-cloud opening. Turning back toward the splendid and showy world — who will use the ancient washing vessel?

Reading notes:

The poem opens with a disclosure: the speaker has not visited Gwaneumgak because of some reason connected to “you” (the addressee) — presumably an unresolved matter or a disagreement has kept him away, causing the path moss to accumulate a foot deep. This humanizes the temple as a place that can be avoided, not merely visited.

“Pomegranate fire shooting forth” (榴火逬): the pomegranate flowers blazing in early summer at the hall’s threshold are described as fire shooting outward — an image that is both botanical and temperature-appropriate for a summer gathering. The wine vat opening into wine-cloud (酒霞開) — the fermentation haze rising from a just-opened vessel — gives the gathering its sensory register: pomegranate heat and wine mist.

The closing question — “who will use the ancient washing vessel?” (誰爲古洗罍) — draws on ritual: the lei (罍) was a bronze vessel used to wash hands before ceremony, the act of purification that preceded any formal occasion. By asking who will use the ancient vessel, Kim is asking who, in the present company or in the present world, has the gravity to perform genuine ceremony rather than its social appearance.

失題 (Untitled)

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

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

Occasion: An untitled poem of summer illness and correspondence longing, written from a position of confinement — illness preventing the mountain excursions that populate the rest of the installment.

Original text:

庭陰濃欲滴。歲月已侵尋。幽竹憐王子。朱華憶謝臨。病違雙蠟屐。情重異苔岑。不有郵筒過。誰破寂寥心。

Translation: Cinemawords

Courtyard shade so thick it seems to drip; years and months already encroaching. Secluded bamboo — fondness for Wang Huizhi; crimson flowers — remembering Xie Lingyun. Illness preventing the two wax-coated clogs; feeling weighty — different kinds of mossy hillocks. Without a mail-tube passing by — who will break the desolate heart?

Reading notes:

Two classical figures anchor the poem’s middle couplets. Wang Huizhi (王徽之, ?–388), son of Wang Xizhi the calligrapher, was famous for saying he could not live a single day without bamboo; the bamboo in the courtyard calls up this devotion. Xie Lingyun (謝靈運, 385–433), the first great Chinese landscape poet, was known for his excursions in mountain clogs with specially attached wooden teeth for traction; “crimson flowers” — the summer flowering — recalls his practice of going out specifically to see what was blooming.

Both figures lived active, outward-facing literary lives. Illness prevents Kim from following their example: “two wax-coated clogs” (雙蠟屐) refers to Xie Lingyun’s famous footwear, here prevented by sickness from being worn. “Different kinds of mossy hillocks” (異苔岑) is a phrase for the friends who are absent but present in thought — each friend a different moss-covered hillock, distinct and familiar.

The mail-tube (郵筒) is the bamboo cylinder used to pass letters between households — here the final resort of the ill and housebound. Without letters arriving, no one breaks the silence. The poem ends on exactly the question the previous installment’s poem 85 cannot answer: who will take the trouble to correspond?

白塔 (The White Pagoda)

Period: Written during Kim’s 1809 Beijing visit or a related trip; pre-exile period (before 1840).

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

Occasion: A poem written before the famous White Pagoda (白塔) at Miaoying Temple (妙應寺 / White Pagoda Temple) in Beijing — the Yuan dynasty Tibetan-style stupa, eight-ridged and hung with bells, that dominated the flat Beijing plain and was audible for great distances.

Original text:

一野如盃大。四天圍客低。聊應支宇宙。行可表東西。百里鈴聲聞。八稜神物齊。嵬勳曾並屹。今古絶攀躋。

Translation: Cinemawords

The whole plain as large as a cup; the four heavens encircling the traveler, keeping him low. Providing support, it seems, for the universe; its form can mark East and West. Bell-sounds heard a hundred li; the eight-ridged divine object — exact and aligned. Towering achievements once standing together; past and present: impossible to scale.

Reading notes:

The White Pagoda of Miaoying Temple was built in 1279 under Kublai Khan and became a defining feature of the Beijing skyline. Its octagonal base (八稜 — eight ridges) and the dozens of bronze bells hung from each of its thirty-three stories produced a distinctive sound that carried in the flat northern landscape.

