The poetry and poetics of Nishiwaki Junzaburō

Description

This book offers an in-depth investigation into the writings of one of modern Japan's most gifted poet-scholars, Nishiwaki Junzabur. Exploring both his poetry and theoretical writings, Hosea Hirata describes how Nishiwaki, who wrote his first poems in English and French, shaped a highly influential poetic modernism in Japan while elevating the artistic status of translation. This volume includes Nishiwaki's highly original essays on the nature of poetry, his first two collections of Japanese poems, and a poem meditating on the annihilation of symbolism. The author maintains that in Japan the language of modernism was that of translation. When Nishiwaki finally began to write poems in Japanese, a new poetic language was born in his country: a translatory language.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Studies of the East Asian Institute

Other Editions

• The poetry and poetics of Nishiwaki Junzaburō: modernism in translationPrinceton University Press1993-01-01
• The poetry and poetics of Nishiwaki JunzaburōPrinceton University Press1993-01-01