Classical Sijo

Themes of Classical Sijo

While Sijo may not be as well known to western society as the poetic form of Japan’s Haiku, the Korean people are very proud of their literary heritage. Sijo has influence authors from the Korean peninsula for years, and is a continued art form today. Sijo is a poetic form for everyone; this paper will analyze and depict the importance of this literary form to not only the most noted scholars, but also that of palace women and the Kisaeng.

Historical Background

It has not been much more than a century that Koreans wrote mostly in Chinese. Even today Chinese still plays a major part in the Korean language today. However, the introduction to the Korean alphabet and writing system opened up the ability for nearly a whole population to record their own thoughts and ideas. For some, the Korean written language was used to express ideas and thoughts meant to be shared only to fellow Koreans, for others, it was used to simply be the means to share or just record one’s thoughts.

While sijo has become a poetic structure of writing, traditionally it is understood that up until the beginning of the twentieth century the word ‘sijo’ constituted a certain type of song. Pre-modern sijo poetry survives today because those singers recorded their thoughts and words as suitable ideas for sijo lyrics. (Kim, xiv)

Poetic Structure

There are three separate verse forms of Sijo. The standard, and most commonly known is the three line p’yŏng sijo, but there is also a slightly more expanded variation called ŏssijo and an even more expanded narrative type called sasŏl sijo. (McCann, 115)

While the structure of this form of poetry is not set in concrete, there is a generic makeup that sets it apart from other forms.

The typical p’yŏng sijo structure is as follows:

“Group” I II III IV

No. of syllables: line 1 3 4 3 or 4 4

line 2 3 4 3 or 4 4

line 3 3 5 4 3

(McCann, 116)

It is important to...