Guunmong

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Korean alphabet : 구운몽
Hanja : 九 雲夢
Revised Romanization : Guunmong
McCune-Reischauer : Kuunmong

Guunmong ( German dream of nine clouds ) is a novel written by Korean writer Kim Man-jung in the Joseon period in the 17th century. The work is set in China during the Tang Dynasty .

action

The framework story is the education of the youngest monk Hsing-chen in the monastery on the lotus summit. He is sent to the Dragon King by his master Liu-kuan and on the way back he meets eight fairies on a bridge, whom he cannot avoid and is accused of longing for worldly desires after a conversation with them. He is sent to Hell by his Master, where he receives the punishment of being reborn as a son to a hermit and his wife. This begins the story of Yang Shao-yu, who forgets his previous life early in his childhood.

His father left the family when Yang Shao-yu was ten years old. At the age of 14, Shao-yu said goodbye to his mother to take the civil servant examination in the capital. On the trip to Chang'an , he met Ch'in Ts'ai-feng, the daughter of an officer, and was prevented from continuing his journey due to the war. A year later, in Luoyang , he meets Ch'an-Yüeh, who is highly regarded among poets. He continues to travel to the capital, where he takes first place in the civil service examination. In the capital, he disguises himself as a Qin player to meet the daughter of Minister Cheng, Ch'iung-pei, to whom he eventually becomes engaged. Because of his talent, the emperor sends him into wars in which Yang Shao-yu's tactics help the imperial troops to victory, whereby he is appointed chancellor by the emperor. He is supposed to marry the Emperor's sister, Princess Lan-yang, but this only works after his fiancée Ch'iung-pei has been adopted by the Empress mother. Yang Shao-yu is allowed to marry the two women and to bring all other female acquaintances from previous trips to the court as concubines - these eight women are the fairies he met as Hsing-chen.

After Yang Shao-yu retires after many years with children and grandchildren, he realizes how quickly the lives of great men also pass and he wants to devote himself to Buddhism. At this point, a monk visits him and asks him if he no longer remembers him. It is his master Liu-kuan who wakes him up again as Hsing-chen: he had only dreamed.

background

The dream as an element of the narrative structure was already used in The Prefect of the Southern Branch (Nanke taishou zhuan) by Li Gongzuo (李 公 佐, 770-850) and in the story of Choshin in the Samguk Yusa (Legends of the Three Kingdoms).

Buddhist , Daoist and Confucian motifs and elements can be found in the novel , and the relationship between the religions is also discussed. Buddhism is presented positively, while Confucianism, which was prevalent in Korea at the time of Kim Man-jung, is criticized:

"There are three ways in the world - the way of Confucius, the way of the Buddha, and the way of the Taoists. Buddhism is the highest. Confucianism exalts achievements and concerns itself with the passing down of names to posterity. Taoism is mystical, but it is unreliable, and though it has benefited many, its truths cannot be wholly known. Consider the fates of Ch'in Shi-huang, Han Wu-ti, and Hsüan Tsung. "

The political and social structures of the Joseon Empire were modeled after those of the Chinese Tang period, Buddhism was actively suppressed. It was fashionable among the Korean Yangban writers of the time to relocate their stories to an earlier China.

Urtext and translation

Until 1446, the Chinese script was the only writing system in use in Korea. Little by little , literary works were written in Hangeul , but until the 19th century some works were still written in Chinese (Hanmun). From the 17th century onwards, novels - such as B. Hong Gil-dong - written in Hangeul.

The original manuscript of the novel no longer exists, only records have been preserved.

The oldest surviving manuscripts are an undated, multi-volume Korean version in Seoul University and a Chinese block print from 1803 in written Chinese, which is available in numerous libraries.

This fact led to debates in literary studies in Korea, since the novel is considered one of the most famous classical works of Korean literature and the language of the original text is important for the national self-image of Korea. There are many Korean literary scholars who assume that the original was already written in Korean script.

reception

In the following centuries the novel was widely imitated, an example of which is the novel The Dream of the Jade Chamber (Ongnu mong) by Nam Yeong-ho.

Another novel with a similar structure is The Life of the Unyeong (Unyeong Cheon), which was written in the 16th century by an unknown author.

In the first half of the 19th century, the novel was adapted by an unknown author in China, expanded to 35 chapters and published under the title Records of the Nine Clouds (Jiuyunji).

Thanks to a translation by James S. Gale in 1922, The Dream of the Nine Clouds was also the first novel to be translated from Korean into English.

The Korean author Choi In-hun published a novel with the same title in 1962.

The television series My Love from the Star (Byeol-eseo on geudae), which was broadcast on SBS in 2013-2014 and also became popular internationally, parodies the novel and gives explicit references to the work. The success of the series in the People's Republic of China was so great that the novel was translated into modern Chinese for a second time.

Text output

  • Cloud dreams . Translated by Albrecht Huwe, EOS-Verlag, St. Ottilien 2011

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter H. Lee: A History of Korean Literature . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, pp. 276 .
  2. ↑ Kim Kichung: An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: from hyangga to p'ansori . Sharpe, Armonk 1996, pp. 159 .
  3. ↑ Kim Man-jung: The Nine Cloud Dream . Penguin Books, New York 1996, pp. 159 .
  4. ↑ Heinz Insu Fenkl: Foreword to The Nine Cloud Dream . Penguin Books, New York 1996, pp. viii .
  5. ↑ Kim Kichung: An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: from hyangga to p'ansori . Sharpe, Armonk 1996, pp. 161 .
  6. ↑ WE Skillend: Kodae Sosol: A Survey of Korean Traditional Style Popular Novels . School of Oriental and African Studies, London 1968, pp. 50 f .
  7. ↑ Peter H. Lee: A History of Korean Literature . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, pp. 280 .
  8. ↑ Kim Kichung: An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: from hyangga to p'ansori . Sharpe, Armonk 1996, pp. 164 ff .
  9. ↑ Thomas Zimmer: The Chinese novel of the late imperial era . In: Wolfgang Kubin (Ed.): History of Chinese Literature . tape 2 . Saur, Munich 2002, p. 511 .
  10. ↑ Yu Myoungin: Kuunmong and Korean Literature Studies. History of science as a provocation . Dissertation. Ruhr University Bochum 2011, p. 118 ( ruhr-uni-bochum.de ).
  11. ↑ Barbara Wall: Self-mockery of hallyu in the Korean Drama My love from the Star and the role of the seventeenth-century novel The Dream of the Nine Clouds . In: Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema . tape 8 , no. 1 , p. 73-87 .