| MODEL ESSAY
MS.LORI NEWMAN |
(The following essay was submitted in the Fall of 1996 at the University of Toronto for an introductory course in Japanese Literature by Ms. Lori Newman and is, I believe, representative of the finest work done in that semester. The paper received a high mark for its attention to detail, to proper methods of quotation, and to comments of a comparative nature that are, while not specifically required for the level of enquiry of this course, far beyond "normal" requirements.)
Throughout her essays, Ms. Newman makes concrete and useful comparisons of what she
has read from Japanese Literature, with what she already knows from English Literature,
in particular,Welsh poetry. I will list here some of the bibliographic references she makes
which are particularly helpful for the study of Comparative Culture and Comparative
Literature:
Allison, Alexander et.al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. (Norton, 1996)
Bain, Carl E. ed.The Norton Introduction to Literature. (Norton, 1995)
Burgess, Glyn S. The Lais of Marie De France. (Penguin, 1986)
Heaney, Seamus. The Haw Lantern. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989)
EAS 238F Japanese Poetry and Literature in Translation Prof. K. Richard Term Diary by Lori Newman
Manyoshu
Grief is one of the most overwhelming emotions that an individual can
experience, and I found the portrayal of grief in Kakinomoto Hitomaro's poem
"After the death of his wife" to be very effective. Hitomaro began with a
gentle tone; his love is a hidden treasure, "secret like a rock-pent pool"
and he was "secure in [his] trust" . The message of his wife*s death is
presented as suddenly to the reader as it was to the poet in real life.
>From this point the poem is awash in grief and confusion; Hitomaro "knew not
what to do nor what to say" . Her death meant nothing to the world at
large: women still shopped at the market and birds still sang. However, the
poet could hear "no voice of her" in the sounds of life around him. I
found the last two lines of the poem the most evocative:
None passed by who even looked like my wife.
I could only call her name and wave my sleeve.
Although the poet did not visit his wife often while she was alive because
he feared social reprisals, in grief he was unafraid to stand in the middle
of her favourite marketplace, calling her name. The act is is both
passionate and immediate: his love was private, but his grief was public.
This segment of the Manyoshu brought to mind another poem that deals with
similar emotions and subject matter: "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"
by William Wordsworth. In this poem, his love is also a hidden treasure:
"A violet by a mossy stone/ Half hidden from the eye" . We do not know the
exact relationship between the poet and his love, we only know the
tenderness he felt for her. It is in the last four lines of the poem that
the transformation from love to grief occurs:
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
Lucy's death is presented as suddenly as that of Hitomaro's wife. However,
Wordsworth chose to reveal only a hint of his grief, expressing that her
death has had an impact upon him. We are left asking the question "What
difference has Lucy's death made in the poet's life?" In contrast,
Hitomaro's choice to continue past this point and present the effect of his
loss sustains the feelings of grief and sympathy summoned by the poem. We
do not wonder what effect the death has had upon his life, but rather how he
will continue after it. This is a fundamental question that all those who
grieve must address: "Now that she's gone, how will I ever go on?"
Both poems are a statement of grief and both cause the reader to experience
their own remembered pain. However, I feel that Hitomaro's poem is more
effective. Because he continued beyond the initial expression of grief, the
reader's emotions unfold much like the poet's, building to a keen sense of
loss by the end of the poem. Wordsworth's poem ends abruptly, and it is
unable to evoke the deep sustained loss that is summoned by the other poem.
Grief is a process that waxes and wanes over time, and because he chose to
let emotion build over time in his poem and reflect this process, Hitomaro's
is the more evocative and effective poem.
The Kojiki
I must admit that I found "The Luck of the Sea and the Luck of the
Mountains" to be a generally unremarkable piece of literature for a number
of reasons. Even though this is a tale of adventure, little sense of
adventure or suspense is created in the story. The most important events in
the tale were often described in precise detail before they occurred,
usually through a set of instructions given by another character. For
example, a long, precise set of instructions given by the God of the Tide
are followed by the statement: "The Prince followed these instructions, and
after he had gone a little way everything happened just as the God of the
Tide had said." Although this technique successfully furthers the plot, it
does little to evoke a particular mood, or to capture the interest of the
reader.
