Pining Wind: A Cycle of Nō plays : the first of two volumes

A Cycle of Nō plays #1

by Royall Tyler (Translator)

Vol. 2 has title: Granny mountains.

198 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1978

About the author

Born in England in 1936, I was educated in the US and France. During my academic career I specialized in Japanese literature. My last teaching position, after stints in Canada, the US, and Norway, was at the Australian National University in Canberra. After that I retired with my wife to a farm in in New South Wales. We've bred alpacas here for over twenty years, although our herd is smaller than it used to be. And I've continued to publish books. In summer we see blue-tongue skinks--a big, slow lizard that really does have a blue tongue. So I named my own book imprint (Blue-Tongue Books) after one that scrabbled at my window, wanting to come in.

I'm descended from two other authors named Royall Tyler, both listed on Goodreads and Amazon. The first (1757-1826) was the American jurist and playwright best known as the author of The Contrast. The second (1884-1953) was my grandfather.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a number of Noh translations, including Ezra Pound’s transliterations, but with Royall Tyler’s book, I feel I’ve gotten close to the underlying text for the first time. Tyler, it appears, favors literalness over explanation, creating what I feel is a deeply poetic text. (I’m not a Japanese speaker, so this is purely a speculative observation.)

Noh is a famously dense but sparse, precise in imagery but vague in meaning. It is a poetic form that revels in homonyms and double-entendres. The stories typically have a rich background that contribute to the complex, layered imagery and themes, and the plays often feature ancient (sometimes Chinese) poetry. The translator’s challenge is immense as Noh becomes as close to the mythical “untranslatable” work as any.

Most translations, like Pound’s, spend their energy trying to interpret (explain) and make the narrative clearer, but end up in my opinion being boring. The poetry feels like it gets lost. Tyler’s text is a bit rougher. It’s not a smooth English. The lines can be choppy and rather irregular, which, from what I can understand, is the way Noh reads in the original. The dense sections are dense, the sparse sections are sparse.

I do have a few quibbles with the book. Tyler chose not to distinguish the poetry from the prose in the text. I wish he had, but it’s not too hard to speculate where the poetry starts and ends. In addition, Tyler uses a lot of Noh terminology (I believe they are performance instructions) that he doesn’t explain, even though he has a glossary. Additionally, he never explains the play cycle and why these plays were pulled together. I think this is his invention/compilation, using the ancient template for the type of plays typically compiled for performance. But he is unclear about this.

I certainly wouldn’t say I walked away from the plays understanding them perfectly. Noh isn’t that kind of work of art, but I thought these translations pulled away some of the veneer of other translations, allowing me to see the underlying plays and, more importantly, their emotional impact, a bit clearer.

I highly recommend this book for those interested in non-Western, non-naturalistic drama and the rich dramatic history of Japan.

[Tyler Monsein · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOMAN: Scant the news from him, / a stranger, / it's to fall winds

CHORUS: this night / I'll broadcast sorrow!

WOMAN: Village folk too, / far off, / come under that gaze;

CHORUS: the moon asks not / who claims the night.

WOMAN: A striking time, this fall eventide!

CHORUS: Stags' belling / quivers in the heart; / down mountain winds / invisible / which twig then / lets one leaf fall?

(She looks into the sky)

CHORUS: Awful aloft / shines the full moon, / gleams on day lilies / at the eaves

WOMAN: where dewdrops hang, / gem-spangled blinds

CHORUS: the night through / shall I disclose / my agony.