Manyoshu, an 8th century Japanese collection of poetry

I’ve begun reading some of the poems in the 8th century Japanese poetry collection, the Manyoshu. http://library.globalchalet.net/Auth...%20%201965.pdf

I’ve started this thread to keep track of my thoughts and invite anyone else to add theirs.

Great find, Yes/No! Thank you for the pdf. It seems to be a scholarly edition as this ancient poetry deserves. I just loaded it down and had a look at the foreword which deals with the translation history. I wasn´t surprised to learn that the first western language translation was into German.

Thanks, Danik! I’m still trying to make sense out of this collection. I wonder why German would be the first western language translation of this?

Had to find the thread. Now that there is more activity on the forum the new threads get buried quickly. I had a look at the first poems. They seem to be a kind of bucolic poetry: Japanese emperors and empresses talk about the nature in their domains. How did you learn about this collection?

One of the poets linking to dVerse Poets Pub prompts (https://dversepoets.com/) wrote a book referencing the Manyoshu. Much of her writing and selections from her books is on her blog at https://ladynyo.wordpress.com That's how I found out about it.

Here is some general information about Japanese poetry including the Manyoshu, which is the oldest collection of ancient poetry.

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


And here is some information about the Manyoshu:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27yōshū

There is a lot in those Wikipedia articles, but then the topic is extensive.

What I learnt there from a first reading of the first one you mentioned, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_poetry, is that there are many anthologies like the Manyoshu. These early poems were influenced by the Chinese Tang poems. The Japanese imitations of these Chinese forms were called kanshi. The 5 or 7 character lines are a similarity.

I liked the story of how poetry got started. The goddess Izanami said:

What joy beyond compare
To see a man so fair!

and the god Izanagi, after complaining that she spoke first, said:

To see a woman so fair—
What joy beyond compare!

Lol! Even gods dislike it when women have the first or the last word.:wink5:

I included the link because I felt a need to know the place of the Manyoshu in the Japanese poetry tradition. It seems that this is a tradition that prefers short and very synthetic forms of poetry.

Izanagi and Izanami were humorous, but at least they started talking. I found it also strange that the god Izanagi wasn't all that creative. He only slightly modified her poem.

By "synthetic" I think you mean "formal" or perhaps something else.

No I mean the ability to find an compact or economic but nevertheless complete way to express ones meaning.

The tanka, a five line poem with 5,7,5,7,7 syllables, appears to be the main form used. It doesn’t rhyme nor have any meter, but supposedly uses alliteration and juxtaposing disparate ideas as poetic techniques. The Yamato language has all syllables ending in vowels, no accented syllables, no long/short syllables and that seems to explain why the tanka is what it is. (page 21)

The language appears to me to be impoverished compared with English for sound effects, but I don’t know how these poems sound.

The English five line common meter might be close to the tanka although many common meter poems have 4-line stanzas closer to Chinese Tang dynasty poetry.

One has to consider the time when these poems were written. Just for comparison, here is an link on old English literature\\;
"The poem Beowulf, which often begins the traditional canon of English literature, is the most famous work of Old English literature. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has also proven significant for historical study, preserving a chronology of early English history.
In descending order of quantity, Old English literature consists of: sermons and saints' lives; biblical translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical works on grammar, medicine, geography; and poetry.[2] In all there are over 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, of which about 189 are considered "major".[3]"

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

Here is Beowulf a poem from the 7th century:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kTS1Ex-dig

I haven’t listened to all of it, but I like the Beowulf audio you linked, Danik.

I think my interest in the Manyoshu is really an interest in any of this very old literature.

Maybe specifically in Japanese poetry. I found this other more recent collection of Tanka poems , called the Hyaku-nin-isshiu:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/hvj/hvj001.htm

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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?

The Chinese Tang poetry used five and seven characters. That may be where it came from. Those poems rhymed, but that may have something to do with the two languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_poetry

I like short poetry and stories. Jokes are short as well. In English where the language allows both rhyme and accentual meter I can see how an even number of lines and syllables in a line would dominate with the odd number of lines or syllables appearing for variety. One has the five lined limerick which could be written as a four lined poem with a longer third line. I can see how five and seven make sense for Chinese and Japanese especially since writing them has a nice rectangular shape.

I like my jokes in the 5, 7, 5 format.