Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Kaneko Misuzu



I'll tell you the truth. I won't lie to you. I hate human beings. I try to be happy in this world, among human beings, but, day after day, it becomes clearer that I am failing. I cannot explain why. I only know that this pain has made its home in my heart and in my body.

But today I have discovered a secret. I want to tell you, but I don't want to tell you. I want to tell you, because I am human. But I don't want to tell you, because you are human, and because if I tell you then the secret will lose its purity. I have a secret, and so it doesn't matter now how hateful human beings are. That secret is Kaneko Misuzu. She was born in 1903. She died in 1930 at the age of twenty six. She took an overdose. In between being born and dying she wrote poems for children. A friend of mine gave me a volume of her poems as a going away present before I left Japan. For some reason, as I was cleaning up the house today, in anguish at the utter hopelessness of the human race, I remembered this volume of poems, dug it out, and began to read, and tears streamed down my face. I have never been so moved by poetry before.

I think that if William Blake had been a woman in Japan in the early twentieth century and written poems for children, they might have been something like this. But why compare? Comparisons are false.

Are there any translations of Kaneko Misuzu into English? I don't know. I made four translations today, but I'm not going to post them here. There is the problem of copyright. There is also the fact that I'd like to revise the translations until they are perfect. Then there's the fact that I think, if they are going to be published, it should be somewhere other than my blog. And there is the not insignificant fact that I just want to keep this secret away from the dirty world a little bit longer. And that's all I'm going to tell you. I will now post one of Kaneko Misuzu's poems in the original. If there are any copyright problems involved, I may take it down again. The poem is called 'Stars and Dandelions'.

星とたんぽぽ

青いお空の底ふかく、
海の小石のそのように、
夜がくるまで沈んでる、
昼のお星は眼にみえぬ。
　　見えぬけれどもあるんだよ、
　　見えぬものでもあるんだよ。

散ってすがれたたんぽぽの、
瓦のすきに、だーまって、
春のくるまでかくれてる、
つよいその根は眼にみえぬ。
　　見えぬけれどもあるんだよ、
　　見えぬものでもあるんだよ。