Oscar Wilde
on the rock in the park
watching
the sky and himself
with a cynical smile
Gusts, 27, Spring/Summer 2018
Kozue Uzawa
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
奧斯卡·王爾德雕像
半躺在公園的岩石上
帶著憤世嫉俗的微笑
凝視
天空和他自己
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
奥斯卡·王尔德雕像
半躺在公园的岩石上
带着愤世嫉俗的微笑
凝视
天空和他自己
Bio Sketch
Kozue Uzawa is a retired university professor. She works as editor of the English tanka journal GUSTS. She composes tanka both in Japanese and English. She also translates Japanese tanka into English and co-published Ferris Wheel: 101 Modern and Contemporary Tanka (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2006), and Kaleidoscope: Selected Tanka of Shuji Terayama
(Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 2008). Ferris Wheel received the 2007 Donald
Keene Translation Award for Japanese Literature from Columbia
University.
Kozue's tanka effectively builds, poetic phrase/line by poetic phrase/line, to a thematically significant and visually powerful ending that shows the playwright's in/famous “cynical smile,” reminding me of the following remark:
ReplyDeleteA cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
― Oscar Wilde.
FYI: "Statue of Oscar Wilde: The comedy and tragedy of Oscar Wilde is preserved in a Dublin park, captured in a sculpture of colorful stone," accessed at https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/statue-of-oscar-wilde
Delete