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| Kim Jong-gil / Yonhap |
On Saturday, Korea's most senior poet died suddenly in his 91st year, only two weeks after his wife's death.
Kim Jong-gil was born in 1926, in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, and received the name Kim Chi-gyu. Kim Jong-gil was his pen name. His mother died when he was only two years old.
In his early childhood, he was cared for by his father and grandmother and especially his great-grandfather, who was a noted scholar of the old Confucian tradition. He began to learn Chinese characters from his great-grandfather almost before he could walk. He studied at a teachers' training school in Daegu and from 1940, for several years, he helped edit a literary coterie magazine there. In 1945, after the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule, he entered the humanities section of Hyehwa College (Hyehwa Jeonmun Hakgyo) in Seoul. There he formed a literary club with other students, which began to produce its own magazine.
Having begun to write poems, he won the 1947 Spring Literary Award of the Kyunghyang Sinmun, marking the start of his official career as a published poet. In the spring of the same year, he transferred schools and entered the English department of Korea University.
There he came under the influence of Professor Lee In-su, the first Korean to have graduated in English literature from the University of London, a gifted translator who introduced him to T. S. Eliot's "Wasteland." He graduated in 1950 and during the Korean War (1950-53) he served as an interpreter. From 1953 he taught at Daegu Technical High School and also lectured at the College of Education of Gyeongbok University. In 1954 he was appointed as full-time lecturer at Gyeongbok University and in the same year published a volume of translations of 20th century English poetry. He became assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Korea University in 1958.
In 1960 he was able to go to England, where he spent a year studying at Sheffield University under the guidance of the celebrated critic William Empson. During this time he met T. S. Eliot and other well-known writers and critics. Returning to Korea University, he continued his academic career. In 1969 he published his first collection of poems, "Christmas." In the autumn that year he visited the United States, where he met celebrated poets including Robert Lowell.
In the following years he lectured, published critical studies and served for several years as the university librarian. In 1983 he paid another visit to England, where he met noted literary critics including Christopher Ricks and A. Alvarez. In the following year he was able to spend a year studying at the University of Cambridge. In 1986 he celebrated his 60th birthday by publishing a volume of prose writings, a survey of modern English-language poetry, a second collection of his own poems, "Yellow Dust," and a volume of poetic theory.
Throughout his career, he translated a considerable number of contemporary poems by Korean poets, into English. These translations were published in various Korean journals but were never published as a separate collection. In 1987 Anvil Press (London) published a volume of his English translations of Korean classical Chinese poetry, "Slow Chrysanthemums."
In 1988 he became President of the Korean Poets' Association. He participated in several international gatherings and met Seamus Heaney in Kyoto in 1990. In 1991 a volume of his selected poems was published, followed by a collection of his English-language literary essays, "The Darling Buds of May."
He retired from Korea University in 1992, after which he was free to travel and give papers at various international conferences around the world. In 1993 he was elected a member of the Korean Academy of Arts. He was given the Inchon Award in 1996. His third collection of poems, "An Evening Primrose," appeared in 1997 and in 1998 he received the Korean government's Silver Order of Merit for Culture.
In 2000 his English translations of the poems of Kim Chun-su were published in the United States. In 2003 a volume of German translations of a selection of his poems was published in Germany. In 2005 he received the Gosan Literary Award. In 2008 he published another collection of poems, "Gleaning at Dusk," and a Spanish translation of some of his poems appeared in Mexico. In 2009 he published a collection of essays about his encounters with celebrated international writers and also received the Manhae Award. In 2011 he published the poetry collection "Those Things" and in 2013 he published a volume of his selected poems, "The Kite," which is soon to be published in English, too late for him to see it.
Kim Jong-gil often explained that the pressure of his work as an academic meant that he had very little time to write his own poetry. This year marks the 70th anniversary of his recognition as a poet. He was a living archive of the history of 20th-century poetry and will be sorely missed.
