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paraverse press new books reviews errata glosses paraversing haiku robin d. gill japanese page mad description. Errata & Lacuna for Mad In Translation If you wish to print out this and
paste it in your book, by all means do so. If you wish to quote something,
All the errors noted below were corrected and the revised book (same ISBN) uploaded to the printer in Autumn. As far as I know, only one large mistranslation was missed and, as luck would have it, not only is the poem a chapter head, but the first sentence of my explanation is "My inability to do justice to this poem hurts." And, now, that pain is excruciating! So you may call my failure to catch a major pun not only embarrassing but ironic. The Chapter (pg.84-5) is titled "To Pluck the Form of a Soundless Zither" and the first word of Shokusanjin's poem, yaminureba puns on the woman being sick. I caught all the classic allusions to Genji, but having found the poem without the accompanying preface, indicating that the poet lay next to a sick woman, caught only the old double entendre and missed the missed the main, third one. And I still thought the poem a masterpiece! Yaminureba is “sick” (becoming sick if/when, or “having become sick (she) fell asleep)! Perhaps the current translations could be replaced with,
She lies sick and silent, a zither
without strings . . .
Sick, she sleeps, a zither without
strings, & what "How much trash and how many mounds" I also have a probable misreading of a poem with a fine translation: p. 129 “suggests to me an awareness of the mounds left by the ancients . . . " blah, blah, blah, but I now think How much trash and how many mounds
must pile up before iku chiri no yama o ikue ni kasanete mo ge ni kuni wa ugoki-naki yo ni should be read as a lament for political instability! "My poor potted children!" p. 696. I mistranslated Ryoukan/Ryokan's forgotten begging bowl (hachi no ko) as "potted plants" and "my poor potted children." Finally, reading a whole anthology of Ryokan, I found over a dozen versions of the poem. Only a couple have him engrossed in the sumire, or violet/s that led me astray . . . And, as it turned out, someone searched for him to return the bowl, which confirmed his belief in human goodness, hence so many versions, some very long. |
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Errata for the reading copy first edition (less than 100 copies out there) in easy-to-follow page order follow this sampling. * (8/13) Special Bulletin. On page 455 I misattributed a paragraph beginning and ending as follows: Donald Keene, perhaps the most conspicuous of the previous generation of scholars, apparently was not too fond of kyōka, . . . so often resorted to parody.” -- to M. Kei (who writes beautifully on kyoka in English), when it should have cited Behold My Swarthy Face, a blog & a Modernologist's rough draft titled Ishikawa Jun’s “Moon Gems” Saturday, January 26, 2008. Also, I mistakenly called the misattributed Kei a poet and a captain when he is a poet and a deckhand on a Chesapeake Oyster-boat. Apologies to both parties! ** (8/3) Special Bulletin, a most important error addition: Getsudokan should be Getsudoken. He is one of my favorite mad poets but a non-entity on the internet, so I would hate to start him off wrong!
First a probable error I hope you, dear reader, will find these for me, but, in this case, I found it myself (on pg. 522).
A misreading of fifteen or twenty years stuck in my head – call it
“cognitive dissonance” – corrupted my ability to read what was there,
once again, before my eyes. Two
days after the pdf was sent to the printer, as I was gathering the best poems,
looking at the Japanese alone, I suddenly saw what was what.
Perhaps, sending the book off to the printer broke my links to the
material in it and allowed me to finally edit myself as another might.
Note that all the Japanese originals are in the book
(visible at Google Book) but not here for most browsers cannot read Japanese. My previous translations -- all three -- that you will find in the book are all more or less this:
The many things I imagine must be going on – I’d view! But, I now bet it must be this, instead:
I cannot view those Loving Stars as if they are out there, Either way, the waka questions the usual perspective on things and is, to my mind, kyoka-like though, perhaps not quite so mad as I made it. For this and other translations in the book, I am always happy to receive the opinion of others which may be sent to Uncool Wabin (combined as one word without caps) at hotmail dot com. |
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Second, a translation that escaped me. Errors do not bother me much for I make no claim to be omniscient. But coming up with a better translation for a poem of long acquaintance shortly after printing a book hurts as much as the heart of the person unfortunate enough to finally marry a second-best the day before their old sweetheart comes back to town in one of those country weepers that can do in three minutes what takes an opera hours to accomplish (pardon my prejudice). And, in this case, what is worse is that it is the first damn example in the book and by the poet I know best, Issa:
shômotsu mo nokorazu bô ni furu^sato no hito no shimijimi
nikuki tsura kana Well, what do you think? While I never could match his Tom Swifty -- turning silverfish into an adverb (shimijimi) -- and this fails to save the detail (the spiteful faces of townsman recalling silverfish in the poet's eyes), by verbing silverfish and playing on a proverb, the level of wit final approaches the original. Unless you can come up with something better, please print this out or scribble it into your copy of Mad In Translation! You are free to change details. For example, some might prefer "My hometown's motto is ~ " rather than my interrogative. When a close translation is impossible, such matters can not be objectively settled one way or another. Here is the Japanese for Japanese or other Japanese readers who might not have my book, as the original has not to this time been put on the web unless I drank too much and shared it (contributed it to some blog), for when I am in a good mood I want to show and tell. |
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Third, another translation that also escaped me. In this case, the following poem was not up front. It started the only other chapter about mad poems that were actually mad in the sense of being angry other than Issa's silverfish chapter. It is important because the poet is often called the first kyoka master and for being so outrageous and yet justifiable in a righteous way. Before introducing my new translations, here, following the poem, are the translations in the book for your comparison:
nyôin no gozen no hiroku naru
koto wa kyôgetsu-bô ga shiji no iru yue kyôgetsu-bô d.1328
The Empress’s Garden
