Kim Seung-jong's Literary Miscellany (180) 'Rain Must Fall for Rain's Own Sake'

The oppressive heat that had swollen like a huge balloon has somewhat abated, but the black fissures at the bottom of the reservoir, dried and twisted with cracks, keep widening. Whether engaged in farming or not, more than any other summer, we occasionally look up at the sky, hoping, even wishing, that rain will come soon. At such a time, I encountered and read the following poem dealing with rain.

Just as no amount of insisting that the cat's paw prints in snow are flowers will produce fragrance, rain cannot sing a song

I'm sorry, because rain has no vocal cords. If fact-checking is necessary, please summon the sound of rain you heard a moment ago

What screams most cheerfully is the corrugated metal roof; what bounces back raindrops most swiftly is a stone lump

For a sparring partner against rain with glass fists, young green or leaves wearing green gloves that learned flexibility early on are perfect

It is an unwritten rule not to touch flowers, which often cause misunderstandings because of their dark bruises, but flowers have no choice but to thrust their faces forward first

Just as what grasps the ankle of fallen leaves is the spider's web's affair, not the wind's, rain can only fall for rain's own sake.

With the sorrow patiently endured, because there are things that must be fed even that saltiness, embracing swollen weeping, dying or living, rain simply falls

- "An Apology for Rain" / Han Hye-young

Through the six stanzas, we feel drawn to the speaker's personified statement making excuses for rain's silence, unfolding matter-of-factly, and we affirm that this excuse is established not merely as rhetoric but as fact. Yes. Because 'rain has no vocal cords' [because rain itself has no vocalization], the so-called 'sound of rain' is strange. Yet whenever rain comes, we have consistently expressed and acknowledged it based on the premise of hearing that sound. In stanzas 1, 2, and 3 of this poem, we recognize and affirm the fact that the sound of rain is not a sound made by rain itself, but a sound that arises from contact between rain and objects [different from bird or insect sounds].

The problem is not merely such encounters that deviate from habit. We read the final seventh stanza and find ourselves bewildered by its shock. That rain is the 'sorrow endured and borne' itself. Or rather, that it is a subject that has embodied that 'sorrow' with its body. After reading the sixth stanza, we either did not expect or could not expect a presentation of rain's identity, and if we did expect it, we apparently did not or could not anticipate such an identity. In other words, the seventh stanza not only comes as a surprise but its presented identity is fresh to us. Moreover, we marvel at the additional elaboration 'that saltiness,' and continue to do so at 'there are things that must be fed even that saltiness,' and faced with the utterance 'embracing swollen weeping, dying or living and falling,' we scarcely have leisure to relax our tension. This swift and unforeseen development—yet we appreciate this message in its context almost as if we were savoring it.

If earthly things are forcibly emaciated by drought with no countermeasures and dying, they cannot but be 'things that must be fed even that saltiness.' Yet even so, just as 'what grasps the ankle of fallen leaves is the spider's web's affair, not the wind's,' these are the 'affairs' of those things, not the 'affairs' of rain, yet the speaker says 'rain's affairs,' and rain 'can only fall,' without concerning itself with 'dying or living.'

In this poem we encounter once more the great virtuous dedication of rain embodied in benevolence and compassion. At the same time, we must estimate that this poem was written not with the intention of praising rain as one of nature's phenomena, but as an allegory reliant on that phenomenon, and read it again. In that case, we are curious what this rain is a metonym for. From this point on, we cannot help but associate, though carefully, and perhaps first and foremost we will recall the arduous toil of parents, that grace of giving life and nurturing. It fits well the aspect of 'because there are things [children] to feed,' embracing swollen weeping, dying or living and falling. But if we go beyond such schematic representation and develop something else further, it will surely be better in this appreciation.

In the rain falling with the dedication of self-sacrifice, we will not merely detect benevolence and compassion abundantly. Might we not dare to conceive of a willingness to attempt that great virtue ourselves once in a while? Drenched in that rain, drenching ourselves.

As a note, when savoring the lingering resonance of this poem, we can appreciate why the apology and related elaborations in stanzas 1-5, which initially seemed somewhat lengthy, were necessary. Otherwise, the utterance of the seventh stanza would not have stood out so dramatically. The fifth stanza is an apology concerning the 'dark bruises' of 'flowers' that can arise from contact with rain, different from the sounds preceding it—a moment we also listened to with interest. The avoidance of 'flowers' is an 'unwritten rule' of rain, but the 'affairs' that allow this are that 'flowers' have 'no choice but to thrust their faces forward' to meet rain. That is, flowers, unlike 'corrugated metal roofs' or 'stone lumps,' suggest a serious kinship with rain, and in the image of rain lies the implicit appeal of that solidarity.

The speaker's motivation related to apology, also considered throughout the entire work, is noteworthy. At first glance, it does not seem to be an apology related to rain that does not fall while things suffer amid drought, but ultimately it can be said to relate to the intention of bringing out the great compassion of rain that finally engulfs everything in water flooding, more harshly than burning out, extinguishing life. As rain that did not come despite endless waiting finally pours down and pours, it indirectly represents and speculates on the aspect of revival of things and their sentiments.

The reader's attitude, in other words, will also change. Not limited merely to a heart of gratitude for the sight of falling rain, but transcending that threshold clearly, reaching a state of greater emotion. As if bursting forth the 'weeping' that rain itself cannot finally burst out.