Poems of the Goat (review)

It's often been said that translation is a labor of love. Nowhere is this more true than with the translation of poetry, which, as Baudelaire said, is a kind of universal translation, since poets translate the language of the universe—mountains, rivers, trees—into the language of humanity. So why do some writers get translated and others (better, more deserving) remain obscure? It's a question Ry Beville asked himself seven years ago. This book is his answer.

In 1995,the Virginia native was studying literature at Nanzan University in Nagoya and attempting to translate Oe Kenzaburo when a professor shared with him an article he'd written about poet Nakahara Chuya. The article quoted a line from "The Cicada": "Utsura-utsura to boku wa suru." The rhythm and music of the line resonated with Beville, who had always admired the more "musical" poets of the last century like Yeats, Auden, and Frost.Beville went right to the bookstore and bought a collection of Chuya's poems in Japanese; there was no English version on the shelves.

Beville felt it was almost a "crime" that a poet as extraordinary as Nakahara Chuya—not to mention as admired among the Japanese—was not only unavailable in English, but also unknown to many Western scholars of Japanese literature. "I undertook this project in part to correct that balance, if only a little. But more importantly, I wanted to let the English-speaking world know that there is a poet with a style as diverse and accomplished as some of the greatest modern writers in the West."

Chuya was born in 1907 in Yuda Onsen, Yamaguchi,to an army doctor and his wife. Though the family moved to Hiroshima and Kanazawa, they returned to Yamaguchi in 1914. As a child,Chuya wrote poetry and tanka, but as a teenager he discovered alcohol, and the distance between him and his family grew.He was sent away to a fancy private school in Kyoto, where he was introduced to dadaism and French symbolism, and fell in love with an older woman actress. In 1926, he met the critic Kobayashi Hideo and devoted himself to poetry, leaving his family and small town far behind. The rising influence of European culture was felt against the growing tide of imperialism and nationalism.In 1931, Chuya enrolled in Tokyo University's foreign-language school and began compiling Poems of the Goat, but the manuscript had a hard time finding publication. By age twenty-six, he had entered into an arranged marriage and was publishing poetry and writing lyrics. Living a somewhat profligate life in the city, Chuya was the prodigal son and did not return home for his father's funeral—something almost unheard of at the time.Poems of the Goat was the only book he saw published during his lifetime. In 1938, at the age of thirty, he died of tuberculosis. Shortly before that, he gave another manuscript, Poems of Bygone Days, to Kobayashi. It was published posthumously, and Beville is now translating it.

Chuya matured in a time of immense social change, with industrialism, modernism, and the dark shadow of war impacting the social and political landscape. His poems are elegies to lost times and places, sad celebrations of the shabby underbelly of existence, both inner and outer: the circus,a hangover,a sigh, cigarettes, a lover. And yet Chuya's poems are suffused with an innocent resignation, much like the pastoral goat after which they are named: a gentle animal often used in sacrifice. In "Poem of the Sheep," he writes:

I'll embrace my fate at the hour of my death!
I'll lift this little chin of mine—lift it to the heavens.
Only now do I understand that this death
Is the consequence of all I was unable to feel.
Yes, I'll embrace my fate!
And then I'll finally know how it...