“The whole plain as large as a cup” (一野如盃大): the Beijing plain is so flat that the pagoda appears to rise from the floor of a vast basin, the traveler small within it. The reversal — the pagoda is vast, the human is enclosed — is rendered in the second line: “the four heavens encircling the traveler, keeping him low.” This is the experience of standing before something that genuinely exceeds the human scale without metaphor.

“Providing support for the universe; its form can mark East and West” (聊應支宇宙。行可表東西): Kim assigns the pagoda cosmological function — it marks the compass directions and upholds the sky — in the manner of classical descriptions of sacred structures. But the word 聊 (“providing support, it seems”) admits that this is an observation about appearance rather than claim about ontology.

“Towering achievements once standing together” (嵬勳曾並屹): the founders of the Yuan dynasty who commissioned the pagoda are gone, and the achievements that produced it are now historical. “Past and present: impossible to scale” — the pagoda cannot be climbed but also cannot be fully known; its builders’ world is unreachable.

贈李子野 (Given to Yi Jaya)

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

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

Occasion: A spring poem given to Yi Jaya (李子野, unidentified).

Original text:

禁城春事麗。詩心已半傾。寵柳平橋晩。崇桃小屋明。碧山憐舊約。今雨損幽情。南麓懷遊子。追隨不待晴。

Translation: Cinemawords

In the palace precinct, spring affairs are splendid; the poetic heart already half-inclined. Favored willows at Pyeongyo Bridge at dusk; tall peach trees, the small house bright. Blue mountain — fondness for the old agreement; today’s rain [new friends] disturbing the secluded feeling. South foothills — cherishing the traveling son; following along without waiting for clearing.

Reading notes:

“Today’s rain” (今雨) carries Du Fu’s famous pun: in his prose piece “Sent to Jiangnan,” Du Fu writes that those who were present during his times of plenty were “today’s rain” (today’s friends), while those who stayed through hardship were “yesterday’s rain” (old friends). Kim’s use here reverses the consolation: “today’s rain damages the secluded feeling” — the new social connections of a prosperous spring season disturb the quieter, older bonds. The contrast with 舊約 (the old agreement, old promise) in the preceding line sharpens this: the old mountain agreement is being eroded by the new society.

“Following along without waiting for clearing” (追隨不待晴): Kim will go despite the rain — whether the rain is literal spring rain or figurative social intrusion. The poem closes on motion despite obstruction, which is its characteristic resolution.

北屯看桃花 (Viewing Peach Blossoms at Bukdun)

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

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

Occasion: A spring poem written while viewing the famous peach blossoms at Bukdun (北屯 / 북둔), a settlement north of Seoul.

Original text:

城東尺五地。花發萬林齊。佛乘如將悟。仙源了不迷。乳苔叉磵合。眉黛鬲山低。罨畵村茅潔。行當借地棲。

Translation: Cinemawords

East of the city wall — land a foot-and-a-half away; flowers blooming — ten thousand forests together. The Buddha-vehicle — as if about to achieve awakening; the immortal source — completely without confusion. Milky moss branching across the stream; eyebrow-dark mountains — low, dividing. The mist-painting village thatch — clean; one should go and borrow ground to settle.

Reading notes:

“East of the city wall — land a foot-and-a-half away” (城東尺五地): a measurement phrase used in classical poetry for the distance just outside the city walls — far enough from urban noise, close enough to reach on foot. “Ten thousand forests together in bloom” — the simultaneous flowering of an entire hill’s peach trees is described not in terms of aesthetic beauty but of scale: ten thousand is the classical figure for totality.

“The Buddha-vehicle — as if about to achieve awakening”: the mass of blossoms is so overwhelming it functions like a sudden enlightenment — not a beautiful sight but an epistemic event. “The immortal source completely without confusion” (仙源了不迷): the peach blossoms evoke Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源記), the hidden paradise that is impossible to find again once left. Here the finding is not confused — the location is known, the path is clear.

“Milky moss branching across the stream; eyebrow-dark mountains low, dividing” — the two middle images work as a single composition: small-scale detail (the pale moss across the water) followed by the larger framing (dark mountains like ink-painted eyebrows, low and close). The thatched village in “mist-painting” (罨畵 / 엄화) style — the technique of mist-and-wash landscape painting — concludes the visual sequence.

“One should borrow ground to settle” echoes poem 74’s implied question and poem 80’s unanswered one: throughout this installment, Kim encounters landscapes so compelling that the desire to stay permanently keeps recurring. Here it becomes explicit.

