friday poetry blogging

[coraa]

By the monk and poet Ryokan.

Translated by Steven Carter:

     It's all I think of: of when I was young,
     reading books in the empty temple hall
     —refilling the lamp again and again with oil,
     never lamenting the long winter night.

Or, in the original:

     一思少年時
     読書在空堂
     灯火数添油
     未厭冬夜長

(Edit: lnhammer points out that it's interesting that the second is in Chinese, which is interesting since Ryokan is Japanese. I don't know if it was originally written in Chinese, or if my source is a translation of a translation, but it is interesting.)

Comments

[meaghan_bullock]

Depending on Ryokan's era, at a certain point in Japanese history all Cultured People read, wrote, and composed in Chinese. So it's entirely possible that it was originally written in Chinese. (This brought to you by last summer's "if you're going to be unemployed and thus not usefully contributing, at least educate yourself, lazy twit" experiments in library foraging!)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Lovely!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My husband loves Ryokan :-)

[larryhammer]

So we have a Japanese zen monk writing in Chinese? Hmm.

Doing a good job of it.

---L.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(here from friends' FL- please excuse the intrusion)

Japanese poetry written in Chinese is called Kanshi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanshi_(poetry)). It's still studied in Japanese high schools as part of kanbun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanbun), which is basically the art of reading Chinese texts when you have (many of) the same characters but quite different grammar.

[larryhammer]

And there was a long tradition of writing in Chinese dating back to, well, when Japan first imported writing from China. My understanding is that it was done less and less after the classical period, and what there was, was more predominately prose than poetry.

Which makes an 18th century kanshi interesting.

---L.

[rowr.livejournal.com]

I would have translated the first line differently - to me it seems more like 'my singular thought when I was young' (the english translation seems to more imply that in the present he only thinks about this time when he was young).
Maybe I don't understand it, maybe it was just artistic license with the translation and maybe it doesn't matter. In any case, I like it. I remember being it (minus the oil in the lamps and the temple bit). :)