The Empress’s Vagina A short explanation. She requisitioned part of the Monk's property (he, too, was of Imperial blood) to expand her front garden. “Private-ground” (shiji) was once slang for a man’s privates and gozen – literally “honorable front” not only refers to the Empress and her garden but her privates. In other words, he got his metaphysical come-uppance. The original combines both of the above in one pun-enabled poem. Alas, I failed to find a way to integrate the two in time. But after coming up with the Silverfish solution, I decided it might be a good day to see if I could do it. And, in a matter of minutes, got this:
The next monk she fucks with will slip
right out and beg her pardon – There are two things wrong here. It is too obscene – not because I wanted to be dirty, mind you, but because the rhyme “pardon” had to justify itself. Rhyme, now as ever, is a dangerous thing (Look what rod did to the poor copyright ditty writer in Orwell’s 1984 who could not help mentioning god!). My second effort pegged it:
The Queen whose garden ate his messed
with the wrong monk-bard: This is exactly like the original. The poet refers to himself in the third-person and the word referring to the male member is now obsolete. Yard was once a common word for it. Cotton Mathers, an admirable preacher and physician who worked harder than anyone else to stop the executions of so-called witches in Salem, treated an unfortunate with a hole in his (other than the normal one in the glans). No, I do not look up these things: I corrected the translation of Chadwick Hansen’s moving book (Witchcraft in Salem) – which I had scouted and recommended to my employer, a Japanese publisher – which had a hole dug in the garden. Mistranslations as funny as this stick in the mind; and, speaking of yards, as I write this, I recall a kite nailed to a barn-door in an 800-page biography of Darwin I corrected. The idea of displaying an ornithological culprit to scare off others did not occur to the translator, for he was a biologist and not a farmer, so when I found it, the kite was a species of the paper family in Japanese. |
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Fourth, a poem that escaped me. This sort of miss is also hardly a matter for the typical Errata. I miss it because I thought the following poem was in the book. I’m sure it was, but vanished in the process of moving from note to text or vice-versa when something interrupted me and only now, a half year later the day after I uploaded my pdf’d text to Lightning Source, as I collected the most interesting hundred or so poems in the book did I come to realize, gasp! it was nowhere! As I reread poems about the horrors of dry wet-nurses by the kyôka-master Shokusanjin and by Issa I recalled that I had a milder wetnurse complaint a thousand years older, a great pair of dueling kyôka between a scholar spouses Ôe no Masahira no Ason ( ) and Akazome Emon ( )published in the gsis (#1217). When a woman who came to serve as a wet nurse produced only a thin stream of milk, the husband, Ason raged, in Cranston’s translation, “What a scatterbrain – / To think she could squeeze by /As a wetnurse here /In a learned doctor’s house: /Little learning and less milk!” (Waka vol. 2A pg 552). The mad poem plays on some one hakanaku, i.e., frivolously, lacking milk=chi=learning coming to a hakase, or scholars’ house for employment. In my mad translation, that is not so close to the original (hakanaku mo omoikeru kana chi mo nakute hakase no ie no menoto sen to wa) as the professor’s, but might amuse you nonetheless, it is: A
wet-nurse, with no more brains or milk than a tit-mouse? The wife’s good-tempered reply (sa mo araba are yamatogokoro shi kashikoku wa hosoji ni tsukete arasu bakari zo) , again, in Cranston’s translation, “Let’s be satisfied / If at least her native wit / Deserves respect – / Scant schooling and thin milk, no doubt, / But enough to squeeze her in.” (#1218 ditto) Here, too, the main pun is on the same knowledge/milk which modified by hoso=scant/thin is pronounced ji rather than chi. I recall that I did a translation which made Japan “Big Peace,” but it, too, is lost. Before doing it, I wrote Professor Cranston to express my enthusiasm for his book and, as is my wont, question him where I entertained doubt. Here, for example: “I suspect the yamatogokoro is used as rhetoric for the attitude her hubby should take and may not, as you write, be defending the wetnurse for having native wit/japanese spirit.” In other words, I felt she was saying that he ought to be more “big-peace” (how Yamato was often written) in spirit even if that meant reading arasu as arazu. What she
is she is – does not our native wit set us free Cranston thanked me for the additional reading (the general idea, I just cooked up the above translation, about as loose as they come) but stuck to his grammar and his guns: “I still think yamatogokoro applies to the nurse.” Things are more complex and there is an in-between reading She is
what she is and wisdom born of our Big Peace way But, suffice it to say that this example of what can only be called an exchange of kyôka should have been in my book! With the rhetorical usage of yamatogokoro, I would hope the interpretation of the poem would interest other scholars of both ancient Japanese literature and politics and look forward to hearing from them. Perhaps I should add that I may well have lost not only my writing on this poem but a whole chapter, as each chapter in my book is only two-pages. Microsoft’s automatic updates sometimes caught me by surprise and I came back from chores (feeding the cows and cat and crossing the rail-track for the mail) to find an entire day’s work destroyed. The professor’s translation “what a scatterbrain” applies well to me for when such a thing happened (I think it happened thrice in the last year), I could not recall what exactly was lost! |
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I beg your pardon if any misses irritate you, and yoroshiku onegaishimasu! |
| Overall. Because I had no
way to search all the files, I have irregular corrections. I have
found at least one place (p.538) where "Sugimoto and Hamada" is not
corrected to Hamada and suspect there are more (Only one of two
book editors did the annotations I often refer to). I forgot to correct
some romanizations I learned were wrong (eg. ashibiki-yama is still
ashihiki-yama somewhere). Now I can search the book so these will
be fixed if/when a new edition comes out. Most of such mistakes are
unimportant because the Japanese is supplied. Please tell me about
bigger misses, such as the first mentioned above, or weigh in on matters such as the second one mentioned
if you can. And, of course, surprise me with an honest-to-god correction and I and my readers will be
forever grateful! Page-by-page Starts Here Below |
| p.8 Oops. I know i forgot to close a
parenthesis on the copyright page -- it made the line jump and I intended
to rework it but forgot --
p.35. Mitoku playing with Ariwara no Motokata's in/famous first poem of the Kokinshu. The present two readings will be replaced by the following, better for the rhyme and for covering all of the basic reading possibilities. toshinouchi no haru ni mumaruru midoriko o hitotsu to ya iwan futatsu to ya iwan mitoku year-within’s spring-in born infant+acc one+emph say=celebrate-should, two+emph say=celeb.
