Poetry Criticism | Junzaburō, Nishiwaki - Hosea Hirata (essay date 1993)

Hosea Hirata (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: "Violation of the Mother Tongue: Nishiwaki Junzaburō's Translatory Language in Ambarvalia," in Comparative Literature, Vol. 45, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 47-59.

[In the following essay, Hirata suggests that Nishiwaki's "translatory writing"—his use of translation—in Ambarvalia effected "a radical deformation and foreignization of the Japanese language."]

Baudelaire's "Invitation au voyage" evokes our nostalgia for a poetic (thus, oriental?) paradise where only the sweetest language of all, our mother tongue ("langue natale") is spoken. We could well assume that Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894-1982), who was considered to be one of the best readers of Baudelaire in Japan, was well aware of the homesickness for a purer, more authentic language that would afflict any poet. Yet Nishiwaki's effort to create his own poetic voice took a completely opposite direction from the search for a more...

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