O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June
(Robert Burns)

Poetry-more than a mere materialization of what is known and exploration to the unknown; a dialectic of objectivity and subjectivity; or a meeting point between movement and stillness-is basically an activity of 'self' to get in touch with 'others.'

In pondering about this 'self-others' contact in poetical works, we may look at the works of Prague-borned writer: Rainer Maria Rilke.

Rilke (1875-1926) is generally considered the German language's greatest 20th century poet. He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most famous verse pieces are the SONNETS TO ORPHEUS and the DUINO ELEGIES; his two most famous prose pieces are the LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET and the semi-autobiographical THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTA LAURIDS BRIGGE. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, cites Rilke as an example of the highest form of thinker in his essay "What Are Poets For?". The essay's theme is largely explored through the examination of an "improvised verse" (short poem) Rilke wrote in 1924. Heidegger, sometimes considered the most influential German thinker of the 20th century, ranks Rilke in the German poetic tradition as second only to Holderlin.

Only shortly before his death was Rilke's illness diagnosed as leukemia. The poet died on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland. He chose his own epitaph (quoted from Wikipedia) as:

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.

At the end of his famous piece in DIE SONNETE ON ORPHEUS, Rilke wrote: "Und wenn dich das Irdische vergaβ, zu der stillen Erde sag: Ich rinne. Zu dem raschen Wasser sprich: Ich bin" (R.M. Rilke, 1966:571; R.A. York, 1986:93), he shows how the 'I' which seems none other than Rilke-himself, decides to speak-up when it is isolated in time-temporariness; and gave it-self into the streaming water to enhance its own existence. The "I" as 'self' in getting touch with the experienced reality as 'other', if imaginatively, set itself as the meaning-giver.

In Rilke's mind, the experienced reality, though physical and material in nature, is in fact plastic and elastic. This is why, then, he was able to developing Ding-Gedicht, a poetical style that is able to capture plastical essence of physical objects.

In the lights of this Rielke poetical style, I found, on most of his poems, Kim Ch'un-Su has set himself as meaning-giver to realities he experienced by "capturing their plastic-essences beyond the physical appearances".

The HANGUK ILBO recently (5 January 1999) asked a group of 100 well-known poets, novelists and literary critics to choose ten poets and ten poems from the 20th century, which would remain as classics in the 21st century. A glimpse of the contemporary importance ascribed to Kim Ch'un-Su [Kim Ch'unsu (1922- )] is revealed by the fact that he was selected as the ninth poet (tied with Ko Un) on the list.

In addition, Kim Ch'un-Su "Kkot" (Flower) was ranked ninth on the list of poems. While critical of Su's "desire for compromise over struggle, tranquility over suffering, faith over inquiry," Kim Yunsik and Kim Hyon nevertheless acknowledged as early as 1973 that "along with So Chongju and Kim Suyong, he has exerted the strongest influence on poetry in the post-liberation period. The vast majority of poems known as poems of being [chonjae ûi si] or poems investigating interiority [naemyôn t'amgu ûi si] owe an enormous debt to Kim Ch'un-Su poetic explorations."

THE SNOW FALLING ON CHAGALL'S VILLAGE contains a selection of translated poems (arranged in chronological order, but with no dates) spanning Kim Ch'un-Su's long and prolific career, from his first volume of poetry, THE CLOUD AND THE ROSE (1948) to his latest, THE WOODS THAT SLEEP STANDING (1993).

Anyway, in this essay, I will focus and located the subject of reviewing merely on theme of love that comes as the plastic essence of his symbolic diction of the flower in Kim's poetry.
Let us begin with his Sketches of a Flower.

He wrote: "… Even amidst the flames of love,/ I was lonely and sad.// Flower, having burned/ without love,/ you smile in immortal/ nakedness.// O thousand eyes of radiant pure gold!/ while I turn into a stone,/ chilled and harderned.//"

"Flower" in this poem mean allegorical. This allegorism comes from the poet's devotion to capture poetical-moment of the plastic essence of the flower, which he intentionally set as image and symbol of love through poetical method inspired by Ding-Gedicht tradition. As the 'Self' Kim get into total engagement with 'other' flowers.

As the result, the total engagement between "self" and "other" in Kim's Sketches of a Flower, goes into the meaning of the plastic essence of the flower (love) as follow:

"Your smile, in the end,/ becomes a star to be embedded/ in the inaccessible sky.// In a place far, far away,/ you become a color and a fragance./ Onto my memory, flower,/ falls a dewdrop/ you kept./ To you I throw/ my loneliness/ and sorrow."

Yes! There it is: flower as a representation of love in this poem nothing but I-lyric's loneliness as well as I-lyric's sorrow. In the other word: flower is love itself, and love is nothing but loneliness and sorrow.

Furthermore, in Prologue for the Flower, Kim wrote: "I am now a dangerous animal/ The moment my hand touches you,/ you become darkness, unknown and remote.// At the tip of a trembling twig of being,/ you bloom and fall without a name./ I weep all through the night/ in this nameless darkness seeping through my eyelids,/ lighting a lamp of remembrance.// My weeping will gradually turn into a whirlwind,/ shaking a tower,/ and become gold when it penetrates the stone./ My bride, her face veiled!//"

In Prologue for the Flower, love shows its tenderness, able to meltdown hard and solid entities. And the rest is only remembrance. In this fragile life of human kind: is there anything else that has a kind of entity of eternality except remembrance? Again, in tradition of Ding-Gedicht, Kim show us that everything in the range of our sighting have always the plastic-essences beyond their physical appearances.

Here and there, in Kim's THE SNOW FALLING ON CHAGALL'S VILLAGE explicitly contain words of 'flowers'. All of these flowers mean allegorical. This allegorism comes from the poet's devotion to capture poetical-moment of the plastic essence of the flowers, which he intentionally set as image and symbol of love, through poetical method inspired by Ding-Gedicht tradition. As the 'Self' Kim get into total engagement with 'other' flowers.

Furthermore, some of Kim's poems-seem to be in the tradition of post-romanticism-bring us to a morning reality where beatitude, as always love, give us pain. With the harth of a flower, this poet set himself as the meaning-giver. The flowers as an experienced reality transformed into an interpreted reality. The flowers as familiarly a physical object reborned into in a new meaning: the symbol of love grows out of the soil of sorrows.

Here and there, in the book full of flowers-some are tangible and some growth from the hearth-we meet the poet himself as the messenger of the nobleness of love, resurrected, listen he singing a love song, telling about his wounds and sorrows, and learn from him the new meaning of life.

The new meaning of life that had seen centuries ago by the poet Robert Burns when he saw the red rose in the spring time: "O my Luve's like a red, red rose/ That's newly sprung in June." ***

© 2006/2007 Cecep Syamsul Hari