Poetry in Different Languages
I’m not very good at writing or understanding poetry. This is
true in general, but I understand Japanese poetry a lot better than
English poetry. I’ve never been able to figure out just why this
is. I have several theories:
1. I grew up speaking Japanese in personal settings but English in
academic settings. Since poetry is usually emotional, naturally I
understand poetry in Japanese better.
2. I learned Japanese before English. I didn’t speak English
until I was three years old. In the realm of poetry, this makes a
big difference.
3. There is something qualitatively different about poetry in Japanese
and poetry in English, and either A. Japanese poetry is better, or B.
my personality/inclinations fit better with Japanese poetry.
I’ve heard some people say English is not a very poetic language even
compared to other Western languages such as Italian. I’m in no
position to opine on this. I’ve always been puzzled by the
importation of haiku into English though. In Japanese, I think
haiku work well because the language is based on monosyllabic
characters and the intonation tends to be constant regardless of how
you put them together. It’s really hard to get anything close to
this using English words. Take something like:
So the children play
From the spring and through the fall
Every single day
As opposed to something like:
Magnanimously
Overflowing abundance
Cornucopia
The latter doesn’t have the right rhythm. The former is
rhythmically closer to a Japanese haiku, but the intonation is still so
different that it doesn’t sound like a haiku. I think this is
because English words have strong accents (i.e. KA-RA-O-KE vs.
“kar-E-’O-kE). I don’t know whether these should really be called
haiku or not… I guess my opinion is that enough of the essence is
missing that they shouldn’t be - it’s sort of like asking whether a
marching band minus the percussion and brass is still a marching band.
C 'Quence
January 3, 2005 @ 11:56 am
Interesting that you can speak Japanese. I am intrigued by that, I often wish I could speak other languages and wonder how much I am missing in my grand perspective of the world. I you care to go into any more detail of your background I would love to read it…
sss
January 5, 2005 @ 8:40 am
I know nothing about poetry, but recently I’ve been reading some poems by Paul Celan in “Collected Works”. I’m Polish - that may be important. The book is great (the poems are so soo sooo intriguing, words are symbols here, ’cause poems are in two versions: the original one in german (as Celan wrote in that language) and translated into polish, sometimes there are more than just one polish translation by some well-known polish translators. I know german a bit. I believe that poetry cannot by translated in 100%. It’s impossible to grasp everything during translating from one language to another. It’s really fascinating… and how fascinating must it be, when we compare such different languages as Japanese and English… I have to take up Japanese, especially if I want to go to Okinawa in two years time for some karate lessons…
take care
Phillip Lipscy
March 9, 2005 @ 2:51 pm
Hi C ‘Quence, thanks for your very nice comment. I try to avoid blabbering about myself too much on this blog, as it’s not supposed to be about me but rather about interesting ideas. Maybe in the future though.
sss - that’s really interesting. I recently learned that my last name might have polish origins. I think you could do fine in Okinawa without too much in the way of Japanese skills, but knowing even a little bit goes a long way!
dying
March 23, 2005 @ 12:48 am
i feel the same way about english haiku. in fact, i feel like we’ve
discussed this topic before, many years ago, but didn’t really have
anything interesting to debate on this subject because we both basically
agreed that english haiku usually don’t work well.
nowadays, whenever i’m told to write a haiku, i usually write something
that derides the usage of english in the haiku format. i suppose that
this can get old pretty quickly, so i’m glad that i am rarely asked to
write haiku.
serendipitously, i have recently come across a collection of our old
published works. i wonder if you still remember writing these.
Quentin Crisp
September 15, 2006 @ 6:18 am
I also think it’s true that haiku don’t work in English. In fact, I find something almost annoying about haiku written in English. I’m not quite sure what it is. It’s like someone pretending to understand something that they don’t. But it’s quite possible that I’m just bitter and being rather hypocritical, as all expressions of the ‘fashionability’ of Japanese culture grate on me, after having given years of my life to the intensive study of the language and culture, and still finding myself very much excluded from it.
Also, that thing about one language being more poetic than another - my impression is that people are very chauvinistic with regard to their own language. There are very few people who are in a real position to judge these things, and even the judgement of these people is subjective.
Fredda
April 4, 2007 @ 4:31 am
Japanese poetry is short and sublime and beautiful. English poetry is word-obsessed. It’s always seeking to NAME something. In fact Western civilization is… “In the beginning was the Word…”
I think one thing Westerners won’t fully appreciate, unless they change their way of thinking, is the beauty of silence and nature. how words cannot express “everything”. not that I’m saying they SHOULD try to…
anyway your blog is really great. Greetings from the Philippines!~