38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Korean Hamlet, January 21, 2001
This review is from: The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea (Paperback)
"The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong" is actually four different works written by one woman, a circumspect, scrupulous, unfortunate 18th Century Korean aristocrat. The memoirs are, successively, a family injunction, a memorial, a biography, and a historiography. At the center of the collection sits Hong Hyegyong and her husband, Crown Prince Sado. "The Memoirs" span the reigns of Yongjo, Chongjo, and Sunjo, and the careers of Lady Hyegyong's father, Hong Ponghan, and her older brothers.
Lady Hong Hyegyong was the wife of Crown Prince Sado, who in 1762, was ordered by his father, King Yongjo, to step into a rice chest, which was susequently bound and covered in sod. Crown Prince Sado had been punished by his father for a series of heinous murders caused by Sado's mental illness. Lady Hyegyong and her family, including her son, the future King Chongjo, then became the focal point of factional quarrels at court, each side using the execution of the Crown Prince, to its own political advantage.
Lady Hyegyong, in the first three memoirs, strives to defend her father and brothers against chages of treason and complicity in Sado's execution. The last memoir is a defense of her husband. All four are addressed to her grandson, King Sunjo, to restore the honor of her family.
Although Lady Hyegyong nor Haboush could ascertain the specific cause of Crown Prince Sado's illness, and Lady Hyegyong's anecdotal evidence is hardly scientific, I would like to offer ''hwabyong'', or, in Korean, ''fire disease'' or ''anger disease''. ''Hwabyong'', as offered by Alford in "Think No Evil: Korean Values In The Age Of Globalization" (see review), is ''...a unique Korean folk syndrome...'' characterized by ''...anxiety, panic,...and the suppression of anger...'' (p. 77). Korean fire disease's ''...symptoms reflect[s] the constraints of the culture: not just on the expression of of emotion, but the lack of opportunity...to change...''(p. 79). Only Crown Prince Sado,and the evidence offered in "The Memoir of 1805", can affirm this conjecture.
The last work, "The Memoir of 1805", is a brilliant psychological portrait of Crown Prince Sado. It is a revealing exercise in historical writing, and also reveals the mind of an extraordinary woman trying to understand some of the most harrowing personal tragedies any spouse or daughter might face.
"The Memoirs" can be compared to Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji", "Hamlet", and the lives of the Roman Emperors. One major failing of Haboush's''Introduction'' is, that she does not place the incidents in a broader historical and international context. But she does manage to argue against abridging and collecting each work into a longer historical novel. A broader focus would further aid in understanding Lady Hyegyong's dedication in defense of her brothers and father.
This is not only a valuable history, but it is also another demonstration of the narrative powers of Asian women authors operating in a patriarchical, almost misogynistic, culture.
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lady Hyegyong's ``Unmentionable'' Memoirs Revived in English, January 13, 1998
This review is from: The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea (Paperback)
THE KOREA TIMES 971016 CULTURE 1044WORDS
> By Yang Sung-jin
Staff Reporter
Darkness seals the closed space. In a wooden rice chest, he protests desperately, but to no avail. After nine days of unimaginable pain and despair, he dies alone.
It would be a sheer nightmare to see a person imprisoned in such an unlikely place and die from asphyxiation. To Lady Hyegyong, the widow of this man, it was much worse. For her husband is Prince Sado and the person who ordered him to die is no other than his own father, King Yongjo (1694-1776).
"The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong" (University of California Press; 327 pages) reveals the darkest chapter of Korean history. It was translated in 1996 by Kim Ja-hyun, professor of East Asian History and Culture at University of Illinois.
For the brilliant translation and the original book's literary value, Kim received the 3rd Korean Literature Translation Award, a biann ual ceremony organized by the Korean Culture & Arts Foundation in order to promote Korean literature overseas.
"Professor Kim's translation is brilliant in every sense. For its unparalleled accuracy in translation as well as the literary value of the original text, we had no difficulty choosing her work as the best one," announced jury chief Lee Young-kul at the award ceremony Tu esday.
