Why do some writers get translated and others -- better, more deserving -- remain obscure? This is a question that Ry Beville, a young Virginia native, asked himself seven years ago when studying literature at Nanzan University in Nagoya.
Beville, now 28, was attempting to translate Kenzaburo Oe when a professor shared with him an article he'd written about the poet Chuya Nakahara. The article quoted a line from Chuya's "The Cicada": "Utsura-utsura to boku wa suru." The rhythm and music of the line resonated with Beville, who had always admired the more "musical" English poets of the last century like Yeats, Auden and Frost. He went straight to the bookstore and bought a collection of Chuya's poems in Japanese; there was no English version on the shelves.
"In Japanese bookstores," Beville said, " It's common to find translations of rather ordinary authors in the English-speaking world, and yet Japanese writers who far excel them in talent and accomplishment remain untranslated and obscure." Beville felt it was almost a "crime" that a poet as extraordinary as Chuya -- not to mention as admired among the Japanese -- was not only unavailable in English, but also unknown to many Western scholars of Japanese literature. "I undertook this project in part to correct that balance, if only a little. But more importantly, I wanted to let the English-speaking world know that there is a poet with a style as diverse and accomplished as some of the greatest modern writers in the West."