Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/42

30 and to such criticism there is no answer. Their compass will inevitably appear limited to most people, and only the connoisseur will discover areas of suggestion around them.

The word “connoisseur” suggests another difficulty for the Western reader. Japanese poetry, like almost every branch of their arts, is virtuoso in methods, and perfectionist in details. This is in direct contrast with Western poetry, where two or three mediocre stanzas in the middle of a long poem are not considered a serious defect providing that there are a sufficient number of high moments in it. Although the second verses of most of our poems are inferior to the first ones, the cry from the poet’s heart or his philosophic perceptions are generally thought worthy of more than a single quatrain. However, the Japanese poet when expressing his feelings is more likely to use a few words of someone of long ago, words as familiar to everyone in Japan as at one time the famous parts of the Bible were familiar in this country, adding a little and giving to these old words the new accent of the present. It is thus possible in a highly concentrated form to express much to the connoisseur familiar with the allusion, and the change from the old poem needs to be very slight if it is expertly managed. Often it is almost impossible to express these slight changes in English translation, so delicate are the variations. If the range of Japanese poetry is small, the shadings within that range can make the English language seem gross and unwieldly.

The problem in translation is accentuated by the fact that there is no poetic correspondence in vocabulary between Japanese and English. For example, Japanese has a rich variety of words for different types of winds, enough to name a whole class of destroyers used in the past war. Or with the word hanami, which we may translate “flower-viewing”, a poet can suggest gaily-clad crowds enjoying the sight of the