NOTA |
()(Being a translation of the Hyaku-nin-isshiu [Slêñ]//@This early translation of one of JapanLs most famous anthologies of poetry has preserved its charm for almost a century, and remains by far the most popular of classical poetry anthologies among the Japanese. TheLHyaku-nin-isshiu [literally Lone hundred poems by one hundred poetsL]L is a collection of a hundred evocative and intensely human specimens of Japanese LtankaL [poetry written in a five-line thirty-one syllable format in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern] composed between the seventh and thirteenth centuries and compiled by Sadaiye Fujiwara in 1235.//@These little gems consist almost entirely of love poems and picture poems intended to bring some well-known scene to mind : nature, the round of the seasons, the impermanence of life, and the vicissitudes of love. There are obvious Buddhist and Shinto influences throughout. To make the sounds more familiar to English readers, the translator has adopted a five-line verse of 8-6-8-6-6 meter, with the second, fourth, and fifth lines rhyming. His accompanying notes put the poems into a cultural and historical context. Each poem is illustrated with an eighteenth-century Japanese woodcut by an anonymous illustrator.)//@William N. Porter translated many works from the Japanese between 1900 and 1914. He is best known for his challenging but artful translation of LA Hundred Verses from Old Japan : Being a Translation of theLHyakunin-issiu (1909)L. Another of his well-known translations is LThe Tosa DiaryL, the oldest extant Japanese work of literature, which was written in 935 by Ki no Tsurayuki.) |