扶旺寺 (Buwangsa Temple)

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

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

Occasion: A poem written at Buwangsa (扶旺寺 / 부왕사), a Buddhist temple.

Original text:

看山何處好。扶旺古禪林。日落峯如染。楓明洞不陰。鍾魚來遠近。禽鳥共幽深。漸覺頭頭妙。靈區愜道心。

Translation: Cinemawords

Viewing mountains — where is it best? Buwangsa — the ancient Zen grove. At sunset the peaks are like dyed cloth; maple brightness — the valley not dark. Bell and wooden-fish drum sounding near and far; birds and fowl together in the deep seclusion. Gradually feeling the wonder in each thing — the sacred district satisfying the Way-heart.

Reading notes:

The simplest poem in this installment, and one of the most transparent. “Viewing mountains — where is it best?” is a conventional opening question whose answer is the poem’s subject: this particular temple, this grove, this evening. Each image serves simply to establish the quality of the place without commentary.

“Gradually feeling the wonder in each thing” (漸覺頭頭妙): 頭頭 (in each thing, in each head, in every particular) is a Chan Buddhist expression for the recognition that Buddha-nature is fully present in every phenomenon without exception — not more present in sacred objects than in ordinary ones. The temple’s effect is to make this recognition available: the bell-sound and the bird-call and the sunset-colored peaks are equally, completely themselves.

“The sacred district satisfying the Way-heart” (靈區愜道心): 道心 (the Way-heart) is from Wang Wei’s landscape poetry — the fundamental spiritual orientation that is satisfied by genuine contact with the natural sacred. The poem ends on satisfaction rather than longing, which distinguishes it from most of the installment’s final couplets, and marks Buwangsa as a place that actually delivers what the other sites promise.

秋夜與蓮生共賦 二首 (Autumn Night — Written with Yeongsaeng — 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: Two poems written collaboratively on an autumn night with Yeongsaeng (蓮生 / “Lotus Born,” unidentified literary companion). The second poem pivots from the immediate evening to a meditation on Weng Fanggang after ten years.

Original text:

其一 酒熟花初發。詩情俱在眉。異苔同石喜。各夢共床知。蛩雨靑燈暗。雁霜赤葉遲。重陽看漸近。又是把盃時。

其二 十年覃老想。忽若現鬚眉。定結三生業。翻從萬里知。詩龕香瓣古。書帕石帆遲。佛墨參禪罷。幽情更湊時。

Translation: Cinemawords

I

Wine ripened, flowers just starting to bloom; poetic feeling all gathered at the eyebrows. Different mosses on the same stone — joy; each dreaming their own dream, sharing a bed, knowing. Cricket rain — the blue lamp dimming; wild-goose frost — red leaves slow to fall. The Double Ninth — seen approaching; again it is the cup-raising time.

II

Ten years of thinking about Elder Tanxi — suddenly as if his eyebrows and beard appear. Surely tied in three-life karmic bonds; all along, knowing from ten thousand li. The Poetry Shrine, incense petals — ancient; writing cloth, Stone Sail — come too slowly. Buddhist ink, after Chan practice ends: the secluded feeling more concentrated as time passes.

Reading notes:

The first poem is an autumn evening in precise particulars: wine ready, flowers beginning, the Double Ninth festival approaching, crickets in the rain, geese frost arriving on the leaves. “Different mosses on the same stone — joy” (異苔同石喜): two people of different character sharing the same ground, finding the coexistence itself a source of pleasure. “Each dreaming their own dream, sharing a bed, knowing” — the intimacy of old friends who can sleep in the same room and dream separately, and the knowledge in this is complete without any exchange.

The second poem is the installment’s emotional center. Ten years after the 1809 Beijing visit, the thought of Weng Fanggang (覃老 / Elder Tanxi) produces his face suddenly in the mind’s eye — “suddenly as if his eyebrows and beard appear.” The three-life karmic bond is not metaphor for Kim: the encounter with Weng was genuinely formative, and the decade of distance has not diminished but concentrated the feeling.

“The Poetry Shrine, incense petals — ancient” (詩龕香瓣古): the shrine Fa Shitan maintained for Su Dongpo, in Weng Fanggang’s circle, is now ancient — a decade of incense accumulated, the petals faded. “Stone Sail — come too slowly” (石帆遲): Weng Fanggang’s studio, the Stone Sail Pavilion, is far and slow to reach. The final line — “the secluded feeling more concentrated as time passes” (幽情更湊時) — is the installment’s most exact emotional observation: time does not dilute longing for the literary bond but intensifies it, packing it more densely with each year.

