poor-queequeg:
historical-nonfiction:
This love letter was found clutched to a mummy’s chest in Korea. His name was Eung-tae, a member of Korea’s ancient Goseong Yi clan, and the letter was written by his pregnant wife after he died prematurely at the age of 30 in 1586. It says:
To Won’s Father
June 1, 1586
You always said, “Dear, let’s live together until our hair turns gray and die on the same day.” How could you pass away without me? Who should I and our little boy listen to and how should we live? How could you go ahead of me?
How did you bring your heart to me and how did I bring my heart to you? Whenever we lay down together you always told me, “Dear, do other people cherish and love each other like we do? Are they really like us?” How could you leave all that behind and go ahead of me?
I just cannot live without you. I just want to go to you. Please take me to where you are. My feelings toward you I cannot forget in this world and my sorrow knows no limit. Where would I put my heart in now and how can I live with the child missing you?
Please look at this letter and tell me in detail in my dreams. Because I want to listen to your saying in detail in my dreams I write this letter and put it in. Look closely and talk to me.
When I give birth to the child in me, who should it call father? Can anyone fathom how I feel? There is no tragedy like this under the sky.
You are just in another place, and not in such a deep grief as I am. There is no limit and end to my sorrows that I write roughly. Please look closely at this letter and come to me in my dreams and show yourself in detail and tell me. I believe I can see you in my dreams. Come to me secretly and show yourself. There is no limit to what I want to say and I stop here.
I have something in my eye.
Oh, it’s the letter of Won’s Mother! Yeah, this is a major cultural landmark in Korea and has been the subject of two novels, an animation, a musical, and other works. The clothing found in the grave, and the details of Won’s Father’s life cross-referenced with other sources, provided valuable insights into the customs of this region during this period, too.
There’s a mistranslation in the English version, by the way: it’s the wife, not the husband, who would ask at night whether other people were in love as they were.
In a reflection of the status of women in the past, the name of Won’s Mother and the details of her life are entirely unknown. Also of note is the fact that this letter was written in Hangul, the indigenous Korean script, and not Hanmun, the Chinese script that men of her class used. Educated upper class men looked down on Hangul as the writing of women and the working classes, who indeed favored Hangul for its ease of learning and use and its suitability for writing down the Korean language. And indeed, being fluent in written Hanmun was pretty much out of reach unless you could dedicate large chunks of your life to study. Thanks to the invention of Hangul we have these beautiful writings by women and working class people, people whose lives and thoughts we would not have known about otherwise.
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