A child born in the spring within the year – what can we do? We want to call him “one” and we want to call him “two!” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ or ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We cannot call her “one” and we cannot call her “two!” p.86 Ryokan’s wingless tofu poem. The second line of the second five-line translation has been altered – a good case of ambiguity as the soul of wit: Geese & duck Geese & duck p.92. & 486. Stylos galore. There are a word or two changed in all the translations and the explanation split between the text and the notes for this poem by one of the top two female kyoka masters was not that great either. ukauka to nagaki yosugara akugarete tsuki ni hanage no kazu ya yomaren fushimatsu no kaka
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(1)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lolling about the whole night long I’m smitten by the moon; Handsome will count the hair in my nose and leave me in a ruin. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(2)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forgetting yourself the whole night long, besotted by the moon soon she’ll read your nostril hair and you will play her tune! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(3)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lolling about from dusk to dawn in love that’s how it goes, In the moonlight, one can count every hair within a nose! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(4)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Putsing away a whole night in adoration? Take care, in moon-light, the girls can read your nostril hair! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(5)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Absentmindedly, all through the night, admiring the harvest moon can count your nostril hairs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The last, by Rokuo Tanaka, I deparsed. Nostril-hair-counting means paying rapt attention to one’s superior, or in a mistress’s case, one’s sugar-daddy. Why so many readings? Because the identity of the counter is ambiguous if not contradictory. A moon-viewer looks up at the beloved heavenly body from the lowly perspective of the hair-reader. On the other hand, moon light shines down or rather up the nostrils, as looking up we lean back. Reading 1) assumes the poet Fushimatsu no Kaka, or The Unkempt Wife, one of the top two female Tenmei era kyôka-masters, is the protagonist and the moon a fair man, the man in the moon 桂男 (katsurao) was considered to be dangerously good-looking lady’s man. The ruin is purely rhyme – but doesn’t staying up all night do that to you? Reading 2) assumes the poem is addressed to the poet’s husband, Akera Kankô, for male poets tended to stay up all night moon-viewing. The language (yosugura) can not help but allude to Bashô’s well-known haiku of all-night (yomosugura) moon-viewing while circling a pond, and thus kiddingly wonders if the nature of her husband Akera Kankô of Revealing-loin-cloth fame and his friends’ moon-viewing was not less pure than that of the famous aesthete. Reading 3) is left personless but based on a guess the poet recalls moon-viewing with her husband. Reading 4) is the preferred reading. The moon, like Autumn leaves, was an excuse for men to go out and paint the town and Kankô’s cool kaka, ever the sophisticate in the good and not bad meaning of the word, was cleverly warning him not to paint himself into a corner with some coquette. Reading 5) is by Rokuo Tanaka (2006). His translation does not quite match his preface: “she is bantering with a flirting man” but Tanaka has done something fascinating here. His “harvest moon” – the unspecified moon is by convention that of mid-fall – serves as the object of admiration and a seeing subject, in turn. That is, he reproduces a Japanese-style pivot-word, though, to be fair to the poet, the original does not require one to ignore grammar. In the end, none of the five readings captures the fine way the Unkempt Wife plays with “moon and blossoms” (tsuki ni hana), a combination suggesting the lifelong aesthetic pursuit of the poet (favoring readings that it is addressed to her husband), before the would-be blossoms become a nose for the hair that follows. But the biggest problem is sexing the moon. Forgetting myself the whole night long I’m stuck on one so fair,
The moon, my Laurel Man, must have read my nostril hair! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forgetting yourself the whole night long stuck on one so fair;
My man, beware, your Luna reads your every nostril hair! p.94.
