Manyoshu, an 8th century Japanese collection of poetry

[YesNo]

I like the iambic meter William N. Porter used to translate those tanka using extra syllables and rhyme.

[Danik 2016]

I don´t understand Japanese, but it seems that these poems don´t rhyme in the original.

[YesNo]

They don't, but I think that is because of the language. They also don't have meter from what I've read.

[desiresjab]

Your old pal Morpheus Sandman had a pretty good understanding of Jap poetry as far as I remember.

[YesNo]

I don’t know. What we discussed were various quantum theory interpretations. He supported many worlds and I felt safest with the Copenhagen interpretation or the “shut up and calculate” interpretation. Today I would argue for a panpsychist interpretation.

[Danik 2016]

I had to Google that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism

But what is panpsychism to you Yes/No and how does it relate to the ancient forms of Japanese poetry?

[YesNo]

It doesn't relate to Japanese poetry. I was just responding to desiresjab.

[desiresjab]

These poems were composed by royalty, did I read that correctly? That is a rather small crowd to choose from, which might explain the paucity of technique, and the lack of feeling they seem to generate for me. That was a little surprising, since traditionally I am a better bet to like either random Chinese or Japanese poetry I encounter more than random poetry in English. I thought perhaps the translations were weak. But it must be the small numbers of royals available for quill work. Or maybe I am just out of sorts and not reading right.

I think of The River Merchant's Wife, a Chinese poem that I believe was translated again by Pound and I found extremely effective. One of these poems reminded me of it for a moment, but lacking most of the vigor and feeling of the Chinese.

I guess we must applaud the royals for having the tradition at all, and for reviving it at least once from the ashes of history.

[Danik 2016]

DJ

I don´t relate to it so much either but I think there are some points to consider:
1-This is ancient poetry from the Middle Ages (according to Western Concepts).
2-I wonder if beside the nobility there were people educated enough to produce poetry
3-It is a tradition of poetry that differs widely from the Western tradition in form and also in content. It seems to be based on the cult of nature, This cult of nature one can still find in the poetry of angliholic for example, although related to more complex and interesting themes.

[YesNo]

Here's one I liked (page 96)

HAD he been at home, he would have slept
Upon his wife's dear arm;
Here he hes dead, unhappy man,
On his journey, grass for pillow.

[Danik 2016]

Some interesting images:

"Prince Otsu and Lady Ishikawa
48 WAITING for you, [n: 107]
In the dripping dew of the hill
I stood,-weary and wet
With the dripping dew of the hilL-By the Prince.

Would I had been, beloved,
The dripping dew of the hill,
That wetted you
While for me you waited.-By the Lady."

[desiresjab]

DJ

I don´t relate to it so much either but I think there are some points to consider:
1-This is ancient poetry from the Middle Ages (according to Western Concepts).
2-I wonder if beside the nobility there were people educated enough to produce poetry
3-It is a tradition of poetry that differs widely from the Western tradition in form and also in content. It seems to be based on the cult of nature, This cult of nature one can still find in the poetry of angliholic for example, although related to more complex and interesting themes.

'Tis the comment of an unborn in the subject, but Jap poetry could get very interesting, I know from nubbins I have seen in the past; and the Haiku form is of course a jewel of human kind. If my memory is not faulty, Pound found imagist ammunition in Jap poetic traditions, which I believe he also says were responsible through inspiration for his In A Station Of The Metro:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Maybe not. All I can find right now on its origin is that Pound felt he needed not a description of these faces but an equation for them. The poem is his poetic equation for a nocturnal moment of epiphany in an underground Paris railroad station circa 1912.

Anyway, Pound had found Jap poetry. In artistic subjects he had that nose. I am no Pound expert either. Just dabbled enough to half remember these bits. I never did understand how some of these brainy poets can end up translating poetry from obscure languages they were completely unfamiliar with a few years before. Did a man like Pound or Robert Bly have so much talent with language and for learning them that they could hop from Japanese to Chinese, translating wherever fancy compelled? I have no doubt they were massively talented when it came to language, but is something else at work here that someone not a neophyte would see immediately. I take it they are not able to really speak the ancient language, but can gather from its pictures enough information to reconstruct the ancient texts embedded into a new medium and language with the aid of lots of imagination and a big belief in the universalism of human sentiments.

[YesNo]

I agree with your suspicions, desiresjab, about whether these translators had a good understanding of the languages they were translating. I also don't particularly like haiku or tanka, but I am trying to see if there is anything there that might be interesting. I prefer translating these using rhyme and meter although the original doesn't have either.

[desiresjab]

I have wondered if there is anything special about 5, 7, 17, 21, 26, etc., when it comes to mining the Japanese language for poetry. I doubt if these numbers are any more intrinsically special to Japanese than 10 is to English simply because we like iambic pentameter.

[desiresjab]

But viewed another way, one might say five is special to the poetry of both languages. Is it really, or are there just so few small numbers to go around that coincidences are likely?