Paek Ch’ŏl’s Translation and Stage Adaption of Michael Gold’s “120 Million”: Sprechchor for the Materialist Dialectic

This article examines how the Korean writer Paek Ch’ŏl translated and adapted Michael Gold’s American proletarian poem “120 Million” into Korean using the sprechchor (speaking chorus) genre, which originated in Germany and entered Korean literary circles via Japanese leftists. Focusing on the early 1930s, it explores how Paek anchored his literary practice in the materialist dialectic and how his stage adaptation enhances our understanding of that dialectic as manifested in Gold’s poetry. The analysis shows that the communist aesthetic championed by Gold and Paek strives not to forgo any aspect of the world, seeking to replace a bourgeois ersatz totality with a Marxian bona fide one. Since Marxism, understood as a living philosophy, hinges on grasping transformation and process, its aesthetic centers on praxis attuned to the emergent forces that disrupt hegemonic formations. It aims to overcome the alienation of individuals from their labor, their communities, and the elements of their being—ultimately reclaiming economic, political, cultural, and communal dimensions to which humanity is entitled. Although proletarian aesthetics in colonial Korea were largely shaped by Russian, German, and Japanese thinkers, Paek uniquely positioned Gold’s poetry as a model of materialist dialectics and a corrective to the artistic impasse facing Korean writers. By theatrically rendering this dialectic through American verse—a relatively obscure current in world Communist literature—Paek sought to awaken his audience at the intersection of colonial rule, the Great Depression, and the global resurgence of Marxist thought.