POETREE

Sonnets were for a long time strongly identified with the Petrarchan tradition, and even now the form can have connotations of love poetry despite extensive proof that it's useful for a two-part argument of a certain size on any subject. Not to mention, there's quite a few sonnets having nothing whatsoever to do with Laura in Petrarch's Canzone. But to start us off, an actual Petrarchan sonnet, with a more-or-less literal translation (cribbed together from ponies and rusty Spanish) plus a much freer by the poet who introduced the form to English. Note, btw, the classic volta.


Una candida cerva sopra l'erba
verde m'apparve, con duo corna d'oro,
fra due riviere, all'ombra d'un alloro,
levando 'l sole a la stagione acerba.

Era sua vista sí dolce superba,
ch'i' lasciai per seguirla ogni lavoro:
come l'avaro che 'n cercar tesoro
con diletto l'affanno disacerba.

"Nessun mi tocchi" al bel collo d'intorno
scritto avea di diamanti et di topazi
"libera farmi al mio Cesare parve."

Et era 'l sol già vòlto al mezzo giorno,
gli occhi miei stanchi di mirar, non sazi,
quand'io caddi ne l'acqua, et ella sparve.

( Literal rendering )

( Wyatt's rendering )

Leaving aside the all-too-obvious fact that I am not the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was, this does raise questions of just how valid adaptations and imitations are as translations and of the role of either in the adoption of forms across languages -- but since this is not translation but sonnet week, I'll set those aside (after linking to this discussion of translations of another Petrarch sonnet by the first two poets to use the form in English). Though doing so leaves me with no question for discussion on this one. Oops. Well, maybe you guys can think of something to ask me. Or we can return to the meta question of what defines a sonnet.

---L.

We know very little about Ono no Komachi aside from that she was active in the middle of the 9th century and the subject of later medieval legends about her as a hardhearted beauty. Based on a body of 22 poems reliably attributed to her, she's considered one of Japan's greatest woman poets, noted in particular for her passionate love poems and her technical mastery, especially at using words with multiple meanings.

That last requires some comment. ( Brief discussion of ways of doubling meanings, including one unique to Japanese, ) by way of context. As for the poem: this is again from book 2 of the Kokinshu, in a section about flowers fading in late spring, and like Tomonori's poem, it also represents her in One Hundred People, One Poem Each. The headnote claims the topic is unknown.

花の色はうつりにけりないたづらにわが身世にふるながめせしまに
hana no iro wa utsurinikeri na itazura ni waga mi yo ni furu nagame seshi ma ni	This flower's beauty has faded away it seems     to no avail have I spent my time staring into space at the long rains

So about those double-meanings? ( Let me count the ways -- and the compromises. ) And even then, I'd still want footnotes.

Incidentally, if you ignore or overlook all the double-meanings, it's relatively easy to read the poem as a single, simple statement (for example, a descriptive bit about flowers fading in the rain). One that gets it very, very wrong. Which may, when coupled with its reputation, go a long way toward explaining why this is one of the most translated poems of any language. If you're interested in a detailed analysis of several English versions, and how they do or do not get it right, I recommend Joshua Mostow's excellent discussion in chapter 3 of Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image (link is to Google Books version).

Technical details aside, double-meanings appear in poetry in every language, of course. Can anyone recommend translations that manage to reproduce, either directly or by other means, double-meanings of the original?

---L.

The Kokinwakashu ("Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry"), or Kokinshu for short, was the first imperially commissioned anthology of poetry in Japanese, compiled around 905 CE by a panel of four leading young poets of the day. This was a cultural watershed -- it firmly cemented the reputation of Japanese as a valid language for poetry, as opposed to the Chinese in vogue for the prior century and a half, and it set what was acceptable in terms of diction, subjects, and images for court poetry (and by omission, what was not acceptable) for the next thousand years minus a couple decades.

( Background notes on the collection, verse form, Japanese grammar, and the collapse of ambiguity (if not civilization itself). )

For what it's worth, my philosophy of translation is to render my best understanding of the original's sense while reproducing as much as possible of the poem's quality and structures -- sonic, linguistic, rhetorical, and so on. This involves not only interpretation, but trade-offs. For example, the normal sentence order of Japanese is almost, but not entirely, the complete reverse of English. This means that in a literal prose paraphrase of a poem that's one long clause, the nouns, verbs, and adjectives are in the opposite order in English from the original. If the sequence of images these substantives call up is not important to the poem's effect -- for example, if the mainspring of the poetry is a witty metaphor -- then this reversal does no real damage. But if the images form a careful progression, such as sweeping from a wide scene down to a small detail, it is probably better to maintain that sequence as best as possible, at the expense of breaking up the smooth swoop of a single clause.

Trade-offs. Just like in any poem, or any other work of art.

For this week, I've chosen three Kokinshu poems that highlight different problems of translation. I'm afraid there's far more prose than verse in these posts -- partly because the poems are so small, but mostly it's that it takes a lot to unpack these lovely puzzle-boxes that are Japanese verse. Starting on the next rock, coming tomorrow.

Until then, for discussion: those of you who translate, what is your philosophy/practice? What do you focus on the most?

( A modest footnote )

---L.