The characters themselves were also difficult to relate to. Except for
Fire-fade's initial suggestion to "make a change and use each other's
luck" he demonstrates little initiative throughout the rest of the story.
A passive hero, he is led through the tale by the suggestions of others.
Because Fire-fade is propelled through the story by following the suggestion
of others without question, little dramatic tension is created. The only
other moment where he takes the initiative to act independently of the
wishes of others occurs when he disobeys the princess' request and catches a
glimpse of her giving birth in her true form. However, this is a negative
act: as a result, the princess retires in shame and he loses her forever.
Although this event provides a climax for the story, giving it some degree
of emotional impact, it seems somewhat incongruous when measured against the
hero's unwavering passivity throughout the rest of the tale. The moment is
lost beneath the weight of Fire-fade's past motivational emptiness.
As an orally-transmitted tale, the use of repetition in this segment of the
Kojiki would be a good way to emphasize details worth remembering in the
story to a listening audience. For example, the expression "A mountain-luck
is a luck of its own, and a sea-luck is a luck of its own. Let us now give
each other back his own luck" is an idea that is central to the action in
the story. However, in written form this technique slows down the
narrative, especially in light of the degree of repetition present in the
instructions to Fire-fade.
Although I did not connect well with "The Luck of the Sea and the Luck of
the Mountains" , I enjoyed some of the language used in the story. The
images of the "ten-grasp saber" , "things broad of fin and narrow of fin"
and "a stout little boat without seams" have a definite lyric quality that
add a great deal of charm and grace to the story's style. However, these
small highlights were not sufficient to give me a deep connection to the story.
The Tales of Ise
After reading segment IV of The Tales of Ise, I turned to a poem by Sorley
MacLean for comparison, "A Spring". Both poems explore the same subject
matter and see the world in a similar light, but how each poet expresses
these perceptions is significantly different.
In The Tales of Ise, the poet Narihira has returned to an old haunt to
reflect upon the love he once experienced there: "He stood and looked, sat
and looked, but nothing seemed the same." The poem composed for the event
focuses on the idea that although Nature has continued in the same manner:
And is not the spring the same
Spring of the old days?
My body is the same body--
the poet's situation has changed inexorably, and "everything seems
different." A tension is created between the concrete and the ephemeral,
the world of memory and desire conflicts with a real world in which the poet
has no part in the lady's life.
Sorley MacLean's poem contains many similar features. In "A Spring",
MacLean takes his love to a river where "She bent her head down to its
brink/ and it did not look the same again." However, the memory of the
incident touches the poet's awareness forever:
I reached the distant little green
many a time again, alone
and when I looked into the swirling water
there was in it only the face of my treasure-trove.
The memory of a past love has changed the landscape itself. Initially,
MacLean is unable to ignore the association between his love and the place
they once shared together. However, unlike Narihira, over time "the hills
did not look/ as if [his] chanced-on treasure had been seen." Time and the
world's unchanging character have gradually erased his memory of the event.
He admits "I do not remember your words,/ even a thing you said," but has
been reduced to memories of the lesser senses: "the smell of honey-suckle/
and...bog-myrtle" . The details of the event have been replaced by its
individual elements: a river and the smell of flowers are all that remain.
In contrast, the Ise poem demonstrates a greater sense of immediacy.
While "remembering with longing the happenings of the previous year" the
poet has been reduced to tears. The passage of time has heightened the
sense of loneliness and longing. The intense emotion described in the prose
sets the tone for the poem to follow, which contains a distillation of
Narihira's innermost thoughts. Without the prose to provide both a
situational and an emotional context, the poem loses a great deal of its
impact.
As a poem without prose to set the context, "A Spring" is cut adrift
temporally. We are only aware of a moment during MacLean's relationship
through the brief memories he shares afterwards. We do not know how long he
and his love have been apart, the nature of their relationship, or even the
woman's name. However, the poem is able to create a clear enough
situational context to lend the emotions explored a firm footing.
