English Original
spring snow
falling at the crossroads
the young man
at our parting
stammers something
Breasts of Snow, 2004
Fumiko Nakajo
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
站在十字路口
春雪紛紛飄落
一位年輕人
在離別的時候結結巴巴地
對我們說些東西
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
站在十字路口
春雪纷纷飘落
一位年轻人
在离别的时候结结巴巴地
对我们说些东西
Bio Sketch
Fumiko Nakajo (中城ふみ子, 1922-54) was a strong-willed woman who lived a tragic life. She died from breast cancer at the age of 32, just few months after her first collection of 50 tanka, titled Chibusa Soshitsu (The Loss of Breasts), won the first prize in a nationwide contest sponsored by a major magazine. She is, though almost unknown outside of Japan, considered to be the third in the three most famous Japanese female poets in the last century, right up there with Akiko Yosano and Machi Tawara.
Ls 1&2 set the scene, which is infused with visually evocative and symbolically rich imagery ("spring" "snow"/falling at the "crossroads"), while the encounter between L3 (a stranger?) and L4 (the speaker and his/her friends) is a little awkward or uncomfortable because of the young man's stumbling over his words (due to embarrassment, revealing something personal or secret, ...)
ReplyDeleteThis middle-of-the-story tanka is a fine example of what American poet Archibald MacLeish calls "coupled images:" One image is established by words which make it sensuous and vivid to the the eyes or ears or touch-to any of the senses. Another image is put beside it. And "a meaning appears which is neither the meaning of one image nor the meaning of the other nor even the sum of both but a consequence of both -- a consequence of both in their conjunction, in their relation to each other" (Krishna Rayan, Suggestion and Statement in Poetry, p.69). It is in the "space between'" that the poem grows... excerpted from To the Lighthouse: Coupled Images, accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2016/04/to-lighthouse-coupling-of-images.html