偶題尋詩圖 (Impromptu Inscription on a “Seeking Poems” Painting)

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

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

Occasion: A poem written as a quick inscription on a literati painting of the “seeking poems” (尋詩圖) genre — paintings depicting a scholar in a landscape looking for poetic inspiration.

Original text:

尋詩何處好。詩境畵中深。散慮延遐想。忘言待好音。枕書交竹色。下榻借桐陰。舊雨成天末。難爲萬里心。

Translation: Cinemawords

Seeking poems — where is it best? The poetic realm — deep within a painting. Dispersing concerns, extending distant thoughts; forgetting words, awaiting beautiful sounds. Pillowing on books — mingling with bamboo color; off the couch — borrowing paulownia shade. Old friends — become at heaven’s edge; hard to maintain the ten-thousand-li heart.

Reading notes:

The poem frames itself as an inscription on a painting but immediately makes the painting’s subject its own: where is it best to seek poems? The answer — “deep within a painting” (畵中深) — places the painted world as the deeper reality, following the argument of poem 63 (the plum painting inscription) earlier in this volume.

“Forgetting words, awaiting beautiful sounds” (忘言待好音): from Tao Yuanming’s famous line — he kept a silent qin without strings, playing it without concern for technique or notation, “the meaning is in it; why should words be needed?” (此中有眞意，欲辨已忘言). The waiting for beautiful sound without demanding it is the scholar’s proper posture toward inspiration.

“Old friends become at heaven’s edge” (舊雨成天末): the friends who were once near (舊雨 — old rain/old friends) are now distant, at the edge of the sky. “Hard to maintain the ten-thousand-li heart” (難爲萬里心): the poem closes with the difficulty that appears throughout this installment — keeping faith with distant connections across time and space. The mountain excursion poems earlier in the group showed Kim surrounded by companions; this poem acknowledges that those companions are increasingly far.

客至漫賦 (Guest Arrives — Free Composition)

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

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

Occasion: A poem welcoming an unspecified guest, written freely on the occasion.

Original text:

晴山入夕扉。禽鳥娛淸暉。舊雨懷人久。優曇現世稀。竹靑修外史。蕉綠綻新衣。盡日凉簷下。閒雲不放歸。

Translation: Cinemawords

Sunlit mountain entering the dusk gate; birds at play in the clear radiance. Old friends — longing for persons for a long time; the Udumbara flower — rare in this world. Bamboo green — composing informal records; banana green — unfolding new garments. All day under the cool eaves: idle clouds not releasing [the guest] to go home.

Reading notes:

The installment closes where poem 60 began — a guest detained, not by rain now but by the pleasure of the afternoon. “Idle clouds not releasing to go home” (閒雲不放歸): the clouds are the host, holding the guest the way poem 60’s host held his visitor by medical diagnosis of his own deficiency. Here the mechanism is more benign: the cool eaves, the bamboo, the banana trees, the mountain still visible at dusk.

“The Udumbara flower — rare in this world” (優曇現世稀): the Udumbara (優曇婆羅) is the mythological flower that blooms only once every three thousand years in Buddhist tradition, used classically for anything of supreme rarity. Applied to an old friend arriving, it signals that this visit is not ordinary sociability but an event of genuine scarcity and value.

“Bamboo green — composing informal records; banana green — unfolding new garments” are parallel images of the scholar’s summer activity: writing that is not official history but the informal notes and annotations that make the literary world’s memory, and the banana’s broad leaves suggesting new thoughts beginning to unfurl. Both images belong to a scholar whose work is never entirely separated from the environment, and whose environment is never entirely separated from work.

The pentasyllabic regulated verse that dominates this installment — fourteen of the nineteen poem entries — imposes its own discipline: eight lines, each image symmetrically paired, the whole experience of a mountain visit or an autumn night compressed into a fixed frame. In the mountain excursion poems, this compression produces precision. In the farewell to Cho Hui-ryong, the same containment prevents what might otherwise become lamentation. Part 6 moves into the densest social material in Volume 9 — the ten-poem sequence with Geumheon (今軒) and the five poems of the same night’s storm — where the regulated verse gives way to longer, more argumentative forms, and the literary-critical voice returns after this installment’s sustained immersion in the natural world.