Comparing Two Beggars And If May Passes By Forgotten

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Ko Un: The Most Known, The Most Misinterpreted. The forgotten war, his childhood gone. He was 17 when birds in the morning were replaced with the sounds of guns shooting. The life of a war survivor is tragic but usually long lived with the will and strength to do so. Ko Un was a mere high school student, when the Korean War began. And as the final battle ceased, he remained while his relatives and friends did not. Most of Korea's history has been bloody, but this man decided to spend his remaining time on Earth in peace. Underlying in Ko Un’s poetry, or more specifically his poems Two Beggars and If May Passes by Forgotten, we are able to identify that both religion and heritage has shaped his ideals in his poems by expressing compassion, history, and the unification of people under certain …show more content…

Ko Un following the end of the Korean War, joined a monastery traumatized by the events he had witnessed. He found refuge at the monastery and was influenced by the ideals and beliefs of Buddhism. Compassion, a belief, can be clearly identified in many of his writings. “Two beggars sharing a meal of the food they've been given. The new moon shines intensely,” Two Beggars by Ko Un. The poem is simple and short, and the surface messages can be quite coherent. The two impoverished individuals were given a meal, and they share the meal. They are compassionate and sympathetic. But there’s also a deeper meaning, these two men are sharing a moment. A moment where they are neither better nor less than one another, they are humans being living and struggling together in familiar circumstances. The connection that two beggars are having is something that not everyone can experience, giving all one may have to a stranger when one himself does not have enough. In the short poem Two Beggars we are able to identify religion as one of the most prominent influences as it speaks about sharing compassion to

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