The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

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The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 51

by Неизвестный


  is what I want

  to be

  Translated by Hiroaki Sato

  NISHIWAKI JUNZABURŌ

  Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894–1982) was a brilliant scholar and linguist. While he was living in Europe from 1922 to 1925, he met Ezra Pound and others and began writing in English, French, and Latin. At that time, he also read the work of Hagiwara Sakutarō and wrote about his excitement at discovering that authentic contemporary poetry could be written in Japanese. Nishiwaki’s first verse written in Japanese shows the influence of surrealism, and he continued to be interested in the contemporary European avant-garde, translating, among other works, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.

  SEVEN POEMS FROM AMBARVALIA (1933)

  SHEPHERD IN CAPRI (KAPURI NO MAKIBITO)

  Even on a spring morning

  I hear the noise of autumn

  In my Sicilian pipe, retracing

  The longings of thousands of years.

  RAIN (AME)

  The south wind brought a soft goddess,

  moistened the bronze,

  moistened the fountain,

  moistened the wings of swallows and the golden hair,

  moistened the tide,

  moistened the sand,

  moistened the fish.

  It quietly moistened the temple, the glade, and the theater.

  This serene procession of the soft goddess

  Moistened my tongue.

  HAND (TE)

  The spirit’s artery snapped, God’s film snapped—

  When I grope for the darkness of lips,

  taking the hand of inspirited ether

  that still dreams with the withered timber,

  A honeysuckle reaches out

  spreading fragrance on rock,

  killing a forest.

  A hand reaches for a bird’s neck and for the twilight of gems—

  In this dreaming hand

  lies Smyrna’s dream.—

  A rosebush flaring.

  EYE (ME)

  July, when white waves pounce upon our heads,

  We pass through a lovely town in the south.

  A quiet garden lies asleep for travelers.

  Roses, sand, and water. . . .

  Heart misted by the roses.

  Hair engraved in stone.

  Sound engraved in stone.

  The eye engraved in stone opens to eternity.

  THE PRIMITIVENESS OF A CUP (KOPPU NO GENSHISEI)

  Along a luminous riverbank

  where flowers of Daphne blossom,

  a blond boy runs

  passing by an angel who holds an apple and a saber.

  His fingers firmly grasping

  a fish named red-belly

  just above its eyes of milky light—

  a golden dream curves.

  CEYLON (SĒRON)

  Natives are all inside the houses.

  In the hot sun I walked alone.

  A lizard on a drainage tile.

  Shining eggplants.

  Burning violets.

  The hot sand on a violet leaf

  pours onto the back of my hand.

  Ceylon’s ancient past.

  A MAN READING HOMER (HOMEROSU O YOMU OTOKO)

  Silently, dawn and dusk

  like two sides of a gold coin

  reached his throat every day

  through a tamarind tree.

  Around that time, he was lodging

  at a dye house on the second floor and reading Homer.

  Around that time, he had a coral pipe

  with a picture of a pansy.

  All the Gallics laughed (Your pipe

  is like a girl’s letter, or a Byzantine romance novel—

  ouuu aeee . . . ).

  Yet its phosphorescent smoke travels around a cockscomb,

  around the goddess’s nose and hips.

  Translated by Hosea Hirata

  NO TRAVELER RETURNS (TABIBITO KAERAZU)

  No Traveler Returns (Tabibito kaerazu) is a long linked poem and is cited by many as Nishiwaki’s masterpiece. Although it was not published until 1947, it is placed here as the summation of his mature creative work. The following is the opening sequence; the entire work contains 168 individual sections.

  1

  O Traveler, await.

  Before thou wettest thy tongue

  in this faint springwater,

  O think, traveler of life.

  Thou art also merely a water spirit

  that oozed out from the chinks of a rock.

  Neither does this thinking water

  flow into eternity.

  At a certain moment in eternity

  it will dry out.

  Ah! jays are too noisy!

