The Literary Life

I suppose there must be such a thing as an organised writer, but for me the particular curse of a literary life is perhaps best typified by the kind of despair that comes with an ever-growing collection of papers and reading matter, the limited space that results from lack of funds, and the disorder of the former within the latter exacerbated by a mind absent in dreaming and energy reserves brought low by the lack of reward for all one's best efforts.

Today, it seems, has been a day in which the despair of that disorder had to be confronted, at least to some extent, and so the hoover came out of the cupboard. Everything that had been on the floor was piled onto the bed, and the window was opened to let in the outside air, which hopefully would blow away the stale smell of dust.

I have never been very good at packing my luggage for travel, and it seems that being tidy in one's digs is a similar skill. How do you pack everything efficiently? I need to sort through all the papers lying about, but how to store them? It occurred to me that I could make use of the two computer bags behind the desk. Perhaps in one of them I could put my manuscripts, and those that have been sent to me. Oh, and letters, too, since I'm not sure where else to put them for the moment. And in the other, maybe I could put materials relating to 'work'. I wonder what that pile of papers under the bags is? As luck would have it, the pile of papers consists mainly of manuscripts. Why didn't it occur to me before to put them actually in one of the bags?

I'd forgotten some of these things. There's an autobiography, called Nenashigusa, that I started writing in Japanese. It seems unlikely I'll ever finish it. Oh, and here are some translations I made of some poems from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. One or two of them don't seem so bad:

#24

I came away in haste, without the usual offerings.
May the gods accept instead
The brocade of Mount Tamuke's maple leaves,
And bless this journey!

#37

A wind-beaten autumn field.
White beads of dew are scattered
Like pearls whisked from a broken string.

#70

Weary of my loneliness
I step outside to see
Everywhere, only the same autumn evening.

#87

Around the needles of cedar,
Still wet with the passing shower's dew,
The autumn evening rises with the mist.

I'll have to put these where I can remember them, on top of the other manuscripts in this bag.

I also discovered the xerographic copy I made of Higuchi Ichiyo's tale 'Umoregi', which I have not yet read. 'Umoregi', literally translated, means something like 'buried log' (my Japanese-English dictionary gives the definition as 'bog-wood', and my Japanese-Japanese dictionary gives some incomprehensible definition), referring, I believe, to a dead tree in a forest, rotting beneath undergrowth, fungus and so on. Apart from the literal meaning, however, this phrase is a metaphor indicating 'obscurity', as in, lack of worldly success, as in… Well, you know the story.

As I said, I haven't read this particular tale of Ichiyo's yet, and I believe that no translation of it exists in English, but I've read a synopsis of the plot, which involves a master craftsman of ceramics who fails, with depressing consistency, to make a name for himself. Then there are some shenanigans involving the marriage of his sister, I believe, and, in the end, disgusted with the world, ambition, and absolutely everything, he takes a hammer and smashes his masterpiece into smithereens. If I try to translate the opening of the story, it goes something like this:

When he began painting, from the tip of his single brush there would spring five hundred ancients and sixteen deities; towers were builded in the air, and grand designs were worked around on all sides. On three inch tea burners, or five inch vases, would appear personages of Yamato, and Cathay; the elegance of the age of Genroku lived again, and the age of the gods was summoned back. The armour of warriors he devised, the patterns of the costumes of courtiers in the palace he selected, or, painting around a vessel, his brush waxing ornate, he would decorate with birds and flowers, and scenes of nature's beauty…

There are, I'm fairly sure, some mistakes in that (in other words, I had to guess some of it), but I thought I'd just see how far I could get before I had to give up. Higuchi Ichiyo wrote in the classical style, without full-stops. The text as reproduced in a modern book has some punctuation, but it's mainly commas. In this story, there only seem to be full-stops at the end of each chapter.

I think I'll leave these sheets out somewhere, since I want to read this story, despite the difficulties involved. (It will also help me to keep up my Japanese.) But I suppose it will add to the general clutter that I am trying to reduce. And yet, if I put it away, will I forget it again? Will it become, as its title suggests, a buried log?