"Love and sex and loneliness / take what's yours and leave the rest / I'll survive"

[larryhammer]

As for people—well,
I don't know how they feel,
but in my old home
these flowers still bloom
with the same scent as before.

—Ki no Tsurayuki (872–945), trans. Sato & Watson

To simplify things, but not I hope past the point of usefulness: the traditional basic unit of Japanese poetic measure is a couplet of 5 and then 7 syllables (defined by the Japanese notion of a syllable, which for phonological reasons is different from in English). A few of very oldest surviving poems, composed in the 5th century, used forms apparently from folk songs, but by the time Japan fully adopted the Chinese writing system, Japanese poetry had standardized to using any number of couplets then concluding with another 7-syllable line. When written at length, this was called a chouka ("long poem"), but this was soon abandoned in favor of the two-couplet poem, 5-7-5-7-7, now commonly called tanka ("short poem") but until the 20th century either waka ("Japanese poem") or uta ("song").

When one lies alone
    lamenting the whole night through
        until the break of day,
how slowly the time goes by—
ah, but yes—you wouldn't know.

—Mother of Udaishou Michitsuna (936?–995), trans. Carter

From the 8th through 17th centuries, the tanka was the only poetic form used, whether writing either single poems or collaborative sequences, and is still a living form today.

On Matsuo Beach
    I wait in the pines at dusk
        for one who won't come—
and like the blazing salt mounds,
I too am consumed by fire.

—Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), trans. Carter

The collaborative sequence (renga) worked by splitting the tanka in nearly equal halves of 5-7-5 + 7-7, each part written by a different person, with the latter becoming in turn the start of another five-line poem. Being able to write a good head poem in 5-7-5, one that started things well, was a prized ability, and in the late 17th century, this hokku became detached as a form in itself, now called haiku -- one of Japan's most popular cultural exports, Hello Kitty, sushi, and just-in-time manufacturing notwithstanding.

Meeting on the path:
   But I cannot clearly know
If it was he,
   Because the midnight moon
   In a cloud had disappeared.

—Murasaki Shikibu (974–1031), trans. MacAuley/Anon

I've always preferred tanka though. There's more space for developing the image, and more flexibility in how to structure it: 5-7-5 / 7-7 is the traditional one, with its call-and-response division, but also possible is 5-7 / 5-7 / 7 for thesis-antithesis-synthesis. For description-summary, there's 5-7-5-7 / 7 (useful for epigrams), and for image-explanation there's 5 / 7-5-7-7 (or 5-7 / 5-7-7 for when five syllables is too short for a striking image). And that doesn't even touch on variations like the framed digression of 5 / 7-5-7 / 7. But for all the amplitude compared to a haiku, it's still small -- it enforces concision and the heightened language that distinguishes poetry.

    This, then, is the place—
Travelers and returners,
    Both unknown strangers
And those who know each other,
Parting at Meetinghills Gate.

—Semimaru (10th century), trans. mine

(Just for kicks, all poems are from the 100 Poems by 100 Poets collection, and I wish I could provide Hokusai's illustrations for this post.)

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Carter's is good too :-)

One thing I find interesting about all the translations is that they possessify (?) the floating bridge of dreams. I guess tradition must say that that's implicit, that it's not just any old floating bridge of dreams, but my floating bridge of dreams.

What I love about this waka is the drifting cloud picking up where the bridge of dreams leaves off, and is fading just like the dream bridge.

So many beautiful waka; hard to choose just one or two.

[larryhammer]

Or even just five.

Given there's no explicit possessive, I'd be likely to go with "this bridge of dreams". Sato & Watson do something even more impersonal:

The floating bridge of dreams this spring night comes to an end; on the mountaintop a layer of cloud parts the sky

And to round things out, here's Bownas & Thwaite:

This spring night
The floating bridge of my dream
Fell apart:
Swirling away from the peak,
Dawn clouds in the eastern sky.

With the "my" displaced from the bridge. Hmm.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think I like the Sato & Watson best, though that's disloyal to my professor... (shhh; don't tell. Usually I like his best)

[larryhammer]

Sato & Watson's placement of the adverb bothers me. I think I prefer Carter here.

My Sato & Watson is falling apart. As I never liked the cover of this edition (the title treatment is hidjous) I think that's a good reason to buy a replacement. One with a more flexible spine.

---L.