f r o g . p o n d
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Geof Huth, "f r o g . p o n d" (2002)
Over the years, innumerable writers have tried to rewrite or translate Bashō's simple haiku about a frog jumping into an old pond, and the sound of the splash. bpNichol, imaginatively and outrageously, translated the poem into a single letter:
A great attempt there, but I think Nichol, along with everyone else, has failed. I can't think of a truly adequate translation of the poem into English--or I think I can't. I imagine the poem as something greater than the versions of it I've seen. I imagine it must be better than the translations I've read. But I can't really know, being ignorant of Japanese.
In order to accept my place among the other failed translators, I wrote my own concrete version of this poem back in 2002. Note that I don't even mention the splash, which is suggested visually within the poem.
ecr. l'inf
12 comments:
just to note that gary barwin and i have a volume of poetry called "frogments from the frag pool" forthcoming from the mercury press thsi fall which adds 200+ translations, reactions, visual poems and such to this minor tradition (for more information, check out the fall 05 catalogue at: http://www.themercurypress.ca/main.html )
... and i find it interesting that many of the translations i know of work not from basho directly (or from blyth's translation) but from dom sylvester houedard's notorious translation as:
frog
pond
plop
just my 2cents
--derek beaulieu
hi, geof!
haroldo de campos made a sensational translation of this poem. look:
o velho tanque
rã salt'
tomba
rumor de água
take a look at this site
http://www.unicamp.br/~franchet/histhaik.htm
abraços.
Geof, yours and bp's efforts, like Derek's and most such, are not translations of Basho's poem, but variations on it. For instance, nothing is more important in the poem than the fact that the pond is old.
Here's something I consider closer to a proper translation (assuing the direct English translations are accurate if imperfect at capturing the all the poetry of Basho's poem: the word, "pond," is shown in an animated sequence in perhaps its first form in Britain, then shown slowly changing through other forms until it becomes the present form, "pond." After this latter has been on the screen a lengthy time, "frog" intersects it as in your poem--then parentheses appear between the letters of "pond," forcing them apart. Meanwhile, "frog disappears." After them, the parentheses disappear, and we have "pond" as it was before the commotion.
--Bob Grumman
Bob,
Hmm, not sure about that new version. Put it together and send it in.
I talked about rewrites and translations, not just translations, and I'm not sure what to consider mine. A re-envisioning? A crippling?
Geof
Derek,
Thanks for the note. I'll have to watch for that volume (out next month). I probably should've written a tiny bit about the versions based on dsh, but it didn't occur to me last night. Thanks for the note!
Geof
Paulo,
Muito obrigado, but I can't figure out the second line of the poem. I'll work on it!
Geof
i agree with Bob that many of these poems arent traditional translations, but at least in the work that ive done - i dont know that you couldnt call them (and i think that fits for Geof's work) homolinguistic translation (when coming from the houedard poem)...
--derek
and i guess one more question - why do you think that there has not been an adequate translation into english? what, in your opinion, is missing?
--derek
Derek,
There's a question.
I feel an attraction to this poem--in its various remanifestations--but I always feel the English versions lack the resonance that must be in the original, that spark that has captured people's imagination.
I've seen only one translation (now forgotten) that I thought had some resonance, and it (apparently) was somewhat closer to the original than other translations. In this one, the frog jumps into the sound of the splash. There is a simultaneity there, coupled with an impossibility, that I find compelling.
But then I'm left wondering if this is really a more accurate rendition, or merely an overly decorated transformation.
Geof
Geof;
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
thats curious to me, that you are assuming that there is a resonance in the original that you feel is absent in the english versions you have seen, altho you cant confirm that as you cant read the original ... which causes you pause as well. a real interesting poetic problematic in terms of langauge and its resonance...
personally, i was inspired by the remanifestations (to use your word) of bpNichol, jwcurry, McCaffery and houedard before ever reading the Basho (or at least the translation by blyth)
**
water-shaped hole in silence
frog-shaped hole in pond
poem shaped hole in mind.
**
-- derek
I know nothing of any old version of this poem, so I am blank and thus only reacting on what I see here.
I can see the splash and the frog, more I see it sitting right in the center on a big leaf
Great concrete poem!
Ahem.
[Typekey word is "frofz"!]
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