A Selection of Published and Unpublished Translations

From the 1930s onward, Kitasono’s work began appearing in little magazines outside Japan in his own English versions, at first through the auspices of his friend Ezra Pound, and later through an increasingly large network of correspondents around the world. His visual work would adorn the first four covers of the Black Mountain Review, and his poems would appear in magazines in Brazil, France, England, the United States, Germany, and elsewhere. The work below features a small sampling of Kitasono’s work in english, both in the later translations, as well as in Kitasono’s own translations from little magazines and publications, several of which are available as scans below.

translated by John Solt

A CORNET-STYLE SCANDAL

Disconnect the lead cone and hammer the yellow dream in a glass bottle. If even then a metal walking stick leaps up, it's best to take off your glasses and calmly lie down. In a flash, space turns to glass; pigs exhale firefly-colored gas and crack in the brilliant beyond.

VIN

Insect eating plant held up by fingers, sucking in the moon with a long glass tube and eventually the brain becomes pale, becomes pearl colored, and when measuring tape is applied, it splits from the spine.

THE WISE, OR IN-A-FLASK CURVED LINE

Unfasten the conical curved line. Then a pure white kangaroo slowly puts on firefly-colored glasses, rides a crystal parachute and disappears on the far side of a beer hall.

A BOY’S DEATH IN A FLASK

All of a sudden smashed into something like a wail. Then, hanging suspended, instantly fell.

THE OCEAN'S ACROBAT

"Take the periscope out for a peek.” And after looking, “How boring." “That’s bad." I opened a black notebook and casually wrote, “Plerumque gratae prinicpibus vices.” Pigs all of a sudden died.

THE READING OF AN ANGEL WHO WEARS STAR GLASSES, OR THE FOLIAGE, ETC. OF PEARLS?

A pure white space tears and flies off. Then a miracle appeared. On looking, above the distinct limit of orbed space, a flask with waterdrops was dancing with spindle-shaped and conical-shaped body.

THE WALKING STICK OR EYEGLASSES OF THE BOY WHO LOWERED CRYSTAL BUTTONS

Dance. O fad of child's eyeball of light metal. At this time I carry around the book Laibnitii opera phiiosphica, ride a crystal parachute and in a space which suddenly becomes transparent: I face a pure white, cubist city and fall vertically.

HEAVEN’S VARIETY

A gorgeous summer Sunday. 1 pistol shot rings out. Holding parasol of gray matter and walking past blue transparent rose's blooming queen's beauty parlor. A pig suddenly died.

THE WISE, OR IN-A-FLASK CURVED LINE

Unfasten the conical curved line. Then a pure white kangaroo slowly puts on firefly-colored glasses, rides a crystal parachute and disappears on the far side of a beer hall.

THOSE COUNTLESS STAIRS AND CRYSTAL BREASTS OF THE BOY WITH A GLASS RIBBON TIED AROUND HIS NECK

Snail-colored space warps, tears, flies off. Then, from a direction of total liquid, a boy with golden stripes showed the circle of a wise forehead and came sliding here into the proscenium.

from Ensui shishū, Zenshishū p. 131-138

“In short, my role is like that of an operating room surgeon who aims at making the patient breathe and walk like a perfectly normal member of society. Or my role is like that of a manufacturer of vaccines. A good critic would discourse about the bacteria of my vaccine or about my abdominal operation. That would be true criticism. But then another critic may discuss the occupation and personal appearance of the person operated on. Or he may discuss the price and label of the vaccine…” 

From “The Fruit of Spherical Cone [Ensui shishū]”

BEAUTIFUL SECRET

Those women know well what is beautiful  suddenly falling upside down inside a camera. (not breaking the parasol’s bone) 

as this reality is also my dream  what does your white fragment turn into? Venus!  summer is lighter than lifestyle, heavier than matter  summer isn't the season for love, yet 

if your love is born from within a fan  the real Venus may also have been born from within a seashell 

in adventurous eyes, you existed

BONNE NUIT

they were gentle youth

like your beloved jewelry stars with sensitive breasts

oh people with orange bonnets

whatever their youth is nobody loves afternoon's stillness or night's silence

only the balcony's rosebush is fragrant

oh well the round moon blankly rises

From Wakai koronii [LETTERS TO PETITE COUSINS], 1931

SONG OF ACETES

Bright spring afternoon. I walked a marble road, thinking anger was the shadow of a philosopher fluttering a cape of thorns. Then l went to a coffee shop In the shape of a candlestand and talked about anatomy. Oh I talked about anatomy and tomatoes. A girl with slender jaw wearing transparent shoes wrote a poem with cheese on the tabletop. That poem darkened the heart like a turtle. I measured sugar with a spoon in the shape of a turtle’s leg. At the same time I also measured the weight of the gods.

“Akoitesu no uta,” from VOU #7, l Mar. 1936.

AUTUMN’S SOLID

flow of the tragedy after the tragedy that bone's shadow

September rips leaning against a wall of storm Spinoza's sleep

your pure tree drips that pure tree leaf drips

extraordinarily exploded rock portrait leaning against ruins of rainy dream

from Kuroi hi (Black Fire)

OU UNE SOLITUDE

glass inside glass

that curved line and within it gloomy seashell

above one stem the wind

one star breaks one star departs

for purple's yellow wreath there are purple yellow wreaths

one star departs one star sits down crying

from Kuroi hi (Black Fire)

The road I have traversed has been one of advancing by “subtraction.” I gradually pulled off all that was stuck to me. While tearing more and more off, I got all the way down to the bone.

- Kitasono Katué, Interview from Yu #8, Kosakusha, 1975

More poetry and prose by Kitasono translated on this site and elsewhere:

• Kitasono’s post-war poetry manifesto (here)

• Another short selection of poems (here)

• Selections of and writing about Oceans Beyond Monotonous Space via Karl Young’s Light and dust (here)

  + Nishimatsu Fuei and Ohno Yoshito’s performances of Kitasono’s poems (here)