NOTA |
(★)(Saitoo Mokichi is a crucial figure in the development of modern Japanese poetry and his work was highly influential for many of Japan´s younger poets. In ´Fragments of Rainbows´, Amy Vladeck Heinrich offers the first critical study of this significant twentieth-century poet, literary scholar, critic, and theorist. This volume also contains a generous translation of Mokichi´s work. Part One of this study is a literary biography in which the author recounts Mokichi´s life from his childhood, first as a foster son and eventually as son-in-law of a distant relative, through his medical education and training. Succeeding chapters deal with his practice as a physician ; his studies in neuropsychiatry in Vienna and Munich ; the difficult years during which he superintended the rebuilding of his hospital, which had been destroyed by fire ; his separation from his wife and attachment to another woman ; his war poetry ; and the last years of his life. Part Two focuses on specific questions raised by Mokichi´s poetry in the context of this biographical background, his means of poetic expressions, use of form, imagery, and language, and selected major works and themes. Within ´Fragments of Rainbow´, Amy Vladeck Heinrich presents 219 of Mokichi´s most memorable and representative poems in translation. Amy Vladeck Heinrich is an adjunct lecturer at New York University and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.) |