three poets and a painter--玉藻

He was not just the greatest artist in the Catholic world, but he was an art collector and a classically trained humanist who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Indeed, so sure was he of his place in the world that he painted himself with sword in hand before the knighting even took place!

I am reading Simon Schama's wonderful book on Rembrandt. And who should come out as shining prince in the book--not Rembrandt-- but Rubens. In the time-old method of understanding one thing but pairing it against its opposite, Schama in order to uncover Rembrandt, illuminates Rubens.

This from the Salon review:

They were night and day, Rubens and Rembrandt. While the older painter
was the soul of taste, a stoic and a devout Catholic, Rembrandt was a Calvinist vulgarian. “Rubens’s most ardent admirers … [celebrated] the Flemish painter’s commitment to discrimination,” writes Schama.“Rembrandt, on the other hand … had no idea when to avert his gaze.” Fittingly, Rubens died a painter-aristocrat who dabbled in diplomacy and was universally mourned. Rembrandt went bankrupt and expired penniless in a hovel just seven years after he had disinterred his wife’s bones so that he could sell the grave to stave off his creditors.

I mean, just look at the self-portrait of Rubens and his new wife sitting among the honeysuckles. Is it not the ultimate expression of marriage (fidelity and union)? So different from Japanese poses, but the hands really are very evocative of this very touching ancient European (Roman) gesture of *promising.* I love her bracelets too. And of course her hat, which seems somehow totally at odds with the rest of her outfit, doesn’t it? I do think they are charming and seem so in love... it’s a favorite of mine. If only I had met my knight when I was sixteen and he eighteen years older—just back from Italy and so handsome in mustard tights! And if only I was fonder of millstone collars. It is the dream of happily-ever-after...

And, you have to admit not all that many painters or poets dared to express happily ever after, did they? Marriage being seen more as a fortress besieged 围城 than as source of poetry and art.

Not for the faint of heart, more common has always been the theme of romantic love and longing of the non-conjugal sort where the promise was only ever at most an ambiguous promise to come visiting that night.

 

♥

 

Yesterday, my favorite poet (and someone very dear to my heart) Samuel Peralta made an adaptation of a poem by Fujiwara no Teika. Rubens had said that, "My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size has ever surpassed my courage.” And, I think Sam is himself Rubenseque in his talent and confidence to re-think and re-work a poem from one the greatest poets of all time. The great Teika. 

            こぬ人を                            On the Matsuo Shore
            まつほの浦の                     I wait for him
            夕なぎに                            Pining for him in the quiet of the evening 
            焼くやもしほの                    My longing burns me 
            身もこがれつつ                   Like the seaweed burned to gather salt (牡丹訳）

Truly, Teika was one of the great giants of poetry. And, in the same way that sam re-illuminates Teika, Teika himself was alluding to another very famous ancient poem from the Manyoshu (935) by Kasa no Kanmura:

            淡路島                         At Awaji
            松帆の浦に                  Along the Matsuo shore
            朝なぎに                      In the quiet of the morning
            玉藻刈りつつ                They reap jeweled seaweed
            夕なぎに                      In the quiet of the evening 
            藻塩焼きつつ                They burn the seaweed to gather salt
            海人娘女                      Fishermaidens at the shore
            ありとは聞けど             -- I've heard of them at least
            見に行かむ                  Though I am unable
            よしのなければ             To go and see for myself     ---　笠　金村　　(巻６－９３５）

 

                    

As a translator, I wanted (in my translation above) to retain the echoes from the earlier poem--of the evening calm and the shore but I also wanted to retain as much as I could the idea of longing (matsu in Japanese means pine tree but it also means to wait and to long for--so for a thousand years was the symbol par excellance of a pining women). As Sam says, this poem is so filled with sadness, absence and longing. But, more, what I think Sam's rendition (below) captured better than any is the second play on words, of moshio.  