Although I can see the similarities between "A Spring" and this segment of
The Tales of Ise, I must admit that I preferred the MacLean poem. Taken out
of its prose context, I found the Ise poem to be spare and unfeeling; the
prose itself was more descriptive than evocative. I tend to react to
literature on a very emotional level, and as such, I greatly enjoyed the way
MacLean crafted each line to create the greatest emotional impact.
The Kokinshu
When reading The Kokinshu, I found the interplay of the themes of love and
time to be the most interesting. These themes are also echoed in Edna St.
Vincent Millay's poem, "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why".
In both works, time serves as an impediment to love, eventually obscuring
memory itself.
The most obvious level on which time operates is a physical one. The body
ages and deteriorates to a point where love may not be desirable or even
possible. In a poem by Ise this transformation is particularly final:
Not even in dreams
Can I meet him any more --
My glass each morning
Reveals a face so wasted
I turn away in shame.
Her deterioration is such that she can no longer see her love in dreams, and
even to gaze at herself in a mirror is too painful an act to perform. The
process of age is a gradual one, but the emotion expressed in the poem is
swift and immediate: the poet is ashamed of herself because of her worn
appearance. The effect of age is further reinforced by a second poem by the
same poet, in which she describes her body as being "like the fields/
Withered by winter" . She is not sure whether she can hope "That spring
will come again" . Haunted by memories of her former glory, the poet is left
in despair.
Millay also confronts time and age, although hers is "a quiet pain" , not
the shame of Ise. Time has rendered her memories of love vague and
indistinct; she "cannot say what loves have come and gone" . However, like
the Kokinshu poem, Millay uses winter imagery to describe herself. She is
the tree in winter that does not know "what birds have vanished one by one,/
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before" The poet knows that she has
lost something, but the specifics of the loss itself are lost to time. In
contrast, Ise is profoundly aware of her loss: she has grown old, and now
she cannot even see her lover in her dreams.
Both poets conclude their poems on a similar note. Ise questions the
possibility of transformation:
Can I hope, though I am burnt,
That spring will come again?
She wants hope, but she does not know if it exists. The poignancy of this
question endows the poem with an emotional power that reaches a fundamental
part of every reader. We all wonder what the future will hold, and we all
want to be loved. Millay's poem concludes with a greater degree of
finality. Her final statement is both confident and pessimistic:
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
She knows that she once loved and once was young, but with equal surety she
believes that that part of her life has ended. This statement leaves no
possibility for hope.
In my experience, one's reactions to poetry are dynamic rather than static.
When I first read the Kokinshu poems a month ago, I found it to be both
reflective and refreshing: I appreciated its economy of language. However,
in my current mood, I prefer Millay's darker tone, set to lengthier stanzas.
Both works are effective in their use of language, and in their presentation
of human frailties and desires; any change in my attitude toward these poems
is purely a result of my own weaknesses, not that of the poems themselves.
The Tosa Diaries
While reflecting upon the fudo theme evident in The Tosa Diaries, the work
of the poet Seamus Heaney also came to mind: he often examines the
relationship of people to the land through his poetry. I found that these
relationships echoed the ones in Tsurayuki's work, and it was a pleasure to
compare this early diary with a poem from this century, "Parable Island".
I found the wordplay evident in the trip past the beaches of Uta
particularly interesting. The beach is named Uta, "poem", and appropriately
enough, a poem is immediately composed to commemorate the moment . It is
interesting that Tsurayuki notes that "The poem, however, cannot compare
with the sight itself." The moment is too beautiful for words to capture,
and the landscape remains untamed by the poet's art.
Heaney also reflects upon the limitation of words in their ability to
connect with the landscape:
there lies the mountain of the shifting names.
The occupiers call it Cape Basalt.
The Sun's Headstone, say farmers in the east.
Drunken westerners call it The Orphan's Tit.
Words fail to connect with the mountain -- its names range from the
celestial to the profane-- and one is left with the sense that though humans
may occupy the land, it is not truly theirs to name.