Insufficient explanation. The
underlined part needs to be added though it will be hard with the page
packed tight! |
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p.115. Improved translation. One of Saigyô’s poems on drowning in one’s own tears is translated: “Shed long enough / desire’s tears crest higher / than the River Styx // That is they fill a deep pool / to drown your love-sick fool.” and “Longing for love / tears rise and, by and by / The River Styx! // Water so deep you can / kiss your ass goodbye!” I used too much slang, born of frustration at not being able to recreate the pun on the name of the river crossed on the journey to the underworld, Mitsusegawa, where Mitsu is a homophone for “to deepen.” This would be a better translation: mono-omou namida ya yagate mitsusegawa hito o shizumuru fuchi to naruramu Tears
shed of longing pool and by and by leave one in a fix p.121. Improved translation. Having grown-up by the sea, the translator could not help adding said body of water to both readings of Jakuren’s masterpiece: “A River of Tears swept me downstream, then out to Sea – / Beached, I awoke with nothing but the detritus of dreams. and, River of Tears, it carries you out to sea, but then you wake /alone with nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of dreams.” Is the new translation below better? namidagawa mi mo ukinu beki nesame kana hakanaki yume no nagori bakari ni jakuren Down a river of tears I float and waking find I’m washed ashore Alone with the detritus of my dreams and nothing more. p.124. Is this better? Absent a word comparable to minare, “used to being waterlogged” this folksy Tear River gave me trouble in translation. My earlier try “I may be soaked already but . . . Someone, won’t you call a boat! / I’d cross this stream – and go tell my Dear that here on tears I float!” minaregawa watasu o fune ni kotozuten namida ni uku to kimi ni shirase yo akitsuna I’m stuck in a river, the river is me, won’t someone call a boat! And tell my love her sweetheart upon his tears doth float! p.158-9. This is more a stylistic improvement in the paragraph following the translations of a favorite 17c free-thinking poem. The three translations are all different from the ones in the book, too, but that is just because every time I read a poem I want to retranslate it! (to paraphrase e.w. in Nineteen Ways, I cannot read the same poem twice) nenbutsu o shiite môsu mo iranu mono moshi gokuraku o tôri-sugitte wa monk tôsui Making light of blockheads who pray day and night.
With prayers, pushing it too much may prove unwise Taken literally, religion is a blast, a magazine – in the old meaning of the word – full of ammunition for humor. Popular Buddhism, like Catholicism, stereotypically prospered by providing people with concrete ideas of Paradise and the itinerary taken to get there, then charging them and their surviving family hefty fees for safe-passage. The kyôka is not about indulgences per se, but the frame of mind in which they thrive. Though not by Ikkyû, this is the sort of witty free-thinking rationalism usually identified with . . . p.164. New translations. Here is one poem from the prose text that was referred to but only explained as a sucker (the good ones you lick or suck) is not a homophone with heaven and no other pun could be found. At present, my printer cannot go more than 740pp. but some day these translations may be added if . . . muzukashiku toitari mata wa yawaraketsu hitomi no ame o neburasarekeri genin 1679 Rather than trying to explain what’s hard or make it easy Give them Heaven on a Stick: it will soften as they lick! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rather than explain what is arcane or make it explicit, Give them a taste of heaven, a pun to help them lick it! The second reading is what might be called a meta-translation. I suppose that this is what Japanese call an omake for people considerate enough to visit this page. p.176. The underlined is new. The first poem is a stylistic redo to improve the rhyme/wit and the second is the sort of guess that would benefit from the opinions of experts of 18c Japanese literature. In the book, the poem is only noted in the text . . . . . . Shokusanjin would later garnish “a picture of a female geisha (performer)” with a corollary: Curved soles are fine, but keep a corner clean: Pony geta too round tumble too easily, I mean
maruku to mo hito-kado are na komageta no
amari maroki wa korobi yasuki ni
shokusanjin Round they are but there is a corner still on pony geta Were they rounder yet she’d roll over even betta! In the original, Shokusanjin only alters the second poem from the Chikusai book by a few words in the middle, the “human heart” is changed to the beveled-front pony-geta worn by dancers whose tumbling was often deliberate, i.e., sleeping with a customer. The second reading assumes that the amari, or “too/excessive” in the vernacular was also used as an intensifier meaning “very,” and that this reading was also intended. (Experts! Speak up or forever hold your peace. p.177. Oops! The gloss for the first part of a poem used that of the poem next to it by accident. (This is a computing typo caused when a piece of something is copied to save time with setting font size and spacing parameters and not redone because someone or thing steals the attention of a writer with a poor short-term memory) kata-fuchi
ni mi o nagen to wa omoedomo Note: it will end up a bit different because only two and a half inches of space are available as the poems are side by side. English’s lack of a single word for a deep-spot in a river good for committing suicide makes a short gloss hard to say the least! FYI, the trans. says a "deep river bend." |
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pg. 207 I am afraid my translations of Shikibu’s love–like-a-burning-moth waka may have been too mad. The second reading which took “to mienu bakari zo” as negative, with its “~ you would think / We had never seen moths burn or smelled that stink” is so much fun it will stay, regardless, but I am considering changing the two positive readings to: We may
give up our lives for love, and that in plain sight Or, does that make them too humdrum even if more accurate? Scholars of ancient Japanese, any opinion on the positive vs negative reading of mienu here? THIS IS A PRESENT FOR SHIKIBU LOVERS TO ATONE FOR THE ABOVE MISTAKE, IF IT WAS A MISTAKE. IT IS A TALE REVEALING HER REPUTATION FOR BEING A POET WHO LOVED LOGICAL ARGUEMENT. yamazato wa nerarezarikeri yo mo sugara matsu fuku kaze ni odorokasarete Mountain
hollars! I couldn’t fall asleep at all last night Shikibu had a child without a father and left it with a guardian sword in the Gojo area. Years later she was enjoying a country outing and by chance ended up lodging at the house of a commoner who had found her daughter. The wind that night was strong and she composed the above poem. The girl in the house overheard it and asked if she might compose a reply, and using the parrot-repeat method: yamazato wa nenu to iedomo nereba koso matsu fuku kaze ni odorokasarete This
mountain hollar kept you awake? Forgive me if I scoff Shikibu was impressed and asked what sort of person she was and hearing the whole story knew without doubt that she was her daughter. One story has it that she was the one who would later become known as Ko-Shikibu, or little Shikibu. p.214. Unsure. When doing the short version of the book, for better or worse – what do you think? – “& bed” was just pegged on the end. You can scribble it into your copy or leave it out. hikoboshi no hiku teu (to iu) ushi no yodare yori kono chigiri koso nagatarashikeri shokusanjin Long kept – longer by far than the slobber of the Oxen led by our Cowboy Star – Their Wedding Vows & bed. p.214. The stylistic revisions are underlined. “But” and “welded” improve the sound of the poem, despite the latter making the last line 4-beat, a bit too long. “Them beans” was horrid but there were too many the’s and “what” did not pop into a mind too intent on explaining a poem with a content too language- and culture-specific to really translate. But even when translation is impossible, a reading should sound decent. tanabata no hiyoku no tori no tamagozake renri no eda no mame ya kuu ran
Give me wine w/ eggs / from stellar birds that flying
/ use one wing each, p.215. New translation. A Poem in the text that was not translated but only explained. Just translated for the short version of the book.
