I do read Japanese and got nerdsniped trying to figure out what the original poem looked like, as googling various combinations of the original author's name, phrases from the poem and "haiku" in Japanese brought up zilch. I eventually found it in a backtranslation of Hearn's work into Japanese (doesn't help that he kinda misspelled it). For the curious:
われとわが 殻やとむらふ 蝉の声
ware to waga kara ya tomurau semi no koe
Word by word, it's something like "self and own shell, laying to rest, cicada's voice". ("Tomurau" is a bit tricky, it sort of covers any "mourning/condolences/funeral" actions).
I'm glad I nerdsniped you! Thanks for this! I had a feeling that "methinks" was a pure invention by Hearn. That's why I appreciate word-for-word reditions when they appear, you can get a much better sense of how much is added in translation. Turns out it's usually a lot in translations from East Asian languages, even in otherwise rigorous ones.
It's not that I don't find Ong persuasive! It's that I'm reluctant to apply his models of preliterate society onto contemporary people just cause of the phone.
That sounds even more interesting! I haven’t seen anyone try to articulate the differences between a pre literate society and a post literate society in terms of consciousness, types of thought, etc.
By post literate I meant illiteracy after literacy. So the way people now talk about phones and short form video etc preventing people from being able to read longer texts. I don’t think this could really be discussed before 2010 or around then and Orality and Literacy was published in 1982. But it’s been a while since I’ve read Ong so maybe he talks about that transition starting to happen? Or maybe you mean he talks about how orality functions once a society becomes literate? I’m curious if you want to expand on your point.
Oh, I'm really interested in this also. I have an intuition that there is a kind of return to some of the features of oral culture. The highly "current" nature of social media discourse, for instance, seems to relate to the ontic significance of speech in oral cultures.
For sure, now you've reminded me of Ong's term "secondary orality" which was about electronic media bringing about a new orality that's also influenced by literacy.
I do read Japanese and got nerdsniped trying to figure out what the original poem looked like, as googling various combinations of the original author's name, phrases from the poem and "haiku" in Japanese brought up zilch. I eventually found it in a backtranslation of Hearn's work into Japanese (doesn't help that he kinda misspelled it). For the curious:
われとわが 殻やとむらふ 蝉の声
ware to waga kara ya tomurau semi no koe
Word by word, it's something like "self and own shell, laying to rest, cicada's voice". ("Tomurau" is a bit tricky, it sort of covers any "mourning/condolences/funeral" actions).
so cool!! great find
I'm glad I nerdsniped you! Thanks for this! I had a feeling that "methinks" was a pure invention by Hearn. That's why I appreciate word-for-word reditions when they appear, you can get a much better sense of how much is added in translation. Turns out it's usually a lot in translations from East Asian languages, even in otherwise rigorous ones.
I’d be very interested in your expanded thoughts on Ong in a future post...(as someone who has found Ong and Havelock pretty persuasive).
It's not that I don't find Ong persuasive! It's that I'm reluctant to apply his models of preliterate society onto contemporary people just cause of the phone.
That sounds even more interesting! I haven’t seen anyone try to articulate the differences between a pre literate society and a post literate society in terms of consciousness, types of thought, etc.
That's odd, I feel like that's exactly what I got out of Ong.
By post literate I meant illiteracy after literacy. So the way people now talk about phones and short form video etc preventing people from being able to read longer texts. I don’t think this could really be discussed before 2010 or around then and Orality and Literacy was published in 1982. But it’s been a while since I’ve read Ong so maybe he talks about that transition starting to happen? Or maybe you mean he talks about how orality functions once a society becomes literate? I’m curious if you want to expand on your point.
Oh, I'm really interested in this also. I have an intuition that there is a kind of return to some of the features of oral culture. The highly "current" nature of social media discourse, for instance, seems to relate to the ontic significance of speech in oral cultures.
For sure, now you've reminded me of Ong's term "secondary orality" which was about electronic media bringing about a new orality that's also influenced by literacy.