III
But for the same reason that Japanese short poems may be said to resemble. Japanese pictures, a full comprehension of them requires an intimate knowledge of the life which they reflect. And this is especially true of the emotional class of such poems,—a literal translation of which, in the majority of cases, would signify almost nothing to the Western mind. Here, for example, is a little verse, pathetic enough to Japanese comprehension:—
Chōchō ni!..
Kyonen shishitaru
Tsuma koishi!
Translated, this would appear to mean only,—“Two butterflies!… Last year my dear wife died!” Unless you happen to know the pretty Japanese symbolism of the butterfly in relation to happy marriage, and the old custom of sending with the wedding-gift a large pair of paper-butterflies (ochō-mechō), the verse might well seem to be less than commonplace. Or take this recent composition, by a University student, which has been praised by good judges:—
Furusato ni
Fubo ari—mushi no
Koë-goë![[1]]
—“In my native place the old folks [or, my parents] are—clamor of insect-voices!”
[1] I must observe, however, that the praise was especially evoked by the use of the term koë-goë—(literally meaning “voice after voice” or a crying of many voices);—and the special value of the syllables here can be appreciated only by a Japanese poet.
The poet here is a country-lad. In unfamiliar fields he listens to the great autumn chorus of insects; and the sound revives for him the memory of his far-off home and of his parents. But here is something incomparably more touching,—though in literal translation probably more obscure,—than either of the preceding specimens;—
Mi ni shimiru
Kazé ya!
Shōji ni
Yubi no ato!
—“Oh, body-piercing wind!—that work of little fingers in the shōji!”[[2]]…. What does this mean? It means the sorrowing of a mother for her dead child. Shōji is the name given to those light white-paper screens which in a Japanese house serve both as windows and doors, admitting plenty of light, but concealing, like frosted glass, the interior from outer observation, and excluding the wind. Infants delight to break these by poking their fingers through the soft paper: then the wind blows through the holes. In this case the wind blows very cold indeed,—into the mother’s very heart;—for it comes through the little holes that were made by the fingers of her dead child.
[2] More literally:—“body-through-pierce wind—ah!—shōji in the traces of [viz.: holes made by] fingers!”
The impossibility of preserving the inner quality of such poems in a literal rendering, will now be obvious. Whatever I attempt in this direction must of necessity be ittakkiri;—for the unspoken has to be expressed; and what the Japanese poet is able to say in seventeen or twenty-one syllables may need in English more than double that number of words. But perhaps this fact will lend additional interest to the following atoms of emotional expression:—
A MOTHER’S REMEMBRANCE
Sweet and clear in the night, the voice of a boy at study,
Reading out of a book…. I also once had a boy!
A MEMORY IN SPRING
She, who, departing hence, left to the flowers of the plum-tree,
Blooming beside our eaves, the charm of her youth and beauty,
And maiden pureness of heart, to quicken their flush and fragrance,—
Ah! where does she dwell to-day, our dear little vanished sister?
FANCIES OF ANOTHER FAITH
(1) I sought in the place of graves the tomb of my vanished friend:
From ancient cedars above there rippled a wild doves cry.
(2) Perhaps a freak of the wind-yet perhaps a sign of remembrance,—
This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour for the dead.
(3)I whispered a prayer at the grave: a butterfly rose and fluttered—
Thy spirit, perhaps, dear friend!…
IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT
This light of the moon that plays on the water I pour for the dead,
Differs nothing at all from the moonlight of other years.
AFTER LONG ABSENCE
The garden that once I loved, and even the hedge of the garden,—
All is changed and strange: the moonlight only is faithful;—
The moon alone remembers the charm of the time gone by!
MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA
O vapory moon of spring!—would that one plunge into ocean
Could win me renewal of life as a part of thy light on the waters!
AFTER FAREWELL
Whither now should! look?—where is the place of parting?
Boundaries all have vanished;—nothing tells of direction:
Only the waste of sea under the shining moon!
HAPPY POVERTY
Wafted into my room, the scent of the flowers of the plum-tree
Changes my broken window into a source of delight.
AUTUMN FANCIES
(1) Faded the clover now;—sere and withered the grasses:
What dreams the matsumushi[[3]] in the desolate autumn-fields?
(2) Strangely sad, I thought, sounded the bell of evening;—
Haply that tone proclaimed the night in which autumn dies!
(3) Viewing this autumn-moon, I dream of my native village
Under the same soft light,—and the shadows about my home.
[3] A musical cricket—calyptotryphus marmoratus.
IN TIME OF GRIEF, HEARING A SÉMI (CICADA)
Only “I,” “I,”—the cry of the foolish semi!
Any one knows that the world is void as its cast-off shell.
ON THE CAST-OFF SHELL OF A SÉMI
Only the pitiful husk!… O poor singer of summer,
Wherefore thus consume all thy body in song?
SUBLIMITY OF INTELLECTUAL POWER
The mind that, undimmed, absorbs the foul and the pure together—
Call it rather a sea one thousand fathoms deep![[4]]
[4] This is quite novel in its way,—a product of the University: the original runs thus:—
Nigoréru mo
Suméru mo tomo ni
Iruru koso
Chi-hiro no umi no
Kokoro nari-keré!
SHINTŌ REVERY
Mad waves devour The rocks: I ask myself in the darkness,
“Have I become a god?” Dim is The night and wild!
“Have I become a god?”—that is to say, “Have I died?—am I only a ghost in this desolation?” The dead, becoming kami or gods, are thought to haunt wild solitudes by preference.