SOURCE: "Violation of the Mother Tongue: Nishiwaki Junzaburō's Translatory Language in Ambarvalia," in Comparative Literature, Vol. 45, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 47-59.

In the following essay, Hirata suggests that Nishiwaki's "translatory writing"—his use of translation—in Ambarvalia effected "a radical deformation and foreignization of the Japanese language."

Baudelaire's "Invitation au voyage" evokes our nostalgia for a poetic (thus, oriental?) paradise where only the sweetest language of all, our mother tongue ("langue natale") is spoken. We could well assume that Nishiwaki Junzaburō (1894-1982), who was considered to be one of the best readers of Baudelaire in Japan, was well aware of the homesickness for a purer, more authentic language that would afflict any poet. Yet Nishiwaki's effort to create his own poetic voice took a completely opposite direction from the search for a more authentic, "oriental" mother tongue. Indeed, his first book of poetry written in Japanese, Ambarvalia (1933), presents...