October Poem by Ryuichi Tamura (田村隆一) & The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
Hello and welcome to The Young Reader’s Review! For those of you who do not know, about five months ago, I moved to the Land of the Rising Sun. To avoid getting carried away, I am going to keep it very simple by saying that it was a cultural shock. Also, considering that I have (finally) been disenthralled from any school-related constraints and that the Japanese tsuyu rainy season is upon me, it is safe to say that you might notice a slight peak in productivity on this blog (or the reviews will be (dangerously) more analytical and in depth, or I will spend the rest of the summer lying prostate on my bed eating ice cream). Anyway. Being a literary soul, one of the first things that piqued my interest in Japan was obviously literature and I couldn’t help but compare Japanese literature with the Western literature that I had known my entire life. My impressions as a foreigner of literature’s place in the Japanese society deserves an entire blog post to itself, but I will be today talking about one Japanese author whose works particularly whetted my curiosity: Ryuichi Tamura (1923-1998, 田村隆一). The reason why I am so interested by this author’s works is that having recently read T. S. Eliot’s (1888-1965) The Waste Land, the strong Eliotian echoes in Tamura’s oeuvre very much intrigued me. So, sit back in your chair, relax, grab yourself a nice refreshing summer drink, and let's begin.
Background: Ryuichi Tamura (田村隆一) and the Arechi (荒れ地) movement :
One of earliest literary movements to arise after the Pacific War and into the American Occupation was Arechi (荒れ地), the literal translation of the word “wasteland”. This movement was a literary magazine at first where Tamura along with other poets unequivocally stated that “the present is a wasteland”. It is in this poetry journal, that is only constituted of two volumes, both dated 1953, that Tamura along with fellow poets would lay the foundation for post-WWII Japanese poetry. The major theme of this group was the expression of the nihilistic despair caused by the remains of the war. The group’s name is of course derived from T.S. Eliot’s poem which had been translated into Japanese by contemporary poet and literary critic Nishiwaki Junzaburo (西脇 順三郎, 1894-1982) and was used to describe the aura of gloom created by the abject poverty and deprivation present in the first few years of postwar Japan.
 |
| Scene from Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓), 1988 Japanese anime film written and directed by Isao Takahata (高畑 勲 ) |
I think that to be able to fully grasp post-war Japanese poetry, you need to understand the magnitude of the Japanese defeat and how the physical destruction of the Land of the Rising Sun also resulted in an as strong mental deterioration. The Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) even said that the Japanese would have to “bear the unbearable”. The initial response to this loss was a hasty devotion to Western ideals and an abandonment of the Japanese values that had been so vehemently extolled during the war. The beginnings of “modern Japanese poetry” in the Meiji period (1868-1912) even solely lied in the translations of Western poems by Japanese academics. By 1956, Japan began to evolve and to reconstruct a solid national identity even though the war still left fragile scars in the modern Japanese psyche, which are visible in the poetry of the time. The extremely rapid modernization of Japan following the war will also be a theme of interest for the post-WWII Japanese poets.
Ryūichi Tamura is generally considered to be the poet who expressed in the most vivid manner the violent and destructive character of Japanese poetry of the second half of the 1940s. His own home in the suburbs of Tokyo having been burned to the ground after the bombings, he completely understood the disorientation and shock violently aroused by the postwar environment. Therefore, he resolved to revive the Arechi poetry journal which would soon become a literary movement that the authors Ayukawa Nobuo (鮎川 信夫, 1920-1986) and Kitamura Taro (北村太郎,1922-1992) would, for instance, join. With his first poetry book Four Thousand Days and Nights (1956), the latter introduced a new voice to Japanese poetry: he described evocative, yet sensual images and without hesitating to criticize modern civilization with an ironic tone, devoid of any sentimentality. Tamura wasn’t interested in traditional Japanese poetry but was a fervent reader of the Western authors of the time such as W.H. Auden or, as we will particularly see during this review, T.S. Eliot.