hikoboshi no kubeki yoi nari sasagani no kumo no ito yori hosoki sômen
teiryû The herder star will come tonight, for only a spider could spin noodles as thin as these prepared while she waits for him p.225. Just one word has been changed here: “energy” in the main text is now “drive.” kyô sake ni kiku mo hitasanu fujômono nakanaka inochi nagaku arubeki tatsunomi He who
today lacks even the drive to steep ‘mums in wine p.232. Unsure. Your translator, for all his mad translation, tries to maintain consistency of form, i.e., relatively uniform visual line length. Sometimes that backfires. sutehatete mi wa naki mono to omoedomo yuki no furu
hi wa samuku koso are Saigyô I like to
think / the world & I no longer / hang together I like to
think / the world & I no longer / hang together The “do” rather than “would” was used because otherwise the last line (when parsed into five) looked longer than that of the poem it parodied. Rereading, the translator changed his mind. “~ so would I” is better, regardless. Or, is it? Opinion, anyone? p.275. Stylistic revision. This 19c spook kyoka ends “~ terrified her self to see.” On reflection, it is more effective to lose the rhyme or rhyme early and leave "herself" for last as underlined below. atama naki bakemono nari to rokurokubi mite odorokan onoga karada wo ng kyôka - hyakumono A
headless spook? What in the world comes after me! p.282. The underlined stylistic revisions are being considered. As the translator is not a confident poet but merely one trying to show off the wittiness of the original as best he can, he welcomes opinions and suggestions on how to improve individual translations. The third translation below is brand new. noki chikaki tonari ni dani mo towareneba bin hodo fukaki kakureya wa nashi musen Even
your good neighbors knock no more upon your door Even
old neighbors knock no more upon this door Even
neighbors take great care to pretend you are not there Even
neighbors take care pretending not to notice me
When you’re down, you’re out.
Even neighbors never call when poverty comes to stay p.283. I have it Yes in the book, but hell if I can decide which is better. It alludes to both a Kokinshu waka that held this to be a world of falsehood and Teika's waka where the cold rains of that month proved true to their reputation by showing up on time. I now favor "no" as covering both allusions better, but experts are welcome to chime in.
itsuwari no aru yo narikeri
kaminazuki binbôgami wa mi o mo hanarenu
yûchôrô 16c I suppose the bright thing would be to not say "yes" or "no" but it would be a shame to lose the emphatic (it is my way to peg the narikeri) -- would anyone prefer, say, "Verily it is . . ." -- or would that be too affected? |
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p.306. New translation. I give translations for the more famous improved variation of this poem by Hakuin, but the earlier poem by his friend Hannyabo is left to the prose. If room can be made to add a translation, this might be it: waga yado no kaki no moto made yake-kuru o hannyaku bô nite uteba hi tomaru hannyabô K A K I N O M O T O H I T O M A R U When the
flames reach the base of the wall of my dwelling Hannya punning his “monk” suffix bô into a staff is clever and his name meaning prajna also has power, but such detail works against the poem as a charm. And maybe it is too boring in English to be worth any space, you think? On the other hand, the underlined are two additional readings of Hakuin's famous poem. I believe the present tense with future possibilities will make it a better charm but am unsure of the grammatical justification or lack there-of and welcome advice from my betters. jômô ga kaki no moto made kitaredomo akashi to ieba koko ni hi tomaru hakuin d.1768 Though
conflagration licked the Kaki fence, dawn brings proof KAKINOMOTO HITOMARU
Though all beyond this fence is left in ashes and the flame p.316. Bad explanation improved. toshi koete hana no kagami to naru mochi wa kabi kakaru o ya kumoru to iu ran hoyû 1666 The mirror mochi we made last year blooms in the new: Mold has formed, or, should we say aloud, “It clouds?” The second is witty partly because the New Year is full of taboo words, i.e., charming words replacing the usual one, but “overcast?” never! Even old eyes must more lyrically haze or mist-over. Wait. The main pun is on blossoms as “clouds.” p.323. Not knowing that rice was used to ferment fish before vinegar, etc. was, I chose the wrong translation for “ihi,” a channel. It should have been rice. Let me try a new translation while I am at it. kodomo o ba
sushi ni suru hodo mochitaredo ihi ga nakereba hiboshi ni suru anon On seeing poor people with many children
Not to
