Ono No Komachi-- The best poet you've never read
Creative Strategy# 22: Honor the greatness of women.
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-black-gown/id507772279
Translator's note: The Black Gown
For me, discovering the poetry of a woman who wrote over a 1000 years ago in another country, in another language, and in a fledgling written form (Japanese) was unlikely enough. But to discover a poet who spoke to me as clearly as if we were family, as accomplished as any poet I had ever loved, with words so potent, vivid, mysterious and terse was shocking. I felt I had moved in next door to an early incarnation of Emily Dickenson.
But I was ignorant and wrong on several counts. Ono no Komachi (小野小町?, c. 825—c. 900) is a legend in Japan--everyone knows her. The bullet train was
named after her. Shrines honoring her as the epitome of feminine beauty are everywhere. At a time when most poets were men she was considered The Greatest Poet Alive--a national treasure. And, as far as we know, she only wrote 50 poems!!
So here I had stumbled upon a celebrity who was unknown to me, a writer of erotic verse who no one had ever slipped into my sweaty palms, a master of the five-line Tanka (the predecessor of Haiku) whose art I had somehow never witnessed. I had also encountered a problem of translation.
It's like that when one encounters genius. You can't believe your ears.
Imagine you live on an island which only broadcasts music on AM channels. The reception is always poor. And the only means of retrieving this music is a transistor radio about the size of an Ipod but with the fidelity of crappy shortwave broadcast. Now imagine you are a young boy stuck on this frigid island. You live in a strict household. There is no music. Darkness holds for most of the year. Your parents demand instant obedience and gratitude. Your only source of joy is the radio your scandalous Uncle slipped secretly into your pocket on your birthday. And on those frozen nights, you huddle under thick quilts, and wait for the distant signal to come clear as you muffle its forbidden sound under your pillow. And one night it happens. You are saved. From another planet where people actually dance and love and sing you hear four young men from Liverpool harmonizing in strange accents over an irresistible beat, as interlacing guitars swirl catchy, gutsy lines of melody, and you hear a life you only dreamed of.
Some dreams are so powerful they can survive anything.
Thus the poetry of Ono No Komachi survived it's less than perfect fidelity to conquer me perfectly. Despite what seemed to me to be awkward, gangly, or prim presentations--Ever hear the Lawrence Welk Orchestra play the Beatles?--I saw a breathtaking landscape through a smudged and blurry window. I heard her loud and clear. This strange and accomplished woman spoke to me on my island, moved me so deeply, in fact, that I had to dare to bring whatever gifts I had as a poet to bear upon her perfect words.
Well, I failed. Translation is, as the Italian novelist Umberto Eco says, "The art of failure." I felt very close to my fellow failures and hoped they would not begrudge my efforts as I recast the literal and the lost into my own words. Time and again I would beat my head against the doors of these beautiful mysterious poems and find no entrance.
These are the ones that let me in.
--Patrick O'Leary 9/15/09