I encountered this strange sentence on page 26 of this Kindle version of "In Praise of Shadows," by Junichiro Tanizaki.
I bought this very short book — it's only $3.99 — after clicking through from "25 Best Japanese Books of All Time" (Japan Objects), which I was idly scanning, looking for something new to read.
Why Should I Read This Book? Here is a unique examination of the art and aesthetics of Japan by one of its most beautiful writers.
Junichiro Tanizaki is the only author to appear on this list twice, only because his other book is fiction and here is a nonfiction essay. In under 100 pages, Tanizaki explores in deft detail what makes Japan’s artistic aesthetics so unique and important. Tanizaki valued - almost worshipped - beauty as it is seen and expressed by Japanese artists, and this essay gives us an insight into that beauty from a master writer. A unique and uniquely Japanese book.
Trusting the link (to Amazon), I put no thought into the translation. As soon as I started reading it, however, I could see that this was an absurdly hinky translation. I wondered whether there even was a human being who did the translation. No translator is mentioned. I was able to find copies of this book on line — free — that had named translators and sentences that seemed to have been filtered through a real human mind.
But that one sentence — the one you see in this post headline — what could that possibly have meant? Here is the mystery — perhaps destined to remain in (praiseworthy?!) shadow — the other translation I'm seeing has a completely different sentence at that point.
Here's a screen shot of the book I bought, with the quoted sentence in the middle of it:
The corresponding sentence is: "Further yet: might it not have been the reverse, might not the darkness have emerged from her mouth and those black teeth, from the black of her hair, like the thread from the great earth spider?"
Is there the tiniest chance on earth that the 2 translations could have come from the same Japanese original?
I'm sure some readers know Japanese and can easily illuminate this matter, but until then I will enjoy the darkness of imagining that "It is a very good idea to have a good idea of what is going on in the world, but it is also a good idea to have a good idea of what is going on in the world" makes sense and the sense that it makes has to do with black teeth and hair and the great earth spider.
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4 comments:
Eddie writes:
"It is a very good idea to have a good idea of what is going on in the world, but it is also a good idea to have a good idea of what is going on in the world."
A very good idea is something to puzzle over. Why is this idea so good? Is it really so much better than the other ideas? And what does it mean "to have a good idea of what is going on in the world?" If this is such a good idea, it must mean something more profound than it appears at first glance. Will I even know that I'm accomplishing it?
Puzzling is valuable, and even satisfying, but it can also be paralyzing. So, while you're puzzling over this very good idea, know that it is a good idea too, like many other good ideas. You can act on this idea while you ponder it.
Somehow Eddie's comment made me notice that the 2 parts separated by a comma are not identical. It's not just that the second half begins with "but." It's also that the first half finds something to be a "very good idea" while the second calls attention to the same thing and designates it "a good idea" — without the "very."
If we are to take this sentence seriously — and not dismiss it as a glitch in the scanning and machine-translation — we must assume there is a significant difference between a "very good idea" and a "good idea."
Moreover, as I believe Eddie is saying, there's a difference between the concept of "having a good idea of what's going on in the world" and the assertion that it's a good (or very good) idea to be in possession of that thing. A good writer would not use the same word "idea" twice like that (4 times if you count both phrases) — not unless it was considered humorous.
I can imagine lots of locutions that would be like that and would feel jocose in English. For example, I might say I'm inclined to be inclined to fall in love. I could rewrite that into I'm leaning toward developing a tendency to fall in love. That would be more comprehensible, but less jaunty.
So I understand "good idea to have a good idea." Notice that it makes sense to say: "It's a bad idea to have a good idea of what's going on in the world." That means you're better off not knowing what's really going on. I mean, let's say what's really going on is actually a computer simulation. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to inform everyone of this fact. It would ruin the whole game.
Rob says:
"Like you, I am a bit leery of trying to think too hard about what may simply be a bad translation. But what the heck. What Tanizaki may be getting at is the distinction (important in Zen and other Mahayana Buddhist philosophy) between absolute and relative reality. Very important is to have a good idea of absolute reality (the essential emptiness of all phenomena), but as a being temporarily existing in the phenomenal world (i.e. relative reality) it is necessary to have a good idea of that (temporary) reality. The “very” expresses the importance of maintaining the absolute view, even while living in this illusory, fleeting phenomenal world."
J writes:
As expected, when I saw that it was a free ebook on Amazon Japan, I found the full Japanese text of the essay (陰翳礼讃) on Aozora Bunko:
https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001383/files/56642_59575.html
Searching for the name that's in the second picture (the first one is definitely wrong, since "Wulin" is an obvious mis-reading as a Chinese name), Wikipedia tells me it's written as 武林無想庵, and since it appears only once in the essay, it's possible to locate the exact sentence, which the second translation captures correctly.
My Japanese is rusty and was never up to handling good literature, but that last sentence is definitely about darkness emerging from women's mouths and hair like thread from Tsuchigumo, a legendary giant spider:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuchigumo_Sōshi
Even mangled by Google and Bing translation, the results are more sensible, so this was either done years ago or by even worse software:
Original: いや、事に依ると、逆に彼女達の体から、その歯を染めた口の中や黒髪の先から、土蜘蛛つちぐもの吐く蜘蛛のいの如く吐き出されていたのかも知れない。
Google: "No, depending on the matter, on the contrary, they may have been exhaled from their bodies, from their teeth-dyed mouth and from the tip of their black hair, like the spiders that spit out Tsuchigumo."
Bing: "No, it may have been exhaled from their bodies, like a spider spitting earthen spiders, from the mouths of their teeth and from the tip of their black hair."
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