kid but they have children enough to make sushi! As sushi was pressed, the image is close to our “packed like sardines.” Rice, a grain the poor often could not afford, was used as a fermenting agent, mixed in with fish before vinegar (made from rice) came to be used. “Sun-dried” fish is generally small fry. This Modest Proposal provides methods to keep a large catch. The idiom of kids as sushi is worked in many comic tales but the “juicy” preference (for sushi) is mine/rhyme’s alone. p.331. Q for U. re Getsudokan's sexy going wild-pinking down past the navel poem. Knowing full well, we are talking about a girl-friend or "baby," I used "sis" to translate “imo to waga nuru” to japanese it a bit and am having second thoughts. Maybe I will just make it "she." Opinions are welcome and they need not be from experts for this one. p.342. New translation. The first translation is in this book. The second is new and for the short version. The idea of making the forked road of desire in the original split ends of a hair allowed it. Closer to the original, it is the better re-creation. If the reader can come up with just the right idea to improve a translation, by all means do so. hiku-ushi no hanage ni tonbo tsunagu to mo negai no ito wa kakenu futa-michi getsudokan pulling-cow (herder star)’s nstrl-hair-to drgnfly tie evn wshng-thread-as4 hang-not forkd-rd c.1700
On Hanging One’s Wish Out for the Stars
Though I could tie a dragonfly to a hair in the Cowherd’s nose, My desires are a wishbone: Must I split and not keep both? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Though I could tie a dragonfly to a hair in the Cowherd’s nose, Like split-ends, the thread of my desire, forking, goes nowhere! p.349. Hopeless? I did not even try to make this counting kyoka (playing upon Saigyo's waka about life passing as fast as a stone is chucked into a hole) by Issa the haikai master into a poem. Should i add the following if the book ever gets space to grow more, or better to leave it out so a loss in translation does not become a bore for my readers?
ishinago no ochikuru tama no hi fu mi yo
itsutsu mutsu nanatsu yakamashi no yo ya In the time
a jackstone takes to fall? p.385. Big improvement? In the book, the first translation ends “so only haikai remains!” and the last three lines of the second are “my underarms // make sure I’m on fire / then sell me to the ash-man” and the last two lines to the last (for those who have not read the book: all of which is beautifully squared by adjusting the font) are “Turned to ash, just think / You will have my haikai.” p/hokkuri to shinaba waki yori hi o tsukete ato haikai ni nashite tamuware sôbô p.1666 If I
should up & / die, mates, use the hair / below my arms // If I
should pass / away tonight, just light / me armpit first, //
a haikai master’s deathbed
俳諧師なれば臨終に
Let my death be hokku &, when I go in a blink, Be my Second, cap me w/ a waki, light my fire: Turned to ash, I shall be Off upon my last haikai! The explanation is also improved: Hair is not mentioned, but if you recall the Manyôshû waka about mowing a man’s armpit, it is clearly the tinder in this untranslatable kyôka with not only hokku, the lead-off ku in link-verse from the honored guest, but tsuke, i.e., tsuke-ku, or seconding ku by the waki or second, usually the host, and haikai punned into the text, itself ambiguous. The translator favors punning the penultimate 7 as “ato wa ikai ni,” where ikai means “big” or “many” and, idiomatically, lots of work for you guys, thanks! (i.e., お世話になり) but his respondents favor ato haikai ni nashite, punning ato, hai ni nashite, or “afterward, (I/it) become/s ashes.” Haikai may also pun as a derelict to be thrown away 廃壊and the ash-man 灰買, who would be perfect here if there is a chance the nashite (becoming) tamuware is dashite (putting out or selling) tamaware. A handwritten な and た are damn close and such would surely make a good mad ending! However, as one respondent argues, the idea of making the poet’s life becoming=nashite haikai includes the nuance of putting it into a linked sequence, not tossing it out. That would bring out the endlessness of haikai, which is, after all, homophonous with wandering. (Expert comments on reading would be appreciated for this one!.) p.387. On second thought. The following loose translation (as Hoffman has a fine one that holds the line) was partly first-person (for the loose vowel rhyme of “dying” and “mine”), but is probably better uniformly third-person: Raizan is dying: / call
it his punishment / for being born. p.392. A revision of one of the totally unsatisfactory translations for a very colloquial kyôka death poem that predated the birth of Edoite machismo. wanzakure funbaru beika kyô bakari ashita wa karasu ga kakkajiru bei yamanaka genzaemon d.1645 “ Wanzakure! Funbaru bei ka! ” Make my
day! Bring it on today, boys – I can hardly wait! p.399. Not so much a mistranslation as undertranslation of Yomo no Akara’s "yamazato ni shirigomi" poem because your translator was too fixated on re-creating the flatulent puns. The following are new and the old ones are in the paragraph below. [note: my respondent does not feel I under-translated but may be thinking too much here. That, too, is possible. Experts! Please weigh in!]
