"Ryunosuke Akutagawa's ""Pastel Dragon"": Classical China depicted through Imagism"

Ryu, Ken

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/102976 Copy

Description

Title

• "Ryunosuke Akutagawa's ""Pastel Dragon"": Classical China depicted through Imagism"
• 芥川龍之介「パステルの龍」―西洋のイマジズムで描いた古典中国―

Author(s)

Ryu, Ken

Issue Date

2018-03-06

Keyword(s)

• Ryunosuke Akutagawa
• Imagism
• poetry
• translation

Abstract

The Pastel Dragon (Human, 1922.1)（「パステルの龍」:『人間』1922.1） is a collection of five western poems translated by Ryunosuke Akutagawa（芥川龍之介）. It begins with “works that I translated while sick in Shanghai（上海）,” which explains the circumstances behind the compiling of the collection. After a quick introduction to the two female poets, Judith Gautier (1845–1917) and Eunice Tietjens (1884–1944), Gautier’s poems Le Clair de Lune dans La Mer (Gekko月光, translated title by Akutagawa) and Le Pavillon de Porcelain (Suwemono no chin, 陶器の亭) are translated into Japanese in a classical-style free-verse poetry format, while Tietjens’ poems Crepscule, The Dandy, and Poetics were translated in a modern prose poetry format. All five poems depict China, and Akutagawa（芥川) views these as belonging to the Imagism movement. The analysis in this presentation focuses on the translated poem Gekko from Judith Gautier’s Le Livre de Jade and its English version in order to examine Pastel Dragon, ancient China in the Imagism style.

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/102976

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