POETREE

While it is tempting to pick a relatively easy translation tension, such as word order versus order of images, I think it is time to tackle the infamous pronoun problem and the related issue of context. Here's a particularly knotty one, one that would be even worse were it not for its complicated textual history.

Kokinshu #35 is from book 1, in the section of plum blossom poems. To explain the difficulty here, I need to lift up the hood and show the details of how to unpack a Japanese poem. ( Or at least how I do it, which as you've seen is often at length, and immodestly long posts go under a modesty cut. )

And that's it for me this week (unless someone really wants that word-versus-image-order post). I hope I've managed to convey something of the fun of translation, and the beauties of classical Japanese poetry -- or if not, that I was at least entertaining. And I leave you with a question: which of the above versions is "correct," and why?

---L.

Ki no Tomonori is best known today as one of the four editors of the Kokinshu. His birth date is unknown, but he died before the collection was completed around 905 CE. In his day and for a few centuries afterward, he was considered a major poet, writing works that struck a fashionable balance between a courtier's smooth wittiness and an elegant manner.

One reason his reputation declined is that tastes changed, as open wit was devalued in favor of emotional depth and subtle allusion. Another is that he was, in fact, not a very original poet: I've seen him use only a single image or conceit I haven't met somewhere else in the works of his predecessors or contemporaries, and that's in a thoroughly mediocre poem. What he excelled at, more than anyone of his time, was making it sound beautiful. Or to put it another way, his poetry is good in precisely those ways that do not translate well.

Here is his most famous poem, chosen to represent him in One Hundred People, One Poem Each. It is from book 2 of the Kokinshu, a spring poem with the topic "Written on cherry blossoms falling."

久方のひかりのどけき春の日にしづ心なく花のちるらむ
hisakata no hikari nodokeki haru no hi ni shizugokoro naku hana no chiruramu	Gentle light shines down from the eternal heavens,     so on this spring day why do the cherry blossoms scatter with such restless hearts?

( A transient footnote. )

The main difficulty here is what makes this his best-known work -- the original is absolutely lovely, quite possibly the most beautiful poem in the Kokinshu in terms of sound and rhythm and their play with the sense of the words. Something of the effect can be half-glimpsed by noting the interplay of syllables beginning with h and k. The only thing one can do is polish, and polish, and polish until the translation gleams with its own reflected grace.

I cannot claim I've succeeded at that, but I am pleased I managed to shape the progression of vowels, rising high and back in the mouth until dropping to the low front with the final line's restless hearts. This is only a pale imitation of the original's effect, but it's something.

So here's a question: can anyone recommend translations from any language that reproduce the aesthetic, and especially sonic, effects of the original poem?

---L.