Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rod Stasick <>]

The ideas that you’re talking about are ones that I’d think translators of all kinds of
texts would have to struggle with. I think your examples are good for comparisons of 

language, meaning and intent when it comes to whether something scans “correctly,”
but I think we’re dealing with something quite different here - a different kind of ruler 

used to measure.

Speaking of Hesse, I recommend this book about his reception in Japan
and his link to Zen (he wrote three Zen poems inspired by his reading of 

‘Pi Yen Lu” in a translation by Wilhelm Gundert):

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60183155-hermann-hesse-and-japan

“There's virtually nothing to say about rhythm for there's no time”
is the first sentence of Cage’s text, “Rhythm Etc.” which forms the spine
of the third part of his “Time (Three Autokus)” which was brought up in the OP.

One of the things that I, again, find strange about the various mistakes made
when it comes to mesostics is whether what I’m looking at sometimes is really
a mistake or not. In other words, am I missing something by not studying the texts
and processes in more detail? Why is it that, for instance, the spine sentence in the
third autoku is missing the “g” from “nothing”? Why isn’t the “Rhythm Etc.” text

actually used in order from beginning to end to create the autoku?

(and why did he call it an autoku when there’s no resemblance to a haiku - 

“automatically” revealed or not). If you’re using the source as the mesostic

string and you create a text of only 5-7-5 phrases, it would seem to me 

that would be an autoku (and it would certainly be more challenging).

If you don’t use the source as the string, then you could have a simple 

5-7-5 mesostic (“mesostiku”).

The “Rhythm Etc." text as the string producing the first two haiku

using just the first word in the origin text:

       virTually no

          tHing to say about rhythm

     timE we’ve yet to

     leaRn do in front of

   somEthing where no center of

intereSt at all

…

Rod

On Jan 23, 2022, at 15:43, Goldstein, Louis <> wrote:

I agree the #1 option is the one faithful to the original intention.  But I keep thinking of the differences different translations can make.  In class I've used 3 English translations of two H. Hesse poems, ones used by R. Strauss in "Four Last Songs."  In addition to the different choices of adjectives and adverbs to translate individual words, and which can alter the slant of the meaning, - - -  one of the translations preserves Hesse's rhyme scheme, surely a vital element of the poems.  But in doing so the meaning of the text becomes convoluted and difficult to follow.  German speakers have told me that one of the 3 translations best conveys the language and intent of the original, but in English it reads as an unrhymed, unmetered contemporary verse.

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