Human awareness is greatly affected by the landscape in both works. When
Tsurayuki and his wife arrive home and see their garden in disarray, the
pine seedlings (komatsu) that have grown there are visually and
linguistically symbolic of the child that they have lost . The image of the
pine trees using the word komatsu bridges both the physical and emotional
landscapes experienced by the poet, and "Old memories come flooding back" ,
unbidden.
In the Heaney poem, people deliberately seek awareness in the landscape:
...fork-tongued natives keep repeating
prophecies they pretend not to believe
about a point where all the names converge
underneath the mountain and where (some day)
they are going to start to mine the ore of truth.
However, this is also a passive quest. Although the natives know that there
is truth to be found in the mountain, they are not willing to search for it
yet. For a reason unknown to the reader, they choose to avoid nature's
message. It is also interesting to note the difference in interaction
evident in both poems. Tsurayuki finds awareness through the passive act of
viewing the pine trees, but for Heaney's folk to find truth, they must dig
into the landscape, an active and invasive act.
It is difficult to fully evaluate any written work's effectiveness when it
is translated into another language; as these two works demonstrate, words
do have their limitations. Without benefit of further lectures or reading
about The Tosa Diary itself, I would, as an uninformed reader, be unable to
derive the depth of meaning and nuance that a Japanese reader would when
dealing with the original text. As an English reader, I found the
presentation of the text in translation to be effective, but even with
additional information, much of the diary's charms were lost.
The Tale of Genji
"Forbidden love" is a theme that recurred throughout Medieval European
literature, and when I encountered this theme in the first chapter of The
Tale of Genji, a body of work from the European Medieval period immediately
came to mind. The Lais of Marie de France are a series of Breton tales,
expressed by a female poet of the Norman period. I found that her portrayal
of forbidden love in the poem "Laustic" contrasted well with Murasaki
Shikibu's account of the ill-fated love between the Emperor and the lady of
the Paulownia Court. Both affairs are passionate, and both are cut off
cruelly and abruptly.
In 'The Paulownia Court", the Emperor is deeply in love with a woman of
middle rank, and "he [behaves] as if intent upon stirring gossip." The
author contrasts the joys of the relationship with its repercussions
throughout this part of the novel; the birth of a son between them is
followed by an incident in which trash is strewn along the path leading to
her quarters . Love, however wonderful, has a price at certain levels of
society, and Shikibu was not afraid to explore the darker side of passion.
In contrast, Marie de France was quite gentle with the central figures in
"Laustic". The lady and her lover exist in a perfect romantic bubble: the
author insulates them from any social repercussions their ill-advised love
would have created in reality. The different portrayals of love in The Tale
of Genji and The Lais of Marie de France greatly affect the emotional impact
on the reader when those affairs come to an end. Shikibu's constant
contrast of love and its repercussions creates a sense of foreboding in the
reader, as does the comparison she establishes between the Emperor and one
of his contemporaries: "In China just such an unreasoning passion had been
the undoing of an emperor and had spread turmoil throughout the land." It
is clear that this relationship will not be brought to an easy end, and this
heightened sense of foreboding makes the lady's eventual death all the more
tragic. The intrusion of reality into Marie de France's perfect world comes
as a shock to the reader. Caught looking through a window for her lover,
the lady explains to her husband that she is listening for a nightingale .
Her husband orders the nightingale caught, and uses it to confront his wife:
"...I have trapped the nightingale which has kept you awake so much.
you can sleep in peace, for it will never awaken you again."...She asked
her husband for the bird, but he killed it out of spite, breaking its neck
wickedly with his two hands. He threw the body at the lady, so that the
front of her tunic was bespattered with blood, just on her breast.
The lady sends the body to her lover as a warning, and the two never meet
again . As the bird's life ends, so does their love, swiftly and cruelly.