  Sometimes out of this water

  comes the phantasmal man

  with flowers in his hand.

  ’Tis only a dream

  to seek life eternal.

  To abandon thy longings

  into the stream of life ever-flowing

  and finally to wish

  to fall off the precipice of eternity

  and disappear. . . .

  O ’tis merely an illusion.

  Thus says this phantom water sprite

  who comes out of the water to towns and villages

  when water plants reach for

  the shadows of floating clouds.

  2

  On the window,

  a dim light—

  how desolate,

  the human world.

  3

  Desolate, the world of nature.

  Desolate, our sleep.

  4

  A hardened garden.

  5

  Sorrel.

  6

  Plum resin.

  Oil of life.

  Oil of love.

  The pointed tip of a bitter old tree.

  On a summer evening,

  projecting my soul

  onto the lotus pen,

  onto the sky of shimmering stars,

  I write a sorrowful letter.

  The thought of eternity lingers.

  7

  Sticking her head

  out of the window of a house

  adorned with autumn bellflowers,

  a frowning lady

  ponders something.

  How lonely, the one who lives

  at the deep end of the alley

  where zelkova leaves fall.

  8

  That whisper,

  the darkness of a honey nest.

  How lamentable,

  the realm of women.

  9

  It is already December

  Along a path that curves around

  the foot of Nagoe Mountains,

  upon the edge of a pale protruding rock,

  a sea fern gray green

  trembles.

  A dandelion bud.

  A thistle bud.

  Buried in sand, the roots of a spearflower

  that barely hold its few small red berries,

  tremble among fallen leaves and moss.

  In this stillness of mountains

  I pay reverence to the early setting sun.

  10

  Late December

  I wander into the woods of fallen leaves.

  On bare branches already I see leaf buds

  of many shapes and colors.

  No one in the capital knows about this.

  On a vine entwined around a bare tree,

  billions of years’ longings ripen;

  there, numerous nutlets are growing,

  there, a seed more ancient than human life is buried.

  In this little nutlet, dimly

  lurks the ultimate beauty,

  ultimate loneliness perceptible to humans,

  trembling faintly.

  Is this trembling poem

  The true poetry?

  This nutlet must be poetry.

  Even the story of the lark singing at a castle isn’t poetry.

  11


  I just cannot remember

  how to write “rose.”

  How lonely,

  this window

  through which I stick out

  my sorrowful head

  at pitiful dawn whenever

  I try to write “rose” and

  have to look it up.

  12

  At night

  when flowers bloom

  on floating weeds,

  I put a boat on the water.

  A cloud covers the moon.

  Translated by Hosea Hirata

  KITASONO KATSUE

  Kitasono Katsue (1902–1978), always a flamboyant figure, was, like Nishiwaki Junzaburo, interested in surrealism, Dada, and the experiments of the futurists. It was Kitasono who helped create the vocabulary and syntax that allowed a generation of Japanese poets to join in such international movements. His long friendship by correspondence with Ezra Pound provides a glimpse into the creative mentality of both poets.

  COLLECTION OF WHITE POEMS

  (HAKUSHOKU SHISHŪ, 1927)

  1

  white residence

  white table

  pink noble lady

  white distant view

  blue sky

  2

  bright port

  white steamship

  red flag

  white hotel

  decolorized boy

  flowers and food

  3

  glove holding parasol

  white outfit

  candy

  white porcelain and white socks

  French language

  4

  flat red disk

  white dancer doll

  lady’s white shoes

  red curtain

  5

  flower and mirror

  white room

  white conch

  silver boy

  cherry

  6

  pink toys

  world map

  saber

  balloon

  7

  cup and water

  one white carnation

  white table

  cup and water

  8

  red hat

  black jacket

  white socks

  black shoes

  modern noble lady’s equipment

  1 2 3 10

  white hat

  red jacket

  white socks

  white shoes

  9

  white tableware

  flower

  spoon

  spring, 3 P.M.