yamazato ni shirigomi shitsutsu irishi yori ukiyo no koto
wa he to mo omowazu akara
On the Mind of One Leaving the World Behind
Since he retired while holding in mixed feelings like a fart, He no longer gives a shit for the city or so he tells his heart ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Since retiring in the hills with mixed feelings, God was kind: you would think he never gave a shit for what he left behind ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Up the mountain he goes, unsure he would retreat: a blast proclaims that the old fart’s love for the world has past. “God” in the second reading means what is more commonly called cognitive dissonance. In retrospect, the reading seems easy enough, but the reading copy of the 740-page monster translates the Aire for a Buddhist Hermit in the following ways: 1) Turning tail on man / he lives behind the times back / up a windy hollar; // & for the world or mighty / Dollar does not give a fart; 2) And backing into / the hinderparts where even / rumors slip not past / / He cuts no slack nor gives / a fart for the entire world. Do you see what happened? Play too much with figures of speech and you can lose the larger picture. |
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p.467. Minor improvement of poem playing with Ariwara no Motokata's in/famous first poem of the Kokinshu. The last line of the third reading of Mitsutoshi’s poem was slightly altered to improve the ambiguity:
kurehatenu toshi no owari ni haru tachite sadamekanetaru waga yowai
kana mitsutoshi That spring came before year’s end is no secret; but now I really can no longer tell my age! pg. 467 & 609. Nijô Nyôbô (or ~ Yoshimoto 1320-88), whom I called delightful and so gentle I thought he might be female also had some wild flourishes I should have picked up like "mochii zo ni tsuki" or falling on my butt. And I finally came up with not one but two readings of the poem in the Sake Mochi Awase playing with Ariwara no Motokata's in/famous first poem of the Kokinshu: toshi no
uchi ni mochi wa tsukikeri hitotose o koz/so to ya kuwan kotoshi to ya
kuwan Rice cake pounded within the old year – What, then, is true: Would we roast the last year now or should we toast the new? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When we beat this sweet-rice into cake the year was old; Is the next one here? Let’s eat! Or is the last on hold? The biggest problem are pun allusions. Eg. yaku is the usual verb for toasting mochi, but there is no wan emphatic (wai in some dialects, but not wan), so we need to read it ultimately as an emphatic ya followed by kuwan, or “would eat.” With the first reading, roast and toast can both mean yaku and they imply eating. p.467-468. I was wrong to write "Arakata's poem appears with no change" in Laughs to Banish Sleep. And wrong again to write "the only change is in the mind's eye," for iwan changes to iiwan (ihiwan). Also "Arakata" is the oddest typo I have ever made! It should be Motokata's, short for Ariwara no Motokata! Also, I should have discussed the iwamu => iwan phonetic(?) and orthographic change that allowed the pun in the 17c. Iwamu could not have been punned into a rice-bowl. p.473. Minor mistranslation. Here is an honest-to-goodness error followed by a tricky question for experts in ancient Japanese poetry to ponder.
kimigayo wa chiyo ni
hitotabi iru chiri no shirakumo kakaru yama to naru made
This is the first item in the Ryôjinhisshô, an anthology of 11-13c popular poetry and song. Too late, I see I mistranslated it by putting too much effort into the wording and too little into reading. While volcanoes may indeed sprout up once per thousand years in the Japanese archipelago, what the poem really said was this: Until
fine dust, each thousandth year adding but one grain That is a cross between a kalpa (see the bk for that) and a Chinese saying elaborated in the preface to the Kokinshû mentioning dust and dirt rising up from the fumoto (base, or skirts) to build a lofty cloud-covered mountain (How a yet-to-be mountain has a fumoto to grow from is beyond me and the whole idea seems even less probable than pebbles growing into boulders, but the idea did not suddenly appear from out of thin air. It follows . . .). The question I want experts to slowly ponder follows May my
Lord’s Reign so free of dust that only one grain Rereading that first poem of the Ryôjin-hisshô (Credited to Ôe Yoshitoki 大江喜言in the 1086 Goshûishû 後拾遺集), it dawned on me that there are better ways to express “a grain/speck of dust per millennium” than the verb iru stressing the existence of one (grain of) dust per thousand years than chiyo ni hitotabi iru chiri and that made me wonder whether that once–in-a-thousand-years idea might not have something more hidden between the lines. The new reading, above, takes an extra line to make it explicit. I hypothesize that the mention of dust, a dirty thing sullying the clean shining mirror of Shintô or sinful desire clouding the bright moon of Buddhist Law, in a poem serving as a benediction and indirectly, perhaps, a dedication, required some qualification or reframing of dust, namely “if you grant we find but one speck of impure matter once per every thousand years in your brilliant realm” and, then pivots to use that impossibly rare pristine condition to build his cloud-covered hyperbolic blessing. This is not only sublime but sublimely clever. So clever, I am afraid, that no one I consulted or annotation I read even considers such a reading . . . . Am I nuts? The following from Tales of Eika is translated sketchily in the text. Space permitting, I would free it up as follows -- watatsumi no kame no senaka ni iru chiri no yama to naru beki kimigayo kana Like the
chiri on the back of the turtle afloat on the main p.486. See p.92 re Fushimatsu no Kaka’s poem and explanation. They are combined. |