There is little of the dramatic build-up present in Shikibu's novel. This
is not a limitation of the form in which the tale was written; in other
poems from the same collection (such as "Yonec" and "Eliduc") Marie de
France uses a lengthy and elaborate emotional build-up to heighten the sense
of romantic tragedy. The choice to shock rather than to proceed gradually
is an interesting one, but I cannot say that it works in favor of "Laustic".
The use of gradualism in "The Paulownia Court" gives the reader time to
build a deep sense of concern for the characters involved, and when the lady
dies we have built up such a rapport with her character that we are
emotionally affected by her loss also. By comparison, my recovery from the
end of the relationship in "Laustic" was as swift as the end itself;
although it was a tale well-told, it left little lasting impression.
Bibliography Bain, Carl E.; Beaty, Jerome; Hunter, J Paul. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991. Burgess, Glyn S.; Busby, Keith (translators). The Lais of Marie de France. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada, 1986. Heaney, Seamus. The Haw Lantern. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990. Keene, Donald (Ed.). Anthology of Japanese Literature. New York: Grove Press, 1955. MacLean, Sorley. Spring Tide and Neap Tide: Selected Poems 1932-72. Worcester: Canongate Inc., 1988. Shikibu, Murasaki (translated Seidensticker, Edward G.). The Tale of Genji. New York: Random House Inc, 1990.
Shinkokinshu
I found that both the poems of the Shinkokinshu and Dante Gabriel
Rossettis poem Sudden Light connected memory with the poets' own immediate
experience of the natural world. However, both works explore this
connection with varying degrees of success.
In the poem by Fujiwara no Ariie, the natural world is a poignant reminder
of a broken promise:
You said you would not
Forget me -- those were but words;
All that still remains
Is the moon which shone that night
And now has come again.
An event in the poets personal life has imprinted itself upon the natural
world, and now all that remains of that moment is nature itself. The poet's
use of the moon as a symbol gives this poem a universal appeal: the moon is
one of the few natural features that is the same the world over, and to use
it in a poem draws the reader into a common set of human experiences.
Sudden Light also uses nature as a trigger for memory. The poet's memories
are indistinct: "I have been here before,/ But when or how I cannot tell" .
Rossetti continues with a presentation of the natural images that have
triggered this memory:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
The images appeal to the senses: a gentle sound, a sharp scent, and a
distant sight present a generalized picture that reflects that poet's own
hazy memory. As the moment extends into the next stanza, Rossetti's
emotional connection becomes clear:
You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall -- I knew it all of yore.
As a trigger to the poet's memory, the woman becomes a part of the natural
world. She turns as the swallow does, and is clearly in tune with the world
around her.
Although both poets used a similar technique to share their memories with
the reader, I had difficulty relating to Rossetti's poem. The language in
Fujiwara's poem is concise and evocative, presenting a moment's thought with
a poem that takes but a moment to read. We are left to consider the
implications of that moment long after it is over. In contrast, Rossetti's
poem is flowery and inexact; the first two stanzas successfully present the
moment, but the poet continues for a further five lines beyond that with
questions that should have been apparent to the reader otherwise:
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
I felt it unnecessary for the poet to lead the reader's questions in this
manner. Poetry is one of the most contemplative literary forms, and to have
one's contemplation interrupted by a deliberate line of questioning is a
jarring experience.
Hojoki
While reading the Hojoki, I was reminded of Cynddylan's Hall, a Welsh poem
written in the ninth century. Both works were written during times of
social upheaval, and both use a similar structure to present a common theme:
the use of the home as a reflection of both the state of society and the
state of the author's life.
Throughout the Hojoki, houses are used as a vivid symbol of society's rapid
decay during the author's lifetime. Kamo no Chomei begins his account with
a direct statement connecting the fates of people and their homes:
The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming,
are not of long duration: so in the world are man and his
dwellings.
This theme is continued in his detailed descriptions of the disasters that
have befallen Kyoto during his lifetime. When the site of the current
capital is abandoned, we are presented with the unnatural image of houses
which have been "dismantled and floated down the Yodo River" . The houses,
uprooted and unstable, are a concrete reflection of the actual and emotional
upheaval experienced by the people of the city during this period.
