Sijo and Gasa

After Hangul, the poetry of Joseon settled into two main forms: a short three-line song, the sijo, and a longer, running form, the gasa. Both were meant to be sung. This chapter looks at what the sources say about each form, three poets named in them, and the places where the articles contradict or hedge themselves.

Sijo

The Sijo article says it "emerged during the Goryeo dynasty, flourished during the Joseon dynasty, and is still written today." The earliest surviving sijo is dated to the late fourteenth century. The name sijo came later, from a nineteenth-century restoration movement, and modern sijo is dated to after 1876.

Form

• Three lines of about 14 to 16 syllables each, or 42 to 48 in total. Each line has four groups of syllables, and the first half of the third line is a "twist".
• The same article also says sijo is "an accentual verse form, not syllabic". That sits awkwardly with its own syllable counts, and I do not reconcile them.

Kinds

The article names pyeong sijo (the standard form), ossijo (one line expanded), sasol sijo (several lines expanded, narrative or chatty), yeon sijo, sijo chang (the sung form) and modern sijo.

Who wrote it

Early sijo was mostly written by elite yangban men. Gisaeng (professional entertainers, among them Hwang Jini and Yi Maechang) were also prominent, and sasol sijo was written by women, yangban, chungin and commoners. Kim Cheontaek compiled an important anthology in 1728; the article calls his birth date only "almost certain". Early sijo often treated Confucian loyalty, nature and political upheaval; gisaeng poems focused more on love and longing; sasol sijo added humour and everyday life. The article describes gisaeng poetry as "a rare blend of emotional freedom, ironic perspective, and technical mastery." The debate over whether modern free-form works count as sijo is, per the article, unresolved. It carries a "needs more citations" tag, with "citation needed" on parts of its account of English-language sijo.

Gasa

The Gasa (poetry) article says it "was a form of poetry popular during the Joseon period", usually sung, and "popular among yangban women". It says gasa were "a bit longer than sijo poems", built on parallel lines each split into units. It says the form emerged in the Goryeo period as a vocal genre derived from jeongga and was borrowed from Chinese tz'u or fu forms.

Two periods

The article divides the history at the Japanese invasion of 1592 to 1597:

It names the poems Suyangsanga, Cheosaga, Baekgusa, Hwanggyesa (about a woman's longing) and Maehwaga, and says Jeong Cheol, a sixteenth-century poet, "perfected the form". It names no woman as an author.

Three Poets

Yun Seondo (1587 to 1671)

The Yun Seon-do article calls him a philosopher, poet, politician and Neo-Confucian scholar, with the art names Kosan and Haeong. He succeeded early as an official, but his blunt manner made enemies and he was banished for criticising powerful people; about thirteen years later he returned to tutor the royal princes, was banished again, and spent most of his life at a rural home writing. His best-known work in the article is The Fisherman's Calendar (Eobusasi, 1651), a cycle of forty seasonal sijo that the article calls the longest and most ambitious sijo cycle of his period, in which the fisherman stands for a wise person living simply and naturally. It also names Five Friends, and calls him "the greatest master of the sijo form". Its details: it gives his age as 85 in one place though the dates imply 83 or 84 (the infobox says "aged 83 to 84"), cites weak sources, and relies on Larry Gross's translations, which may not match the originals.

Hwang Jini (about 1506 to 1567)

The Hwang Jini article says she was a famous gisaeng of the reign of King Jungjong, kisaeng name Myeongwol, noted for beauty, wit, intellect and independence, and also for poetry and dance. She was born in Kaesong, but her parentage is uncertain: her mother "was either a kisaeng or of cheonmin status". "Only a handful of sijo ... and geomungo pieces exist today", about Kaesong's scenery, lost loves and replies to classic Chinese poems. The article gives several well-known stories as legend or uncited (a coffin that stopped at her house, a riddle only one man solved, mineral water said to flow near her home in 1945) and hedges even her birth story with "The story goes". A claim that her sijo are "the most beautiful ever written" is uncited. It lists later novels, films and television series, and says a crater on Venus is named for her.

Jeong Cheol (1536 to 1594)

The Jeong Cheol article gives his dates as 18 December 1536 to 7 February 1594, a statesman and poet who served as Right State Councillor (1589 to 1590) and Left State Councillor (1590 to 1591), with the pen-names Kyeham and Songgang. It lists three gasa by their translated titles, Gwandong Byeolgok, Samiingok and Songgang Gasa, without describing them, and says he is "prominent in the gasa and the sijo". It describes a witty exchange of sijo with the gisaeng Chinok, in which both play on their names. It tags many claims "citation needed" and marks its family and popular culture sections as unsourced.

Exercises

Next chapter: Joseon Fiction and Performance.