flamenco Journey 2

                     

                      Preface

 

 * translator makes a remark'

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Deep Song' in Korean , a book of poetic prose Gohk wrote

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was published in June ,2007 at Seoul, South Korea. It was

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several months before the writer made his one-month trip

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to Russia. 

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Deep song in Korean is similar partly in contents to this book 

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titled 'Flamenco in Emails' in English. So, frankly speaking,

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it is right to say that this essay book is  composed  in half

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of the translation of  his book 'Deep Song'.

 

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Last year Gohk made his 3rd trip to Portland , USA

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to  contact flamenco artists  there  including a bailaora

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named Lau for flamenco performances he planned to 

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present in Korea.  

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Earlier, he had travelled  a couple of times throughout 

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North America as well as  several European cities  

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for another important purpose of getting ideas for his

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writing. Once he confessed to me that to him to write

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​was a means to weaken  the feeling of despair and

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pains in his mind. 

 

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In this relation, he once said to me that

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whenever he pondered about  his writing style, 

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he was reminded of  the stories of two men:

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one is Charles Lamb , an English essayist and 

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the other, Franz Schubert, the composer of a lied,

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'Der Lindenbaum'

 

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It is well known that the former, who tried in vain

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to write great novels, could be good  only at his short 

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personal essay, and  the latter, who did in vain to compose

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grand symphonies , was brilliant in composing melodies

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to lyric songs or pretty string musics.

 

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But  we are very sorry that he has not seen since! 

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It was the reason  that he made a long stay in seclusion

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at a seaside hamlet  far from his hometown. Unfortunately

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he relapsed into the lung consumption he had suffered

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4 years in his twenties. In fact he is kept away from the ordinary life.

 

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Gohk once said that whenever he got conscious of old painful sores

 

in his heart, he loved to recite a poetic passage of solea, a song

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form of flamenco:'Singing the pain, The pain gets forgotten,'

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His heart pains, in my conjecture, seemed to be something

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that he really wanted to get free of. And he added that 

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so  he tried to get it forgotten  by writing.

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With regard to the journey, he wanted to go beyond the sea

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familiar to him over to the exotic lands. He vaguely yearned

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to be a traveller getting 'the juice insider of the grape',

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not a tourist fed only with the 'skin of the grape. He seemed

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to be often put under an irresistible temptation to drag him

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out of the humdrum daily routine ,to snatch him away from

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the comfort and  to separate him from his native language.

 

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He would wander alone anywhere far from home, be it Portland,

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New York, or Paris with a simple desire to be free on the road of

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the exotic lands. once he stayed in Portland as a house keeper

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for a hostel. Another time He was tramping around Andalusian

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cities, particularly Granada over peeping in the caves of gypsies

 

in Sacromonte, one of the heartland of Gypsy flamenco.

 

Staying home or free alone on the road, he was in the habit of

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murmuring to himself:

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"Can I write novels? No. 

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A dramatist ?  No.  

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If not so, what genre is it where I can do well?"

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such questions are sure to be hidden between lines in the book.

 

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The keynote of this book is made up of the emails which Gohk

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exchanged for more than 8 years with Lau, an American 

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bailaora. So I suggested to Gohk that this book be published

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as a semi non-fiction with the two as the cetral figures in it. 

 

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Having the original book in Korean of ' Flamenco Story'  published

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in Seoul, Gohk expressed in the book his deep gratitude for Lau

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and her friends in Portland - Mark, Rubina, Nieto- saying that

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without these artists, the book could perhaps not be now.

 

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At Gohk's request I, as a translator and  an old friend of his, 

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take the lead in getting it published ,by translating parts of

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the manuscripts into English , by picking out necessary emails

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from his email box and putting them in order for this work

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Joining Gohk for this work, I have been caught

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by a cantaora's words Gohk would often recite  to me :

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'When I sing as I please, I taste blood in my mouth.'

 

                                                          Acting for Gohk Ma,

                                                           jhk