In Cynddylan's Hall, the image of the hall is similarly used to present a
picture of the state of society at the time:
Dark is Cynddylan's hall tonight
With no fire, no songs.
My cheek*s worn out with tears.
It wounds me to see Cynddylan's hall
With no roof, no fire,
Dead is my lord; I yet live.
The hearth is one of the most basic symbols of comfort and security that
humans possess, and a cold hearth in a darkened hall is a poignant image for
any reader. A home without a roof has no purpose, just as one without song
has no joy. Like Kamo no Chomei, the poet has taken advantage of the
universality of "the home" to convey a sense of loss to the reader.
Both works present these themes using a simliar structure. In the Hojoki,
the author first examines society on a large scale, through the presentation
of the disasters that befell his city. Then he takes the essay to a more
personal level, through a detailed description of his own modest home. The
house is small and utilitarian, and throughout the work it is emphasized
that this is but a "temporary hut" . In light of the author's speculation
that his own "life seems about to evaporate like the dew" , one would
surmise that the house is an extension of the author himself, and that its
own impermanence is a direct reflection upon Kamo no Chomei's impression of
his own life.
In Cynddylan's Hall, the poet also moves from the public to the personal.
Throughout the poem, the first two lines of each stanza are used to reflect
the outward affect of the English invasion on Welsh society. Any personal
comments are reserved for the third line in the stanza. The language used
in these personal lines is both eloquent and raw: "I weep awhile, then am
silent....Save for God, who'll keep me sane?" The poet continually
contrasts the larger images of destruction with the emotional aftermath that
this destruction has caused.
In examining both of these works, I must admit that I preferred Cynddylan's
Hall to the Hojoki. The language of the poem was vivid; every line was
infused with mourning and loss. I had difficulty relating to the
comparatively mild language of the Hojoki. Although it was an interesting
presentation of a pivotal point in Japanese history, it failed to appeal to
me in a literary sense.
Heike Monogatari
I have chosen to compare the Heike Monogatari with the British epic poem
The Gododdin because both present pictures of pivotal moments in their
societies' histories through depictions of war. In the Heike, "The Death of
Atsumori" was a particularly effective examination of the price of war.
Told from the perspective of Kumagai, a Genji warrior, this tale presents
his Heike opponent, Atsumori, in a positive light. He sees that his
opponent is "a youth of sixteen or seventeen, delicately powdered and with
blackened teeth, just about the age of his own son and with features of
great beauty" . This is no faceless warrior, but a boy in the flower of
his youth, much like Kumagai's own child. The older man is able to relate
to his opponent, and with this sympathetic portrayal of the Heike youth, we
connect with both participants in the battle. The readers are privy to both
the conversation between the two, and to Kumagai's own thoughts. The older
man*s inner turmoil is particularly poignant in light of his perceived
connection to Astumori:
..."if I slay him it will not turn victory into defeat, and if I spare
him, it will not turn defeat into victory. When my son Kojiro was
but slightly wounded at Ichi no tani this morning, did it not pain
me? How this young man's father would grieve to hear that he
had been killed! I will spare him."
When Kumagai is then forced to kill Atsumori as an act of mercy, the
emotional impact of the young man's death is combined with the older
warrior's own pain to produce an intense and strangely personal sense of
remorse in the reader.
The Gododdin is told entirely from the poet's point of view, and although
he has high praise for the warriors killed in battle, it is presented from a
heroic perspective. The following stanza examines war through both the
glory of the warrior and the grisly reality of the warrior*s death:
He was a tumult on the battle-slope, he was a fire,
His spears were swift, he was radiant,
He was food for the ravens, he was benefit to the crow,
And before he was left at the fords,
At dew-fall, the eagle of graceful movement,
Beside the wave's spray near the hillside,
The poets of the world judged him to be of manly heart.
Although the warrior himself is a vision, an "eagle", he is destined to be
food for scavengers on the battlefield. The poets did not find him lacking
in spirit, but that same "manly" spirit drove him to his eventual end.
