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Sakutarō Hagiwara (1886–1942)

Auteur de Cat Town

14+ oeuvres 173 utilisateurs 3 critiques 3 Favoris

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Œuvres de Sakutarō Hagiwara

Oeuvres associées

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The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019) — Contributeur — 166 exemplaires
Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938 (2008) — Contributeur — 16 exemplaires
Midnight Press WEB 第八号 — Contributeur — 1 exemplaire

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Nom canonique
Hagiwara, Sakutarō
Nom légal
萩原 朔太郎
Date de naissance
1886-11-01
Date de décès
1942-05-11
Sexe
male
Nationalité
Japan
Lieu de naissance
Maebashi, Japan
Lieu du décès
Tokyo, Japan
Professions
poet

Membres

Critiques

It's almost always a bad sign when the best thing about a book is its cover photo, but here we are: that's the best thing about this book, in my eyes.

To be fair, that's because I really dislike poetry of this kind, inward looking and obsessed with suffering. The translator's preface makes it sound quite interesting, formally; apparently Sakutaro is known as a kind of modern Japanese Dante, using 'ordinary' language rather than the ultra-stylized language of previous poets. However, with this book, he returns to that stylized language. That's interesting. Poems which read, e.g.,

"How is it you are so noble,
so gentle, elegant, fragrant,
you alone emit fragrance above all else?
I am ugly beast
unworthy even of your pity.
To start, I am a slave, a barn beast
I'll lie on my stomach under your feet, will serve you like a dog"?

Such poems are not interesting in the slightest. That's one of the worst, and there are some better ones: Fire, A Useless Book. But in general, poets who fret *in poetry* about the nihility of their epistemology are fairly tough to swallow.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |
Rats’ Nests. The Collected Poetry of Hagiwara Sakutaro (Translations of Modern Japanese Poetry Series) by Hagiwara Sakutaro

In Front of the Bridge…. October 1, 2000

By the end of the nineteenth century, several anthologies of Western literature had been translated and published introducing Japanese writers to a variety of new literary styles and genres. After a long and natural period of imitation and derivative writing, as a result of the fresh exposure to the outside world, Japan, deeply affected by its centuries of sakoku or forced isolation, produced its first truly modern poet in Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942). Born northwest of Tokyo in Maebashi, “in front of the bridge,” at the center of Japan, Hagiwara made himself into a Japanese Baudelaire, writing in an at times obscure symbolist free verse, in the colloquial tongue, about alcoholics, bars, squalid love, and sin. He also acknowledged Poe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Dostoevski as Western writers who were important to him, while an heir of the lyrics of Saigyo and Basho. Hagiwara has been commonly recognized by Japanese critics as the most important modern Japanese poet since the publication of his first book of poems in 1917, Howling at the Moon, which he wrote in provincial Maebashi, often longing for life in Tokyo where he did at times live. In “Sad Moonlit Night,” Hagiwara gives voice to his sense of life in modern Japan, after hearing a dog howling on a wharf: A damned thief dog is howling at the moon above the rotting wharf. A soul listens, and in gloomy voices, yellow daughters are singing in chorus, singing in chorus, on the wharf’s dark stonework.

Always, why am I like this, dog, pale unhappy dog? (tr. Hiroaki Sato)

The symbolic moon of Saigyo no longer reflects transcendence but misery, alienation, self-pity, and despair, a psyche as distressed as the “damned” dog. Hagiwara is painfully conscious that something is lacking in or has gone wrong with “the rotting wharf” of modern life. At the end of the poem, identifying not with the moon but with the howling dog, he further projects his own feelings of loneliness and unhappiness and ponders the nature of the modern self, lost and restlessly struggling in the same malaise as the West. In 1925 Hagiwara published a collection of poems that includes “Owatari Bridge,” which I quote in full. The Japanese poet and critic Miyoshi Tatsuji wrote about this poem that “It is not only the jewel among Hagiwara Sakutaro’s poems, but a masterpiece that occupies a prominent place among the countless poems written since shintaishi [new style poetry] became free verse”:

The long bridge they’ve erected here No doubt goes from lonely Sosha village straight to Maebashi town. Crossing the bridge I sense desolation pass through me. Carts go by loaded with goods, men leading the horses. And restless, nagging bicycles. When I cross this long bridge Twilight hunger stabs me.

Ahh–to be in your native place and not go home! I’ve suffered to the full griefs that sting like salt. I grow old in solitude. How to describe the fierce anger today over bitter memories? I will tear up my miserable writings And throw every scrap into the onrushing Tone River. I am famished as a wolf. Again and again I clutch at the railing, grind my teeth,

But it does no good: something like tears spills out, Flows down my cheeks, unstanched. Ahh–how contemptible I have been all along! Past me go carts loaded with goods, men leading the horses. This day, when everything is cold, the sky darkens over the plain. (tr. Donald Keene)

Having lived for a year and a half in Maebashi, where I taught at Gunma University, I cannot read this poem without stirring up my deepest emotions. While it is true that Maebashi is a provincial town, since everything of cultural importance to most Japanese takes place in Tokyo, I can’t share Hagiwara’s bitter feelings. I have many warm memories of Maebashi which is now surely less isolated than during Hagiwara’s lifetime, or even when I was there. Almost daily I saw the cemetery of the Buddhist Shojun temple where Hagiwara’s remains are buried. It was while I was living in Maebashi that I first forced myself to read Baudelaire and recall reading him on the express train from nearby Takasaki to Tokyo. Crossing the Tone River on its bridges at least a couple of times a week, I enjoyed the sight of fishermen in rubber waders fly casting, the bridge crowded with bicycles, often children on their way to school. Hagiwara’s poem “Owatari Bridge” impresses deeply upon me how the state of the consciousness of the individual poet affects perception. Accepting the decadent clichés of the poète maudit of modern Western literature, Hagiwara chose to view life through tainted, distorting lenses. Standing between express cars, rocking along between Maebashi and Tokyo, I knew Baudelaire’s vision of life, though true in terms of social change and loss, was essentially unhealthy, the product of a sick mind. Modern life in Maebashi helped me to understand that. Unfortunately, Hagiwara never learnt that lesson but ended his ever-darkening life, as he put it, “in the shadow of the hazy landscape of Nihilism,” writing poems heavily influenced by Nietzsche while militarism took over his country.

Frederick Glaysher
http://www.fglaysher.com
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
fglaysher | Apr 2, 2008 |
Probably the best translation in English of Sakutaro's dark and difficult verse. Includes an informative introduction placing Sakutaro in the context of his time which helps to illuminate just why he is considered such an important and revolutionary poet, as well as a brief description of his life and (rather unsavory) personality. This volume also includes a small selection of Sakutaro's prose works.
1 voter
Signalé
marietherese | Jan 11, 2006 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
14
Aussi par
5
Membres
173
Popularité
#123,688
Évaluation
½ 4.3
Critiques
3
ISBN
17
Langues
2
Favoris
3

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