Background: T.S Eliot and The Waste Land:
Now, The Waste Land (that you can find at this link https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land if you care to read it). If you have never heard, even vaguely, of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, you must go back to the shire, my friend (kidding, now you’ll know). The Waste Land, a 433-line poem composed in five parts and published in 1922, is without a doubt one of the most important (if not the most important) piece of literature from the 20th century. Eliot had already received attention from his Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock published in 1915 where we can already notice many literary references to Dante Alighieri’s work (which he extensively read), Shakespeare or the Bible to quote a few. But it is difficult to say that The Waste Land “received attention” since that would simply be criminally euphemistic. Now, you must be wondering what is so mind-bending about this poem. First, The Waste Land was written during months of convalescence from depression and illness: Eliot was anxious about keeping his job in a London bank, being cut off from his family in America and being forced to accept financial assistance from his friends and particularly the poet and friend Ezra Pound (1885-1972) to whom he would dedicate The Waste Land (“il miglior fabbro”). What Eliot didn’t know was that he wasn’t just writing an autobiographical work, he was writing the epitome of a literary masterpiece that would reflect his genius and resonate beyond what he had intended in the first place.
The Waste Land was written in 1922 and was consequently a reaction to the impact the First World War had on the world (that’s a mouthful). Eliot is going to loosely follow the legend of the quest for the Holy Grail (in the form of vignettes) in this poem as a sort of extended metaphor. The archetypal version of this legend is a king becomes powerless due to illness and his kingdom becomes ravaged. Therefore, a brave knight will attempt to find the Holy Grail in order to bring fruitfulness to the kingdom but will have to undergo a number of obstacles. You might already see the parallelisms that can be made between the postwar atmosphere and this legend but what is interesting is that the poem does not end in the discovery of the Holy Grail, symbolizing that it is mankind’s duty to achieve its own salvation. It is also the subject of debate whether Eliot wrote this poem (I cannot really discern a particular persona in this poem) in the standpoint of a victim or of a hero. Honestly, you could probably spend multiple lifetimes dedicated to trying to dissect The Waste Land. Yet, I think that it’s momentous influence roots from the fact that it is not only a meditation (though at times obscure due to the many cultural references) on the decline of society and culture, but also a panoramic reflection of the Western modern society and its diversity, in its entirety (human relationships, ageing, death…). It’s fascinating.
As the French novelist Malraux (1901-1976) said, “The point of departure for a work of art is always some other work of art”. Yoko Sugiyama, in an article titled “The Waste Land and Japanese Poetry”, featured in Comparative Literature (Summer, 1961) says that “in postwar Japan one of the most discussed poets is Eliot”. She also says that the effects of Eliot’s poetry on young Japanese poets are mostly his new rhythms, realistic images, and a deep, if pessimistic, faith in humanity. The Waste Land itself has notable influence from Oriental schools of thought and more specifically from Chinese poets: we therefore enter a never-ending chain of cultural influence.
Now, here is October Poem, a poem written by Tamura that I would like to discuss today.
October Poem
Crisis is my nature
There is a fierce hurricane of feelings
under my smooth skin There is
a fresh corpse thrown up
on the desolate shore of October
October is my Empire
My delicate hands control things to be lost
My small eyes watch things that are to disappear
My soft ears listen to the silence of people who are to die
Fear is my nature
The Time that murders everything
flows in my rich blood There is
a new hunger trembling
in the cold sky of October
October is my Empire
My dead armies occupy all cities where rain falls
My dead patrol planes circle in the sky above the lost souls
My dead mobs sign their names for the people who are going to die
(tr. Samuel Grolmes)
Hereinabove is a translation of this poem (I unfortunately do not speak enough Japanese to present to you my conceptions of the original version) that I found on the internet by Samuel Grolmes. I actually came across this poem while reading The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse: From the Earliest Times to the Present (1964) which I purchased since I had already previously heard of the brilliant reputation of the linguist who translated these poems and composed the anthology, Geoffrey Bownas. Yet, after comparing these two translations I simply found the translation of Samuel Grolmes more powerful and pleasurable to read meanwhile, despite Bownas’ eruditeness, his translation did not seem natural and seemed, perhaps, a little too literal. The poem will nevertheless never have the same effect that it has in its original language, which can be at times noticed while reading, and can be frustrating.