Their act of judgment is an empty one in light of the warrior's death, and
because of this, the reader is forced to wonder whether war is truly as
glorious as the heroic standard would have us believe.
Although both works present a critical examination of war, I found the
Heike Monogatari's presentation of the subject to be more effective than
that of The Gododdin. The use of both dialogue and internal monologue in
the Heike creates an intensely personal, battlefield view of war. There is
no glory for either the victor or the vanquished in this tale, and the
reader is left with a deep sense of loss at the conclusion of this episode.
In contrast, The Gododdin presented a mixed message at times: the warriors'
deaths were a senseless loss, but they were still to be praised for their
past glories on the battlefield. The heroic ideal is sometimes in conflict
with the reality being presented: the heroes are glorious, the heroes are
dead. This blind praise does not mesh well with the sense of loss that the
poet attempts to create, and this renders the poem ineffective as a result.
Tsurezuregusa
I chose to examine a segment of the Tsurezuregusa with Linda Pastan's poem
Erosion in mind. Both works present death as a natural process, as revealed
through its connection to nature itself.
In the Tsurezuregusa, Yoshida Kenko has chosen to present a portrait of the
fate of man after death, both in memory and in body. Human nature is the
first element to scour away the dead man's identity, as in this description
of the process of mourning:
Months and years pass by, and still they do not forget, though,
as the saying goes, the departed grows more distant every
day. However that may be they seem not to feel so deeply as
at the time of death, for now they chatter and laugh together.
Eventually nature itself takes over and the mourners die, leaving the
dilemma: "how can later generations grieve, who know him only by repute?"
The dead man has been wiped from society's common consciousness, and only
the body remains. Over time, nature completes the process by removing any
lingering physical evidence of the dead man's passing:
...at last there comes a day when even the pine trees that
groaned in the storms, not lasting out their thousand years of
life, are split for fuel, and the ancient grave, dug up and
turned to rice field, leaves never a trace behind.
The death is complete; the man is not present in body, in memory, or in
name. Time has reclaimed every fragment of what he once was.
In Erosion, water is the element that the poet uses to wash away the
evidence of human existence: "The waves move their long row/ of scythes
over the beach." The rhythmic flow of water blends with the classic
western symbol of death, the scythe, to produce a haunting natural image.
As in Kenko's essay, the process is inexorable, and cannot be stopped by any
human effort:
We have tried a seawall.
We have tried prayer.
We have planted grasses
on the bank, small tentacles
that catch on nothing. For the wind
does its work, the water
does its sure work.
The world is raw and elemental, leaving humans and their works but a
temporary place in it.
I found both works very effective, and I appreciated them for different
reasons. Kenko was very direct in the presentation of his message. In
three short paragraphs, the reader has been taken from the point of the
funeral to the moment when the dead lose all place in the world. The poet
has distilled the death process into specific, universal moments that would
touch any reader. Erosion shares the same strength, using evocative
language and commonly-understood, natural images to convey a sense of the
impermanence of human existence. Both the essay and the poem are
well-written, and as such I enjoyed them both.
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
The author's voice in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon reminded me of the
narrative voice in the poem My Last Duchess. Both works present a
tightly-controlled image of the narrator's ideal partner.
In The Pillow Book, Shonagon describes her ideal lover through a
examination of the way his average morning. After returning home from an
amorous evening, the gentleman does not sleep, but rather completes the
evening's duties by writing a letter to his lover:
He looks a trifle sleepy; but, as soon as he is home, draws his
writing case toward him, carefully grinds himself some ink and
begins to write his next-morning letter -- not simply dashing off
whatever comes into his head, but spreading himself to the task
and taking trouble to write the characters beautifully.
Every act he performs is conscious, deliberate and refined. The author
examines his character through his actions rather than through his words or
thoughts. He may "quietly murmur to himself this or that passage from the
Sutras" , but the passage or its content does not matter: it is the act
itself that reveals the character of the man.
In My Last Duchess, the narrator admires a painting of his first wife while
allowing a brief description of her behaviour to reveal her character, and
eventually, his own personality as well. To explain her smile in the
painting, the Duke describes her readiness to smile:
...My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -- all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least.
