Honda on Lady Kasa
MYS 0597-0600
As Translated by: H H Honda: The Manyoshu (1967)
An illustration for: Nine Maxims On Translation
E Bruce Brooks / University of Massachusetts / 5 Dec 2002
[The portions of these translations corresponding to the thematic line "koi-wataru ka mo" in Lady Kasa's set of twenty-four poems are here shown in red for easier technical comparison].
MYS 0597 (#11)
(8 + 8, rhymed)
Alas, e'er shunning others' eyes,
I spend my days in heaving sighs
MYS 0598 (#12)
(8 + 8 + 8 + 8, rhymed)
Do we not sigh in love and die?
And every month by day and night
Alone I peak, and growing weak
MYS 0599 (#13)
(4 + 8 + 7 + 6, unrhymed)
How can it be
that I am yearning unto death
for her whom only dimly
I glimpsed in morning mist?
MYS 600 (#14)
(7 + 7, unrhymed)
Alas, I love a courtier
Too high in social standing
It's easy to make fun of Honda. And he deserves it ("for her," forsooth). But be it noted in his favor that he has sometimes relaxed his usual preference for rhyme, and to that extent left the poems free to be themselves. #13, in particular, has a meandering grace which is foreign to Honda's usual procedure, but which is somewhat reminiscent of the original. And the mixture of forms, though not corresponding to a mixture of forms in Lady Kasa, does remind us of the varying viewpoints taken by Lady Kasa's successive poems. Respect is also shown for the verbal near-link which connects the end of #11 (koi-wataru) and the beginning of #12 (koi). These are good points which might be saved for incorporation in some more generally adequate version.
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