Anyway, when you say Japanese poetry, the much talked about “haiku” (俳諧) form most probably comes to mind and, perhaps, the “tanka” (短歌) or “renga” (連歌) . Of course, many other Japanese poetic forms exist, but these types of poems are internationally known for having a fixed syllabic structure and for dealing with the same array of themes. Yet, after the Second World War, with the Western influence, a type of free style (free verse) poetry named “jiyushi” (自由詩) was developed and constituted an important part of “gendai shi” (現代詩, literally “contemporary poetry”). This form is usually believed to grant more flexibility to the poet and let him freely manipulate the poem’s structure in order to better convey his message.
As you can probably tell, October Poem is in fact written in this free form, which is directly inherited from Western poetry. In spite of it being written in free verse, we can still notice a succinct organization: the poem is comprised of an alternation of two cinquains and two quatrains which all begin with a simple declarative sentence with a subject+ conjugated stative verb “is” + possessive pronoun “my” + object (“Crisis is my nature”, “October is my Empire”, “Fear is my nature”, “October is my Empire”). October Poem is about despair, or more specifically, hidden despair. The contrast rendered by the antithesis “There is a fierce hurricane of feelings / under my smooth skin” where a “hurricane” is associated with “smooth[ness]” creates a striking image demonstrating concealed anxiety. This immediately reminds me of the French novella Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la mer, 1942) written by Vercors (1902-1991). This novella is also about the Second World War and is more specifically about a young woman who falls in love with a German occupier whom she refuses to speak to as a protest against the German occupation. The metaphor in the title, the “silence of the sea”, expresses the same idea as the “hurricane of feelings” under “smooth skin” or even more blatantly the “fresh corpse thrown up / on the desolate shore of October”: the sea is calm, smooth on the surface yet has complex depths that we cannot perceive. I believe that the “fresh corpse”, which is almost an oxymoron since it associates the concept of “fresh [ness]” with death, shows that the author cannot entirely suppress his emotions. This “fresh corpse” might even symbolize the poem itself.
The verses “There is/ a fresh corpse thrown up / on the desolate shore of October” could also remind us of the fourth part of The Waste Land, “Death by water”, where we are told that a man named “Phlebas the Phoenician” has died at sea. Interestingly enough, the sea is called “the whirlpool” and Eliot here saying “Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you”, recalls our own mortality. The term “whirlpool” in particular made me interpret “Death by water” as presenting death as a necessary part of “rebirth”. Benjamin G. Lockerd (English literature professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and author of T.S. Eliot and Christian Tradition) argues that:
Like Huysmans, [T.S. Eliot] turns to the cross of spiritual discipline as a source of hope, while still acknowledging the necessary and mysterious balance between death and rebirth. Eliot finds an answer to the problem of the decadent body in belief of the resurrection of the body.
Therefore, we would have to experience the “death” of modern society in order to be able to once again start over. Consequently, the “fresh corpse” in Tamura’s poem could perhaps represent the corpse of the pre-war Japanese society that needs to be forgotten.
The theme of water in general and the concept of the ocean and its waves also connotes ephemeralness and has a cyclic overtone just like “A current under the sea / Picked his bones in whispers” in Eliot’s poem. Moreover, this transiency is underlined by the month “October” which is a core part of October poem as we can tell by its presence in the title. October, being in autumn, represents “letting go” or change in general as the verses “there is a new hunger trembling / in the cold sky of October” could remind us of, but this month also has a dismalness to it since October is on the verge of winter. Also, we are not indicated who or what “throws up” the corpse “on the desolate shore of October” but we assume that the ocean did so since it was “thrown up” on the “shore”. In this viewpoint, we could say that death is in the hands of nature: we are impotent in the mighty face of nature which needs death in order to regenerate. We can see this in the verse of the fourth stanza “The Time that murders everything”, or even more implicitly and interestingly in “My dead armies occupy all cities where rain falls”: “rain” portrays nature that inexorably washes away elements that belonged to the past.
