%0 Journal Article
%T Pilgusadu l bi elu: Ono no Komachi t lkimisest / Falling Like Rain through Life: Translating Ono no Komachi
%A Alari Allik
%J Methis : Studia humaniora Estonica
%D 2012
%I University of Tartu and Estonian Literary Museum
%X According to Boris Tomashevski it is very important to differentiate writers with a biography from writers without a biography. In the case of writers with a biography, the life story becomes and important supplement to reading and understanding the text. It makes little difference whether the story is true or not. This article takes a look at the 9th century Japane se poet Ono no Komachi, who is considered to be one of the greate st poet s of the Early Classical period. Although her poems were most likely written by many different authors (some presumably even men), the biographical narratives supplementing the texts have created a singular image of the author, which hides the underlying multiplicity of writers. The passion inherent in the poems has fuelled the imagination of storytellers, who have envisioned the author as a beautiful proud woman who was utterly dissatisfied with the way the natural course of things slowly deprived her of the beauty she was once famous for. Medieval N¨­ plays portray her as coldhearted lover who treats her men cruelly and ends her life as an impoverished old hag living in a dilapidated hut somewhere in the outskirts of the capital. Although almost nothing is known about the historical author and we can be confident that the different accounts of her life are fictional in nature, the subsequent translators and commentaries of her work cannot discard this imaginary tale, since it helps to clarify the ambiguities inherent in Komachi¡¯s rethorically complex writing, which makes extensive use of pivot-words and associative techniques.This article focuses mainly on the Estonian translations of the poem number 113 in the Kokinsh¨± (Collection of Early and Modern Japanese Poetry, 905) and discusses the possibilities inherent in the original text, based on the modern edition of the anthology. Estonian translators Rein Raud and Uku Masing have both resorted to the traditional image of a proud (k y¨­man) woman, which can be traced back to various historical sources and commentaries on this particular poem. This becomes a key issue in understanding the nature of the authors gaze, since the meaning ¡®long rain¡¯ (naga-ame) is skillfully embedded in the verb ¡®to gaze¡¯ (nagame) the translator has to find ways to create a nondual experience, where the subject and the object become one in the act of gazing. Rein Raud, a trained Japanese philologist, solves this issue by talking about the vanity and the impermanence of world (muj¨­kan), which reinforces the traditional Buddhist reading of text (everything in this world passes away ¨C flowers wit
%U http://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/methis/article/view/573