"There were a lot of difficulties and problems, of course. Starting from choosing the most authoritative text available to making footnotes and endnotes, I had to spend much time solving the problems one by one. And yet I think I have been with Lady Hyegyong's voice all those years," said Kim in a press conference.
Interestingly, Lady Hyegyong's voice was at first Korean and then it changed into English as Kim continued to work on the translation.
Finally it was Lady Hyegyong's voice which helped and encouraged the 56-year-old professor to finish the translation.
"Over the past 18 years, many times I felt it's too difficult and too much for me. But whenever I tried to give up, I heard Lady Hyegyong's voice. That's the reason I did not quit," explained Kim.
The translation started back in 1975 when Kim was a graduate student at Columbia University, where she was also working as a teaching assistant of a class called "Asian Humanities," based on the famous humanities course, "Contemporary Civilization." In contrast to many Chinese and Japanese works included in the course list, Kim found no Korean literature, which later prompted her to push ahead with the translation.
"While I was translating Lady Hyekyong's memoirs, it occurred to me that I am a kind of shaman. As far as I know, a shaman supposedly connects the living with the dead. The only difference is, translation connects two different cultures," said Kim.
What Kim did not mention is that a shaman does not simply connect the living and the dead. Traditional Korean shamans are supposed to resolve the entangled relations or unfulfilled desire between the living and the dead through shamanist rituals and trances.
The world of the dead to which Kim guides the reader beyond time and culture is awash with filial hatred, inexplicable resentment and its tragic results, all of which are at the center of Lady Hyegyong's memoirs.
Lady Hyegyong wrote four memoirs (1795, 1801, 1802 and 1805), which are chiefly known as "Hanjungnok" (Records Written in Silence) to most Koreans.
In the memoirs, Lady Hyegyong narrates her life as a royal wife and daughter-in-law from a female perspective, which is rare and precious in Korean literature. At the age of 9, she had to endure the loneliness of being separated from her family after she was chosen as the bride of Prince Sado. Yet the most excruciating experience for her was the uncontrollable feuding between her husband and her father-i n-law.
Lady Hyegyong argues in her memoirs that King Yongjo treated Prince Sado so badly that her husband, who is warm and kind at heart from her perspective, fell into a state of emotional disturbance and insanity.
Prince Sado, as his emotional troubles deepened, developed clothing-phobia. Among other strange behavior, he spent endless time choosing his clothes in the morning. In the process, he murdered and injured the awaiting servants in sudden fits of rage.
King Yongjo, who felt deep distrust and scorn toward his son, finally decided that Prince Sado was too dangerous to live at the court, and confined him to the rice chest in 1762, the "imo" year.
What drove Lady Hyegyong to recount the unmentionable "imo incident" were her feelings of guilt. On charges related to the imo incident, her own father lost his seat in the Cabinet while her uncle and brother were executed, all of which led to the downfall of her family.
To prove her father's innocence, Lady Hyegyong candidly recounted the detailed situation of the imo incident at the age of 71.
The fascinating memoir, as well as its translation, sheds illumination on the historical background of the period, the private lives of the royal family and social obligations demanded of the elite.
Kim's masterful translation and thlet foreigners better understand Koreture. A case in point is that "Asian Humanities" recently included Kim's translation on its reading list and students read it with enthusiasm, showing much interest.
"Lady Hyegyong's memoir is very significant as a historical document and literary masterpiece because it directly deals with historical facts from a female perspective. It is indeed unique, compared with other female autobiographical writings that focus on mainly personal aspects," explained Kim.
Furthermore, Lady Hyegyong wrote in Hangul, which was shunned at that time by the Korean elite, who persisted in using classical Chinese. Because of this, the memoirs provide a precious insight into Korean literary traditions, especially those of works written in Hangul during the Chosun period, she added.
The front cover of the book is a picture symbolizing the taboo against depicting members of the royal family, who are "unmentionable," both literally and visually. In the portrait of the royal family and its servants, only King Yongjo is "invisible" on the royal horse.
In the pages following the symbolic picture, Lady Hyegyong bravely mentions the ``unmentionable" through the voice of Kim Ja-hyun, a modern shaman who transcends culture and language to revive the Princess's spirit after 200 years of silence.
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