While reading October Poem, I experienced the same feeling of overwhelming, crude anxiety and bleakness that I experienced while reading The Waste Land. Tamura also uses the enjambment “There is”, that unstably hangs in the third verse of every cinquain to emphasize this atmosphere of unsteadiness and agitation. The Waste Land, or T.S. Eliot’s poetry in general, is known for its impersonality: The Waste Land’s inconsistent personae do not let the reader form any sort of Romantic-like intimacy with the personae. Meanwhile, in October Poem, the use of the first person possessive pronoun “my” already makes us mentally build the image of an actual person suffering and is more centered on the self, possibly Tamura himself. In the second stanza, we are given the impression that the persona is, faced with this waste land, in fact made weak and fragile: his hands are “delicate”, his eyes are “small”, and his ears are “soft”. Also, the declarations “Crisis is my nature” and “Fear is my nature” illustrate that the persona is consumed by his emotions.
What I find particularly captivating in this poem is the way the pessimism drifts: in the first stanza, the poet makes the reader imagine an ongoing internal turmoil and then in the second stanza we notice a shockingly raw hopelessness where not only is the persona presented as “small” and “delicate”, but we also notice a sort of gradation with the verbs that end the stanza’s last three verse, respectively “lost”, “disappear” and then, the most striking one, “die”. These verbs are also associated with verbal structures that indicate the future (“things to be lost”, “that are to disappear”, “who are to die”) which illuminates a strong trepidation. In the fourth verse, all that could have eventually constituted hope (“armies”, “patrol planes”, “mobs”) is described as being “dead” and the verse “My dead patrol planes circle in the sky above the lost souls” denies any religious horizon: the “lost souls” is euphemistic for the dead but the fact that it is stated that the “patrol planes” circle “above”, almost highlighting that it is not the contrary (“the lost souls” above “the planes”), reinforces their terrestrial mortality.
The last stanza left me very bewildered.
October is my Empire
My dead armies occupy all cities where rain falls
My dead patrol planes circle in the sky above the lost souls
My dead mobs sign their names for the people who are going to die
We are confronted with a paradoxical situation since what is anaphorically stated as being dead at the beginning of the last three verse are the subjects of present-tense action verbs (“occupy”, “circle”, “sign”) which makes this stanza be anxiously climatic. The subjects being “dead”, their actions are impossible to fulfill. The use of the present tense is therefore almost the product of denial and creates a time-related claustrophobia.
Contrarily to the second stanza where the possessive pronoun “my” defines a concrete, human body (“hands”, “eyes”, “ears”), “my” is now used on a larger scale with “My dead armies”, “My dead patrol planes” and “My dead mobs”. Obviously, the persona does not own “armies” or “patrol planes” but we could interpret this as Tamura taking the Empire’s defeat as a personal defeat. Yet, this poem withholds a certain suspense: when I finished reading it, I turned the page around to be sure that I had in fact read it in its entirety. Contrarily to The Waste Land that seeks for a solution to this world of despair, particularly with Eastern religions (specifically Hinduism), October poem finishes on a cold, almost frightfully bleak tone.
In conclusion, we can say that even if October Poem is rooted from a different crisis compared to The Waste Land, it has surprisingly Eliotian undertones which absolutely captivate me. This shows just how powerful literature is: you can identify with the author of a literary oeuvre even if you haven’t gone through the same experiences as the writer or poet himself. Then, this connection can even inspire, just like in Tamura’s case.
That is it for today’s review! I hope that you enjoyed it! Don’t forget to follow me on Google + (in the sidebar) in order to get constant updates and also, if you’re interested, I have a create writing Tumblr account (http://theinscrutableescapee.tumblr.com/). Also, don’t hesitate to tell me your suggestions! Stay tuned, and see you next time for another review! ʕ •́؈•̀ ₎
Bibliography:
•Tamura, R., Grolmes, S. and Tsumura, Y. (2000). Tamura Ryuichi. Palo Alto, Calif.: CCC Books
•Kijima, H. (1975). The poetry of postwar Japan. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
•Lund, Mary Graham (1966). Homesteading in the Waste Land: The Populous Legacy of T. S. Eliot. 51, Southwest Review no. 2: 101-09.
•Locked, Martin (Spring 2013). Into Cleanness Leaping: Brooke, Eliot, and the Decadent Body. Journal of Modern Literature 36.3: 1-13
© Margaux Emmanuel 2018
Comments
Post a Comment