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p.536 Minor improvement. It was “blooming branch” but an association, or conceptual rhyme, trumps alliteration. Oddly, the “last,” below, was “bottom.” waga omou hito eda ta-oru mono naraba yubi o mo kiriteyari ume-no-hana If the one I love should break a blooming limb for me, his point known, I’ll be his sugar plum and pledge my baby finger joint! Most of my readers will know courtesans sometimes gave clients the last joint of their baby finger as pledges,... p.555. Major mistranslation. On more careful reading, the underlined translation, replacing another mistranslation (!) already crossed out, was itself a mistranslation. I am betting on the new one below it. Two lines have been added to the crossed-out explanation, now partly irrelevant but still entertaining. The lines removed for space for the addition said presciently that I really should have bounced the poem off my respondent. Indeed. The preceding sentence is "It so happens that in the 1679 Silver Leaf Savage Songs, where we find poems by his teacher Shinkai, we find a kyôka pole-bearing love as well!" suterarenu shudô nyodô o ninahinaba koi no omoni ni bô ya orenan shunjô
While a phallic overtone is to some degree unavoidable, misreading the
obsolete grammar (sure looked imperative) side-tracked my first
translation and explanation ( p.580. New, improved "Eureka!" translation. Despite the traditionally propitious significance of every feature of the ebi=shrimp, embodiment of the most valued of all treasures, longevity, one 17c man had the freedom of mind to play objectively with its symbolism. I have his poem but suddenly, too late, many more translations! Here are two of them: ikabakari ebi o tori-kuu mukui araba tsui ni wa oi no koshi ya kagaman takuan If we
must pay for each shrimp we eat then in the end p.609. See 467. p.622. Minor mistranslation. I failed to notice that in the Kansai area a dorobo could be a lazy-bones rather than a thief, as in Edo, so the final rhyme was "and meekly kneel / it rather makes us steal." A couple more possibilities follow: ue yori wa sunao ni nare to furu suna ni warera gotoki wa dorobô ni naru Sand
from on high says “be sunao!” truthful, admit defeat: This kyoka squib is from Asahi Bunzaemon's (sometimes rendered Monzaemon's) Parrot-Cage c.1700. It is a delightful perversion of the way volcanic sand suna coming down from on high was apparently said to signal the folk to be sunao, i.e., honest, unpretentious, and docile in the face of authority. That is, if I read it right. If anyone has a record of such a reading of the sand-suna-sunao which the squib might react against, I would love to see it! p.624. Improved translation. From squibs in Bunzaemon's journal again, this is after Kyoto suffered a catastrophic fire. I am afraid my first reading is incomprehensible. The double "they" in the revision bothers me, but it still seems better.
hi no moto no aruji narubeki shirushi ni
wa mazu ôyake o shiroshimesu kana Lords of
the Land of the Rising Sun, or are we the Spark of the Earth, Lords of
the Land of the Rising Sun, or are they the Spark of the Earth, p.626. Just added a third reading. Reader, are multiple readings more fun to have or less? Useful or not useful? Comments on that and everything you like and hate or wonder about, please. tenka toru koto wa kirai de owari ni wa iejû no mono o toru ga suki nari heavn-below conquer thing-as4 hate-so owari/end-in-as4 homeall-thngs+acc take like
Seizing the whole damn country would be too much hassle, So our rulers stay home to steal from everyman’s castle! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Owari, the tail of the earth would not be the head of it: We stay home to empty yours, leaving but the edifice! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Why go out to conquer and rob the ends of the earth When loot’s close at hand in the land of your birth? p.680. New translation and new explanation. What do you think? sazare-ishi no iwao to narite ke ga haete sore o shiraga ni miyoshino no haru getsudôkan ~ Asked by Naokiyo for something on Spring at Year’s End ~ The little pebble became boulder
and grew hair – obscene, The little pebble became boulder and grew into a hairy thing, That has become white crowned mi-Yoshino in the Spring! Yoshino tended to have snow for the New Year so the early solar spring was combined with what would seem to be the pebble-to-hoary-boulder-as-Old-Man-Winter. Obviously, my “obscene” goes too far, but calling moss hair is halfway there. => Yoshino, the hills not far from Kyôto famed for (cherry) blossom-viewing, tended to have snow at New Year, so the early solar spring was symbolically combined with the old year. Japanese do not have as anthropomorphic an Old Man Winter, but calling moss “hair” gets us there. p680. I have made 3 more translations which will not fit in the book. Your reward for reading this far. Does this c.1700 poem not represent the mad-poem spirit? yomu uta o kiku hito goto ni hiyasarete hiya-ase kakeba koko zo nôryô getsudôkan On being told by Naoshige that he was having trouble writing a kyôka on the theme of obtaining the cool [in the heat of mid-summer], I sent him this:
Read a bad poem & ridiculed by all, suffer to become a clown; The cold sweat upon your skin will surely cool you down! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Reading a bad poem, ridiculed by one and all who hear: To chill a mad poet, his own cold sweat beats beer! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Each time I read a poem they never fail to laugh, you see So cold sweat breaks out and helps me beat the summer heat! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Whenever I read they laugh at my poems and hating defeat Cold sweat visits me and then and there I beat the heat! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Each time I read a poem they never fail to laugh at me And with my own cold sweat I beat the heat easily! As to the underlined words maybe "keeping cool" will do it! Of the translations, what of keeping just the first of the old and the last of the new above? And read "easily" slowly: All translations copyright robin d. gill, but you can quote them all you want without asking so long as you give my full name, including the middle initial so I will not be conflated with the English theologian Robin Gill. And, if you have space, mention the book's title, Mad In Translation, too. Thank you. rdg |