from inside "The Ferris Wheel" -- an essay (4)

[previous story click here]

Let us stop dreaming and back to tankas in our hand.
Roma-ji(how to read original tanka) follows after translation by the poet's will.

if I chose my name
it might be "no title"
but I wear a tag
which reads Watanabe
----Saitoh Saitoh

daimei wo
tsukeru to sureba
mudai daga
nafuda wo tsukereba
watanabe no watashi


i am asked
may i have
your name again,
i reply Saitoh
for my name is Saitoh
----Saitoh

onamae nanto
ossyai mashitakke
to iware
saitoh to shiteha
saitoh to suru

These tankas throw a question that what is "I". They can be said concept-predecessor type, it may be unnecessary to apply delicate translation for rhythm like that appeared in the part 1 of this essay. Although, the radical distrust for 'I' which appear in these tankas can be universal issue, I think. Then such works should be translated and launched to the world, then it can be a base of identity crisis argument, with poets from other culture. That may be exiting, I think.

It is difficult to tell a critical tanka from other, but if we can, we walk forward to throw our issues to English speakers first, then the world, for we the Japanese learn English in the compulsory education.

[referrence]
Translation of Tanka -- work of collaboration -- in the case of As Things Are and Ferris Wheel
(Kozue Uzawa, Simply Haiku vol.4 no.4; winter 2006)
link

Book Reviews LYNX XXII; February 2006
(Jane Reichhold)
link