Gi Hyeong-do

Gi Hyeong-do
Hangeul	기형도
Hanja	奇亨 度
Revised Romanization	Gi Hyeong-do
McCune- Reischauer	Ki Hyŏng-do
See also : Korean name

Gi Hyeong-do (born February 16, 1960 in Ongjin , Incheon , † March 7, 1989 in Seoul ) was a South Korean poet .

Life

Gi Hyeong-do was born in Incheon on February 16, 1960. His critical nickname was the personification of black ontology, and he was one of the most original voices in Korean poetry. His childhood was marked by misery and extreme poverty, the death of his sister and the serious illness of his father, which strongly influenced his poetic perspective.

He graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Relations . While he started working as a reporter for the JoongAng Ilbo , he began to publish poems that were characterized by powerful individuality and an extremely pessimistic worldview. Although he died before gaining recognition as a poet, his poems are now considered to be masterpieces of modern Korean literature. Even fifteen years after his death, Gi's public reputation has not declined.

A collection of his essays Report of a Short Journey (짧은 여행 의 기록) was published posthumously on the first anniversary of his death. The collection Love is gone and I write (사랑 을 잃고 나는 쓰네) came out on the fifth anniversary of his death and contains essays in memory of the poet. In 1999 the Collected Works of Gi Hyeong-do (기형도 전집) appeared. The only volume with G sharp poems, A Black Sheet in My Mouth (입 속의 검은 잎), was published posthumously in 1989 and has been sold over 40,000 times to date. This work is carried by the psychology of terror and injustice that are inherent in everyday life. Gi's poetry explores topics such as poverty, death, alienation and illness with particular warmth and lyrical beauty. Through the painful experiences in his life, Gi developed a unique sense of the so-called aesthetic of grotesque realism, which uses disturbing and bizarre images to express the impossibility of communication in modern times and the futility of existence in general.

Gi died of a stroke at the age of twenty-nine. His body was found in the early hours of March 7, 1989 in a theater in Jongno 3-ga, a district in Seoul. The theater is said to have been a meeting place for homosexuals. However, there are highly controversial assumptions on this subject.

Work

Korean

• 입 속의 검은 잎 A black sheet in my mouth (1989)
• 짧은 여행 의 기록 Report of a short trip (1990)
• 사랑 을 잃고 나는 쓰네 Love is gone and I'm writing (1994)
• 기형도 전집 Collected Works of Gi Hyeong-do (1999)

German

• Black leaf in the mouth . Poems. Translated from the Korean by Kim Nam Hui and Torsten Israel. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2019, ISBN 978-3-88423-597-3

Awards

• 1982: 윤동주 문학상 ( Yun Tong-ju Literature Prize )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Korean Literature Authors Name Authority Database: 기형도 ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on February 4, 2014 
2. ↑ 네이버 지식 백과 - 두산 백과: 기형도 Retrieved February 4, 2014 (Korean)
3. ↑ Author Database of LTI Korea: Gi Hyeong-do ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on February 4, 2014 
4. ↑ Three Wise Monkeys: Gi Hyeong-do: A Misunderstood Modern Gay Korean Poet.Retrieved February 4, 2014 (English)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Gi is the family name here, Hyeong-do is the first name.