Those
who think of haiku as simple little poems should certainly
get out and read Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!,
with its title quoted from one of Gills translations
of a poem by Issa, one of several poems the master wrote
on the subject. For, like the book, haiku are not as simple
as all that, and Gill would have us plunge deeply into the
complexity that richly endows Japanese haiku with enough
guts to keep going for generation after generation.
The
book is definitely about guts, and the guts of sea cucumbers
(the sea slugs of the title, a problem in nomenclature Gill
addresses early on) are slippery and endless. As are the
guts of the haiku tradition. Anyone really interested in
the power of season words (= season terms in
Gills terms) should take up this book of nearly 1,000
poems on the little critters with gusto. For in its pages
these poems come to life as no other haiku translated from
Japanese have ever come to life before. Gills chapter
titles give only a glimmer of the range of what those poems
are about (quoting a dozen of 21):
1
the frozen together (solid, collective, reified, dead/alive)
2 the featureless (neither head nor tail, fin nor scale,
lots of nots)
3 the protean (shrinking/stretching, form-fitting/losing,
self- eviscerating)
4 the do-nothing (ancient, still-to-be, unmoving, taoist)
10
the ugly (disgustingly odd, embarrassing, yet homely and
blessed, gross)
11 the lubricious (shell-loving, sexy yet impotent, squirting)
12 the just-so (the silenced, dewy, rock, whale poop,
star and wave-born)
13 the tasty (gourmet, novelty, ozone and moon-scented,
trans- substantialist)
18
the melancholy (dark and heavy, nimia solitudo)
19 the stuporous (sleepy, mumbling, snoring)
20 the nebulous (overcast, placid)
21 the cold (and deep)
Following
these chapterseach ten pages minimum and often dealing
with up to 30 or 40 verses, sometimes moreGill launches
into nearly a hundred mini-chapters on themes represented
by only a few poems.
A
good part of the books size is accounted for by the
fact that Gill appeals to readers who revel in ideas and
expansive footnotes. He also often gives three or more translations
of one poem. To give an extreme example, at the beginning
of Chapter 5, The Agnostic Sea Slug, we have
this poem by Issa (titles provided by Gill):
oni
mo iya bosatsu mo iya to namako kana Issa
no
black, no white, just gray!
phooey
to saints
as well as to devils,
huh, sea slug?
followed
by two more:
confucianism
denial
of hell
and heaven, toothe life
of a sea slug
self-sufficient
bad
gods stink
good ones stink, too
sez sea slug
The
kicker is, all three of these are translations of the same
poem. And Gill goes on, providing yet more visions of the
poem, each accurate to some nuance or other lurking in the
Japanese language and the poem as set in Japanese culture:
the
original
beyond
good
and bad, simply
sea slug
the
grey way
ye
whod neither
sin nor saintly be
be a sea slug!
my
way
the
way of saints
and devils forsaken
a sea slug
and
onward with seven more versions of the same poem, for a
total of 13 different readings of the one poem. For those
who wonder, the one named self-sufficient above
comes closest to the literal meaning of Issas
original. But that is not the point. Literal
is only one kind of meaning.
Yes,
Gill is right. Each good-to-great haiku in Japanese has
many, many possible ways to be understood. Any self-respecting
group of Japanese haiku aficionados could wrangle over the
many meanings of a good poem for hours. Its a bit
of an ego trip for a translator to even hope to get most
of them into only one translation. (See, for another example,
the diversity of the views on many of Bashôs
poems reflected in Makoto Uedas Bashô and
His Interpreters; the people Ueda quotes are talking
about the meanings of original poems, not how to make translations
of them.)
