Brooks on Lady Kasa

MYS 0597-0600
As Translated by: E Bruce Brooks (2002)
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)
(5 + 7 / + 5 + 7 + 7, unrhymed)
MYS 0598 (#12)
(5 + 7 / + 5 + 7 + 7, unrhymed)
MYS 0599 (#13)
(5 + 7 / + 5 + 7 + 7, unrhymed)
MYS 600 (#14)
(5 + 7 + 5 / + 7 + 7, unrhymed)

The poet does not loop her stanzas together into a logical argument; she beats with them, one at a time, against the bars of her isolation. Now it is the prying eyes of ordinary people that keep them from a meeting, near as they are to each other (#11). Now it is the unreality of their previous meeting that makes a second meeting illusory (#13). Now it is the exalted status of her lover that separates them (#14). She pauses a little at that last thought (notice the downward shift of the caesura), which may indeed be the nearest to the truth of the matter. What is constant for her is not their present separation, which she construes in various ways, or their future together, which she cannot envision at all, but her longing for him, growing out of one meeting in the past (#12-13), and consuming her.

Or so it seems on the present reading. It is something of a confirmation to discover, in Yakamochi's two poems to her, that he too was grieved, but that they both should have known, from the beginning, that the thing was hopeless.

 

All materials posted on this site are Copyright © by the respective authors.

To Separation Index Page

5 Dec 2002 / Contact The Project / Exit to Lectures Page