Every smile she makes, whether to a man or a mule, is reason for suspicion
in the jealous Duke's mind. Even the most demure blush, an act to be
expected in a woman of the upper classes, is to be interpreted as evidence
of a possible romantic indiscretion. Like Shonagon's essay, the narrator
allows actions to create a picture of the lover's personality. The wife in
My Last Duchess is also an ideal lover in that, as a painting, she is now
finally under the full control of the Duke: now she can only smile upon
those whom he allows to view her. In contrast, Shonagon's depiction has no
sinister element; her lover exists perfect and whole in her imagination alone.
I enjoyed both the essay and the poem, although for different reasons.
Shonagon's portrait of her ideal lover was light-hearted and deftly-written.
As a young woman, I have no trouble relating to her presentation of the
perfect, thoughtful young man: evening conversations with my close female
friends sound very much the same. Browning's poem appeals to my darker
side: to present a portrait of the unfortunate Duchess through the eyes of
the man who ordered her death is a gruesome idea, but highly effective.
Both works present an ideal lover, but the moods that they evoke are
completely different.
Zeami on the Art of the Noh
The only comparable work that came to mind when reading The Art of the Noh
was a brief commentary on the actor's craft that is found in Hamlet. The
segment is famous: in a series of instructions given by Hamlet himself, the
master playwright gives his advice to those who would perform his works. In
Shakespeare's estimation, a good actor mirrors life through his art:
...o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is
from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first, and now,
was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and
body of the time, his form and pressure.
The use of a mirror as a central image is an interesting one. Whether made
of glass or water, a mirror is merely a surface which reflects the life
around it; it does not actually become that which it reflects.
In contrast, Zeami's focus is internal: "it is due to the underlying
spiritual strength of the actor which unremittingly holds the attention" of
the audience. Where Shakespeare's mirror would reflect every facet of the
role to be presented, Zeami is concerned with what is not shown:
...it is undesirable for the actor to permit this inner strength to
become obvious to the audience. If it is obvious, it becomes an
act, and is no longer "no action". The actions before and after
an interval of "no action" must be linked by entering the state of
mindlessness in which the actor conceals even from himself his
own intent.
It is left to the individual reader to intepret terms such as "inner
strength", "no action" and "mindlessness", an act reminiscent of the
contemplative state which the actor himself must achieve.
Each writer cites a different focus as being central to the actor's art.
Shakespeare admonishes his actors to "suit the action to the word, the word
to the action" . Words and actions are inextricably linked, each serving
as the inspiration for the other. Zeami's approach is less direct:
In the art of the No too, the different types of miming are artificial
things. What holds the parts together is the mind. This mind must
not be disclosed to the audience. If it is seen, it is just as if a
marionette's strings were visible. The mind must be made the
strings which hold together all the powers of the art.
Zeami's use of the marionette's strings to illustrate the mind's pivotal
role is both apt and expertly-written. It presents a clear picture to any
reader of the actor's greatest virtue, while offering an interesting insight
into how Zeami wanted his plays to be interpreted.
I found The Art of the No particularly interesting in light of
Shakespeare's writing on the art of acting. Each used vivid, concrete
images to present their own views, a valuable starting point when attempting
to explain how an art is to be performed. I also enjoyed the difference in
the tone of each piece: Zeami's essay was gentle and contemplative, while
Shakespeare's was witty and passionate. It was a treat to be able to
compare the writings of two master playwrights, and I must admit that I
enjoyed both works greatly.
Bibliography Allison, Alexander, et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1975. Bain, Carl E.; Beaty, Jerome; Hunter, J Paul. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991. Conran, Anthony (Trans). The Penguin Book of Welsh Verse. Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1967. Jarman, A.O.H. Y Gododdin. Wales: Gomer Press, 1990. Keene, Donald (Ed.). Anthology of Japanese Literature. New York: Grove Press, 1955. Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare*s Poetical Works. New York: Frederick Warne and Co., 1912.
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