【藻塩（もしお）】
海藻から採る塩のこと。古い製法で、海藻に海水をかけて干し
　乾いたところで焼いて水に溶かし、さらに煮詰めて塩を精製しま
　した。「焼く」や「藻塩」は「こがれ」と縁語で、和歌ではセット
　で使われます。「まつほ～藻塩の」は、「こがれ」を導き出す序
　詞（じょことば）です。

Moshio: Gathering salt from seaweed. In old times, after being soaked in saltwater, seaweed was dried in the sun. It was then burned to dry it before it was boiled to produce salt. In poetry, "yaku" (to burn) and "moshio" (gathering salt from seaweed) are associated with the theme of "longing" and are used in poetry as a set (ie moshio→　longing) 詞.

Here is Sam's version:

Gathering
after Fujiwara no Teika

Dusk falls in Matsuo, late.
As the charred salt, wrung
From simmered seaweed, burns –
So smolder the ashes of this heart,
As I wait for you, as I wait

That nothing new is ever born is a fact. I think Rushdie is someone who has explored this in particularly interesting ways and in many of his books, there will be one character or another who claims that “Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old-it is the new combinations that make them new.” Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

And so in the same way that the Great Teika writes in allusion to the ancient Manyoshu poet Kasa no Kanmura, so too does Samuel Peralta light up Teika's poem to give it new life, in Modern Antiquity.

Comments

[Samuel Peralta / Semaphore]

I am humbled by your kind words... and dumbfounded! I've been compared to a few writers, but thinking of myself as Rubenesque - well, that's a first.

In research to prepare for my rendition of the great Fujiwara no Teika's poem, I read over half a dozen translations (and the same number for Kasa no Kanmura's verse). There is even one now in the comments of my blog, from another translator.

Having read all these, I am confident to say that I find your version the best direct translation I have read. Sadly I didn't have it before, but I am glad to have it as a touchstone now!

You capture the salt process succinctly, echo the Manyoshu poem, and even project (correctly) that Teika's narrator is a woman. This last is an incredibly important fact, because if you cannot capture that voice of longing, then you have not captured the essence of the poem.

In my blog, I highlighted the issue that most translations don't make allowance for the fact that "seaweed burning" doesn't resonate with the modern reader. When I write, I feel that it is part of my responsibility to convey this to the reader without their having to read commentary or do research (although research would enhance their experience considerably!).

However, another difficulty is that most translations of this poem unconsciously distance the narrator from the loved one - "one who does not come" "my love". But when you emphasize "him", you make real the person, he is no longer an abstract love, but someone.

In my adaptation (and in all my Chieko adaptations), the way I do this is to empower the narrator to refer to their love as "you". It is a conscious break from what is written in the original poem, but for me an important one. It makes for an immediacy to the reader, it makes the poem personal because now the narrator appears to be talking to the reader directly.

The ambiguous "you" and "I" also allows the reader to experience the same emotion, whether that reader is a man or woman.

I mentioned my adaptation appears in the verse novel I'm writing. It's an interesting context, and links back to your essay's prelude on painting.

The Teika poem, in my novel, is imagined to be inscribed on the back of a square dish by the artisan Ogata Kenzan, fired at his Narutaki kiln, and decorated on the front with a scene depicting the poem. The dish is found in a shipwreck.

[alathea]

RUBENS & SEAWEED &.... SALT....THE STUFF THAT BEGINS THE ALCHEMIST'S PROCESS.

Your Blog is a citizen of the singing arts. It is just beautiful
You are one of the few that 'can sail the many seas'.....can speak & 'dwell poetically' about many cultures. I love your explanations of words in the process of seaweed & salt.

I brought you a series of pictures about RED MEDUSA CORAL....there was one of an alchemical text where a man is pulling a medusa coral from the water. 'Farming' out a piece of coral to dry. to get the salt.

SALT IN ALCHEMY IS NEEDED TO BEGIN THE WORK OF FINDING THAT CONUNCTIO---doing all the processes to get the alchemist's gold or philosopher's stone. To 'marry' the elements to find the lapis of the work. The descriptions involve putrefaction, burning,drying, calcifying, turning things dark...really working on the elements.

