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Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Oku-No-Hosomichi (ECCO TRAVELS) Paperback – January 1, 1996
This edition is introduced by Robert Hass, Poet Laureate of the United States.
- Print length173 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEcco Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1996
- Dimensions7 x 0.5 x 10 inches
- ISBN-100880014679
- ISBN-13978-0880014670
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Product details
- Publisher : Ecco Pr; Reprint edition (January 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 173 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0880014679
- ISBN-13 : 978-0880014670
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 0.5 x 10 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,248,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #738 in Haiku & Japanese Poetry
- Customer Reviews:
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Translating the haiku in this work is devilishly difficult. I don't believe that Corman has delivered the goods 100% of the time, but his are still the best versions available, overall.
In the meantime, Corman is the only one who has managed to create in English prose something that remotely resembles the prose of the Japanese text. Basho did NOT write ordinary Japanese prose, so any translation into English that sounds like something you might hear on commercial radio or TV, or reads like a current novel by you-name-it, is woefully inadequate.
Corman's version has been slighted by others, claiming that it "sounds like Corman's own poems" (it does not) or it's written "as if Jack Kerouac went on the journey". (This last is amazing, as I cannot think of a style more distant from Kerouac in contemporary American English.)
Rather, Corman has tried to let the unique toughness and terseness of Basho's language cross the translation barrier.
This translation is closer to Basho than any other I've seen, and I've read probably just about every English translation of it ever published in an edition of 500 or more--and the original.
Kudos to Robert Hass for seeing it back into print!
English and Japanese side-by-side with Preface, Pronunciation Guide, 15 pp of historical/literary End Notes, and a map.