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5.0 out of 5 stars
Gives The Feeling of the Original, February 12, 2005
This review is from: Backroads To Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal (Companions for the Journey) (Paperback)
(Please see William J. Higginson's excellent review of the earlier, Echo Press edition of this book.) I have Ueno Yozo's scholarly edition of Oku No Hosomichi which I've been going over, section by section, with a real scholar of Edo Japanese. My little knowledge of Japanese allows me to understand the differences between modern Japanese and the original, and yes, there's a density, a quickness, and a terseness, in the original that Cid Corman's translation faithfully captures in English. I give a great deal of credit for this to Cid's co-translator, Kamaike Susumu, and to Cid's love for just these qualities in poetry, which he learned from such earlier masters as Ezra Pound, and of course from his great teacher William Carlos Williams, and was on the road to perfecting for himself when he did this project and published it (in 1961) in Origin magazine. Cid's style was a good "fit" for this project--in other words, as the Japanese put it--Cid had "en" or destiny when he undertook this translation with Kamaike-san, for the plain truth is, Cid Corman did not know Japanese. Even after all of his many years of living in Japan, he was not able to speak, read or write it. Cid was absolutely honest about this, however, and you'll see that he shares top billing with Kamaike-san on the title page. Startled? Well, I'd argue that the top English translation of this Japanese classic being produced by a non-Japanese reader, writer, and speaker, is not quite as startling as Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage being hailed by Civil War veterans as being the most accurate rendition of their experience of war in print. Scholars argue that Crane's psychological dynamic allowed him to present the "truth" of conflict. I'd argue that the same sort of dynamic--albeit stylistic--was at work with Cid and Basho. On this point, I differ from Higginson.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent English Basho, February 2, 2009
This review is from: Backroads To Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal (Companions for the Journey) (Paperback)
Basho's "Oku no Hosomichi" has been translated into English numerous times, but this version by Cid Corman distinguishes itself by its faithfulness to the original. Corman preserve's Basho's sentences--rambling, meandering affairs that most translators break up into several pieces--almost exactly, bringing the immortal poet's greatest prose work into English in all its run-on glory.
Corman's translations of the haiku in the text (prose and poetry, here, are integral to one another) are idiosyncratic. He has taken the "gist" of the Japanese haiku and turned them into original English poetry. Sometimes he produces something comprehensible; other times he maintains the Japanese word order so slavishly that the poem slides from elliptical to simply enigmatic.
The translation has a few stylistic quirks. Besides sentence length and organization, Corman follows the near-total omission of the pronoun "I" throughout, a practice perfectly acceptable in Japanese but which, in English, leads to a handful of especially odd passive constructions. Corman may also leave in one too many Japanese words when a translation--despite the introductory protests--would probably have worked just as well. (Informative notes do clarify unusual terms and allusions.) In addition, this edition is sprinkled with formatting inconsistencies and the notes, in particular, suffer from sloppy typographical errors. However, such does not overshadow the translation itself.
The book (a pleasant 5x7 size) is liberally illustrated with ink drawings by Hide Oshiro, spare depictions of scenes from the text. Cid Corman's version of the Narrow Road is not only among the most accurate in style and tone, it is simply wildly different from the run of more well-known English Bashos (such as Sam Hamill's or Donald Keene's). Anyone with an interest in Japanese literature, history, or this particular poet must read this masterful translation.
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