Take a look in that Alchemy & Psychological Transformation book with the glossy photos that I sent for you to see.

...& that book that poet who did some monologues concerning Rembrandt, Vermeer... If you haven't looked at it........maybe now, with all the beautiful thought & shaping that you have done with Rembrandt, Rubens......maybe now, her work would be a further blossoming for your own ears....Her work might
confirm & delight & have you know more of the texture surrounding your artists.

As I remember, Rembrandt's life, the culture & those women around him...poignant & difficult. You do see those brilliant glints of gold on his canvas...an alchemy, some gold from the work.

In this season of THANKS
I AM THANKFUL TO HAVE SUCH BEAUTIFUL ARTWORKS COME THIS WAY.

[peony]

Alathea, as I wrote this post, I was not so sure where I was going with it... but as always, you illuminted the way. Thank you so much for your wonderful response.

I loved what you said about “farming salt” and about our alchemical pursuits involving putrefaction, burning, drying, calcifying, turning things dark... to ”really work on the elements,” as you said... and to work with them too is part of the alchemical process (like grinding ink or making jewelrylike pigments)...

You probably didn’t notice yet, but I added this quote below to last week’s post about boats:

I'm not afraid of storms; for I'm learning to sail my ship. -Aeschylus

I think the same can be said of alchemy, of love, of art—one cannot be afraid of getting burnt (or of getting caught in storms)....

Also, to work on the elements and to “marry” the elements (the number “two” being more than the sum of one and one).

And the Three dramatic Monogues with DaVinci, Michaelangelo and Rembrandt, what a wonderful book! I loved the first Monologue about Da Vinci.

Did you read the article about the Discovery of a lost Da Vinci? I don’t think I have ever seen a da Vinci painting with my own eyes and so I really appreciated seeing the reproduction of Lady with the ermine on such a beautiful paper.

Cecilia Gallerani sat for me,
Holding an emine in her
In her slender arms
And in its claws and snout and furtive eyes--
Emblem of purity!” her lover said--
I left its narrow comment on her name
Notihing qite suits me like a paradox

It is a paradox—every bit so as Mono Lisa’s smile....

Wikipedia says this about it:

There are several interpretations of the significance of the ermine in her portrait. The ermine, a stoat in its winter coat, was a traditional symbol of purity because it was believed that an ermine would face death rather than soil its white coat: Leonardo amused himself by compiling a bestiary in his old age; in it he recorded
MODERATION The ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day, and it would rather let itself be captured by hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity"

Another wonderful stoic image in the Rubens painting just above (bust of Marcus Aurelius, with tulips, some opened and some not yet opened).

I am looking forward to reading this one about a Leonardo painting xoxox

[Samuel Peralta / Semaphore]

I hold the art of the translator in reverence.

It was a group of translators - Anthony Kerrigan, W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Nathaniel Tarn - who introduced me to Pablo Neruda.

Neruda's poetry and the poetry of T.S. Eliot - himself edited by the remarkable Ezra Pound, an admirer of the Japanese poetic ethic - engendered in me an encompassing love for poetry and poetic craftsmanship that had previously been a casual love.

Years later, I read other translations of Neruda's work - and was at times disappointed.

I realized that, had I not first chanced upon the remarkable skills of Kerrigan, Merwin, Reid, and Tarn, a love of Neruda might have been lost to me.

Coming from the Philippines, I have more than a passing capability in Spanish - so I could understand very clearly how some of those translations stumble - and how some translations sing.

But Neruda, first and foremost, is a poet. Had he been born in Germany, he would have been a German poet, a Rilke. Had he been born in Japan, perhaps another Teika...

And yet, Ezra Pound helped enrich many readers with his renditions of the poetry of Li Bai (Li Po) - some would say in spite of his deviations from the original poems. How many present-day readers of poetry have searched out more of Li Po, because of Ezra Pound's 'The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter'?