Gill
ably justifies his multiple-translation efforts:
Multiple
translation is often the only way to translate all the
faces of a poly-faceted poem in a witty, which is to say,
brief manner, when trying to squeeze all the information
into one poem would kill it, and not including that informationand
this is, regretfully, almost standard with haiku translation
todaywould constitute negligence with respect to
the intent of the original. (33)
Gill,
who spent twenty years in Japan finding and assisting with
the translation of English nonfiction books fusing science
and the humanities for two Japanese publishers, not to mention
writing half a dozen substantial books in Japanese himself,
probably has a better grasp of Japanese haiku culture than
anyone since Jack Stamm. (Oh God, how Jack would have loved
this book!) Sure, Gill has leaned on dozens of others for
specific help here and there, neatly summarizing his indebtedness
in two densely packed pages of acknowledgements, but hes
the one who looked at each poem from many angles. And hes
the one who writes some of the most engaging commentary
on haiku (and senryu and the occasional tanka or kyôka)
ever to see print. As a deeply experienced researcher in
two languages, Gill has dredged up incredible amounts of
material to bolster his readings of the originals he tackles,
and his use of English to bring those readings across. Not
afraid to offer as many translations as he thinks a poem
needs to fully come across, hes also not afraid to
admit he still has more work to do on a specific poem here
or there.
Hang
on, here, did I mention that the following chapter, The
Mystic Sea Slug, includes a full dozen more
renditions of Issas double-yuck sea-slug
haiku, that each of these is supported by considerable thinking-out-loud
or stream-of-consciousness commentary, and that, yes, he
does discuss many other poems in both of these chapters?
Gill
hopes to release a second, expanded edition of Rise
when more data comes in response to this first edition,
but I would not wait around for it. Theres too much
to enjoy here and now.
Reading
Rise is not as huge a task as might be
assumed from above. In fact, with his layout that includes
the original Japanese text, a romanized text, a word-for-word
literal trot, and then the one or more translations, all
centered in lots of white space on his generous pages, a
reader might very well enjoy the book first by simply reading
through the centered material, treating each version
as a new poem, in which case the number of poems rises to
2,000 or more.
In addition to the 900 numbered verses on sea slugs, there
are many more poems on other subjects, brought in as R.H.
Blyth brings poems on other subjects into his discussions,
to illuminate this or that point about the verse at hand.
It
would be pointless in a brief review to try to mimic the
breadth of the Japanese vision of sea slugs, or of Japanese
haiku and of Japanese culture, reflected in Gills
book. Just for a taste, though, here is his relatively brief
comment on another poem, Bashôs famous Sea-slugs;
/ alive, / but frozen into one. (in R.H. Blyths
translation, which he supplies, along with a few of his
own):
So
the original sea slug of the haiku world was taken, rather
than witnessed in the wild. I first imagined Bashô
saw sea slugs pulled up by long poles fitted with rake-like
scoops, and thrown together to freeze by cold-fingered
fishermen; but chances are he saw them in a pail on land.
I have never come across an allegorical reading of this
poem, but, considering that most of Bashôs
poems alluded to his social circumstancegreeting,
farewell, praise, censure, descriptionwe might also
dare to imagine our poet sleeping together with other
travelers in a very cold inn. (40)
The
poem was written in the winter about a year before Bashô
died, in 1693. Gills metaphorical/allegorical reading
is precisely within the bounds of haikai culture as practiced
and practically defined by Bashô.
Rise,
Ye Sea Slugs! goes far beyond olde haiku,
however, including verses from any and every era that touch
on its subject, right through the scatological senryu of
the eighteenth century down to verses by leading poets of
today. The book is one of the most reliable magnifying glasses
ever held to Japanese haikai and haiku culture.
As
a specialist in the seasonal aspect of Japanese haiku, I
welcome Gills very extended essay on one of the seasonal
topics of Japanese haiku, a topic that may seem minor to
foreign readers but is classed among the top 500 of the
thousands recorded in season-word guides. Reading it, we
see the deep affection of the Japanese for the phenomena
of their own environment and culture.
At
the same time, we encounter one of the most original minds
to take up the related subjects of haiku and cross-cultural
communication. As a translator, I find Gills approach
stimulating and challenging. He has raised the bar very
high in terms of a translators responsibility (= ability
to respond, Robert Duncan) to the text.
I
shall certainly enjoy rereading Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!
while eagerly awaiting the multivolume In Praise of Olde
Haiku of which Robin Gill says this is but a spin-off.
This single-topic tome may be our best English-language
window yet into the labyrinth of Japanese haikai culture.
If you have read Yasuda, Blyth, Henderson, Ueda, and Shirane,
then read Gill. He will expand your mind. If you have not
read those guys yet, then read Gill first. Hes more
fun.
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