(Yonhap Feature) Korean War rediscovered through poem of late Norwegian literary great

(ATTN: photo available)
By Sam Kim

SEOUL, Oct. 29 (Yonhap) -- It was a mourning. It was a cry.
It was a hymn to a nation torn and bereaved by a forgotten war. But most of all, it was an attack on human callousness -- the kind that leads to the sacrifice of life for political ambition.

Nearly six decades after the outbreak of the Korean War, a poem capturing its
tragedy and mercilessness written by one of Norway's greatest literary minds was
unveiled this week in Seoul.
Olav Hakonson Hauge's poem, simply and sympathetically titled "Korea," is
believed to have been composed shortly after the 1950-53 conflict, which ended in
a ceasefire. It is also one of Hauge's nearly 70 poems compiled by a South Korean
publisher and the Norwegian Embassy in Seoul in a Korean-language publication to
commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Hauge spent most of his life at an idyllic farmhouse next to a great fjord,
producing massive volumes of poems, translations of European literature and
diaries until he died peacefully in 1994.
A self-taught artist who made a living by cultivating his own land, Hauge
immersed himself in the contemplation of how nature expressed its cycles on the
Norwegian landscape. Despite this seclusion, he remained tied to the world by a
wide compassion for humanity.
"His poems are recognized by their simplicity of style, and at the same time,
they have universal messages. They dealt with the complexity of the human mind,"
Norwegian Ambassador to South Korea Didrik Tonseth said at a ceremony in Seoul
earlier this week.
"He was a world citizen, compassionate, loving and especially fascinated by the
Eastern world," said Ingunn van Etten, a Norwegian visual artist who had
developed a personal relationship with Hauge and is exhibiting her works inspired
by the poet in Seoul this week.
In the English translation of his poem, "Korea," recently translated by Idar
Stegane, a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway, and exclusively
obtained by Yonhap News Agency, Hauge mourns those whose peace was shattered by
the politics of war.

Side by side, enemy, friend, with grass
between ribs, poppies shining
in eye sockets, rusted weapons grimacing
until all's hidden under brushwood and fagots

Now they have peace. They don't have any more truck with
where the border is drawn, if right or wrong won.
And death's secret roams across tooth
from the times when they battled on their own borders.

I see you, bone-men from Korea's earth,
ghosting like shadows behind a negotiating table,
where your death, brother, is detritus in a planned deed.

Wordless is death, only a pale grimace
in statesmen's cold consciousness. Your verdict
is stamped, signed -- filed away.

Kristine Helle-Valle, director of the Centenary of Olav H. Hauge, said Hauge was
heart-broken to see a small nation, even as far away as it was, devastated by
conflict -- just as he was sympathetic toward his own people, who had often been
bullied by neighboring powers.
Norway also had a stake in the three-year war that left millions of soldiers and
civilians dead, joining the United Nations forces on the South Korean side by
sending a total of some 620 medical personnel and generating its own public
interest.
"It was deeply disturbing for Hauge to see Korea being torn apart," Helle-Valle
said. "He once said there are no winners in war. When bodies lie there after a
war, they all look alike."
"There are no borders, either, but in people's minds," added Helle-Valle, who
chose South Korea as the first leg of her Asian tour aimed at publishing Hauge's
works in multiple languages. "Through his language, you will discover you're his
and our kin."
"Hauge was a quiet and introspective man who still produced dynamic and
passionate emotions in his poetry," said Hwang Jung-a, a literature professor at
Seoul's Ehwa Woman's University who undertook the translation of Hauge's poems
into Korean.
"We could perhaps draw a sentimental similarity between him and Robert Frost,"
she said, referring to the late American poet, who was renowned for his
depictions of rural life.
Ko Un, a prominent South Korean poet who lost more than half of his friends and
relatives in the Korean War, said he could not stop crying inside during the
recital session at Literary House in Seoul.
"Who would have thought a poet in a country on the opposite side of the world
wrote about us and that his poem would come alive five decades later to be shared
among our hearts?" said Ko, 75, who accompanied then South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung to Pyongyang during the first-ever reconciliation summit between the two
divided states eight years ago.
In his literary response to Hauge and his works, Ko unveiled parts of his own
poem in English. It is intended to honor, he said, a friend he never knew but who
believed in the power of language to console the broken souls of the universe,
including those who fell in the Korean War.

Time with Dead Poets

We are in one region of the universe,
sometimes a merciless wilderness,
sometimes a womb.
Here each of us
is not just an individual living poet.
Here we living poets have been changed
into something else, an unfamiliar backcountry.

No sound passes beyond the boundaries of extinction.
Our bodies sometimes feel heavy,
sometimes lighter than our hearts.
The souls of dead poets
have entered each of our bodies,
folded their weary wings, made their abode. We grow heavy.
I am more than myself.
You are more than yourselves.
We sing in the universe's dialect,
in the new mother-tongue of dead poets.
We began alone
then we came together. Our burdens are light.