  white

  white

  red

  10

  prism architecture

  white animal

  space

  11

  wet paint

  blue flag

  apple and noble lady

  white landscape

  hands off

  VIN DU MASQUE (1928)

  the Queen of imagination who wears the sun’s hat is the imagined sun’s Queen

  the King is watching a movie theater

  the King should ride an airship

  climbing glass chimney glass airship climbs

  the Kiiiiing of eternity

  the Queeeen of eternity

  but, oh wandering mailman I wonder where you carried your love letters and

  mother

  King of eternity worship on sand dune throne the Queen of eternity worship

  here worshiped Queen of eternity has trombone hips and a circular head

  she is the Queen of sadness

  WORDS (KOTOBA, 1932)

  in summer let’s buy blue lampshades

  to see your and our lovely fingers

  in the star city is an angel with seashell fingernails

  a selfish, shabby angel

  that’s you

  in the shade of waves of acacia leaves

  a true manicure is performed

  but

  ah, touch the nails and you’ll get scarred

  this was also a simple, pencil-sketched angel

  TWO POEMS (1938)

  These poems were written in English and published in the London journal Townsman.

  I

  Under the umbrella of concrete, yesterday, we laughed at tomato for its carelessness.

  Their thoughts have gone rotten by a bucket, and they talk of rope necktie.

  A shot is cabbage in the sky over the office.

  Dear friend, now is all right the heel.

  Today a duck they dug out in a brush of philosophismus

  My laugh is nearer to the condition of dachshund-like cylinder than the cucumber-shaped idea of Aquinas.

  I put on gloves emerald green and start with a book Membranologie under my arm.

  Is there a shop to sell clear bags?

  Tomorrow beside a bucket a necktie I shall wear for the sake of General clothed in vegetable costume.

  A weary city is likened to a brush.

  Begone! a wandering head.

  Begone! in a fling like an explosive, over the rock through a Geissler’s brass pipe.

  II

  In leaden slippers I laugh at the fountain of night, and scorn a solitary swan.

  A parasol of glass she spreads and wanders along the lane the cosmos flowering.

  Over the cypress tree I image, to myself, a hotel marked with two golf clubs crossed;

  And move my camera on the sand of night.

  In the street, there shining the spindle-shaped amalgam stairs, the telephone bell is ringing on the desk.

  In Congo by a barber a parrot is trained and sold at Kabinda.

  Then by cheerful young sailors her head is replaced by a leaden one:

  Just a glimpse of it a watchmaker catches under coconut trees, where is seen a dome tightly closed,

  On the table I toss the gloves of antelope, and the gloomy fellows I ignore.

  A typewriter packed in a raincoat of oilskin is dead and gone on the Le Temps.

  She, spreading the parasol of glass, pursues a nightingale, in the space between the Le Temps and the cosmos flowers.

  Or the new age is born.

  Under the hydroplane, “Hamburger Fleugzeugbau Ha 139,” a duck throws into confusion the battle flue.

  Among the cosmos flowers vibrate machine guns.

  By the drain a young washerman blows up.

  O the clearer, the better is the sky over the street.

  Flash on the concrete a bright wire and shovel.

  ALMOST MIDWINTER (SHŌKAN, 1942)

  winter rain

  shines on

  slight moss

  like on damask

  I put on deer

  armor

  and sit in a

  narrow hallway

  with the passing days

  thoughts are light

  bright

  and futile

  one bitter drop

  contained

  as in a Chinese bowl

  cold and futile there is nothing

  there is nothing

  I should know by now

  also, no books

  and no visitors

  KITASONO’S FIRST LETTER TO EZRA POUND (APRIL 26, 1936)

  Dear Sir,

  You will please excuse me that I take the liberty of writing you. For a long time, since Imagism movement, we have always expected you as a leader on new literature. Especially your profound appreciation in the Chinese literature and the Japanese literature has greatly pleased us.

 

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