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5.0 out of 5 stars
Translating the Untranslatable, December 12, 2010
I honestly doubt that classical Japanese poetry can be translated. I'm not so sure that any sublime poetry can be translated, but Japanese poetry, like the Japanese language, has qualities that especially defy conversion. The vogue for 'haiku' in English seems to illustrate what I mean. Haiku can be imitated, parodied, mine for images -- my son was assigned to write haiku in the third grade, and produced a well-turned wee poem alluding to the death of a pet -- but I have yet to read a plausibly literal translation of a haiku that seems to be first rate poetry in English. One obstacle is that Japanese poetry is "multi-media" from the start; the kanji (Chinese characters) are beautiful in themselves and sometimes include pictorial allusions that deepen the sense of the poems, but even more important is the calligraphy, the pure visual design. A haiku is only complete when it's masterfully calligraphed and SEEN rather than merely read. Also, there's the tremendous compression of 'meaning' possible in Japanese poetry, in which every place name has specific emotional as well as geographical resonance, in which every phrase no doubt vibrates in sympathy with phrases recalled from other poems, etc. Even the historical identity of the poet or poetess resonates in the cultural education of the reader, though the poet/poetess in question may be dead 1100 years and known only through a brief appearance in the Tales of Genji. Japanese literature is so dauntingly ancient! This collection of 100 poems by 100 different poets dates from 1237, a century before Chaucer's poems, and it includes poems that were already 600 years old, yet it has remained central to the living literary sensibilities of educated Japanese until our times. It is as if the lyrics of Catullus were still being read and experienced in Latin by ordinary sophisticated people in Houston or Calgary today.
If this book included only the semi-literal translations by Peter McMillan I probably wouldn't rush to recommend it. But it includes much more: each translation appears on a page with its original in elegantly flowing 'grass' calligraphy and with a stylized ink drawing representing the author. Then, in a separate part of the book, each poem is printed both in the standard typographical kanji/hiragana of modern Japanese and in the phonetic 'romaji' Roman alphabet. My own knowledge of Japanese is just barely enough that I can, if I want, collate the kanji, romaji, and translation, and get a fair sense of what I'm missing by nor being Japanese. The first 40 pages of the book offer a history of the collection Hyakunin Isshu (literally Hundred People One Each) and of the astonishingly preserved poetic genres of Japan. The last two sections of the book are Notes on the Poems, deciphering some of the allusions and context, and Notes on the Poets, who include Emperors and Shoguns, Buddhist monks, courtesans and dowager princesses, notable ascetics and more notable debauchees.
All 100 poems are "waka", a rigorously maintained fixed-form somewhat comparable to the English sonnet. A waka always has five lines of syllables, with the pattern 5-7-5-7-7. The vast majority of waka are love-themed, making the form also comparable to the sonnet or to the virelai of medieval troubadours. Here's a waka in romaji, with Mc Millan's translation:
Hana sasou (pronounce the o and u as two syllables)
arashi no niwa no
yuki narade
furi yuku mono wa
wa ga mi narikeri
As if lured by the storm
the blossoms are strewn about
white upon the garden floor,
yet all this whiteness is not snow --
rather, it is me
who withers and grows old.
Compression? That's 31 syllables in Japanese versus 38 in English, and many of McMillan's translations go much longer than this one. Allusions? Cherry-blossom viewing parties, whiteness as an emotion, the white of Mt Fuji, the illusion of cherry petals as snow and vice versa and thus of youth as age or age as youth, white hair as snow or petals, the withering of the man like the weathered quality of the cherry tree bark, etc. The author was Fujiwara no Kintsune (1171-1244), of the very powerful Fujiwara clan, a chancellor and grand minister who later entered religion.
Yes, of course, this is an esoteric subject and perhaps a rather specialized taste. But if you have an interest in Japanese culture -- painting, gardening, pottery, modern novels and/or samurai films -- you'll find this book extremely interesting and well-edited.
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