Sakutarō Hagiwara Quotes

[T]o me poetry is neither a mystery nor a religion. Even less is it "a life-or-death work" or "a sacred way of ascetic training." It is nothing more than "a sad consolation" for me.

[S]ome of my poems generally belong to a sensory melancholy, while certain others belong to a meditative melancholy. But, whichever it may be, the rhythm that I really want to convey is not it. It is not these "sensory things" or "idealistic things." Those things are no more than the costumes of my poetry. The essence of my poetry—that fragrant throb of my heart pulsing that becomes the motive of my poetry-making—lies above all else in the charm of the tender sound of the fife. It lies in the pitifulness of yearnings with no apparent cause for the world of reality. Thus I breathe into the fife's mouth hole, trying to play a mysterious and sensuous life.

Thus I make poetry. Like the moths that swarm around a lantern, deceived by the phantom of certain flowery mysterious sentiments, trying to touch the essence of invisible reality, I vainly flap, flap my wings as fragile as sponge cake. I am a pitiable fantasizing child, the sad fate of a moth.

Since my tender boyhood I've been tormented by my soul's nostalgia with no apparent cause. My night bed was whitishly wet with tears, when the day broke the intestines of my sentimentality were scratched apart by the rooster's voice. For days I ran around the edges of the spring field aimlessly in love with a member of the opposite sex, hugging a tree trunk alone, singing "The One Who's in Love with Love."

Some people say my poetry is sensual. It may be that some are like that. Still, a correct view opposes it. Nothing "sensual" can be the motive of my poetry. It is a chord over the keynote. Or an ornament. I am not a man who can get intoxicated on the senses. What I truly try to sing of is different. It is that atmosphere—the sound of a fife you hear on a spring night. It is not the senses, not a passion, not an excitement, but simply the nostalgia of a cloud that quietly drifts in the shadow of a soul. It is a tearful yearning for a reality far, far away.

Here and there, I see farmers' melancholy faces.
The faces are dark, looking only at the ground.
On the ground, spring, like smallpox, is ponderously
erupting.

Why can't one love with one's body those whom one loves with one's heart?

Sometimes I escape from everyone and become solitary.
And my heart loving everyone becomes tearful.
I always like, while walking on a deserted lonely beach,
to think of the crowds in the distant city.

I love human beings. Nevertheless I fear human beings.

Of the lukewarm unpleasantness of the sensation of a
man at such a moment a disastrous crime is born. A
heart afraid of crime is the forerunner of a heart that
gives birth to a crime.

The air of the countryside is gloomy and oppressive,
the touch of the countryside is gritty and sickening,
when I sometimes think of the countryside,
I'm tormented by the smell of animal skin coarse in
texture.I fear the countryside,
the countryside is a pale fever dream.

This utterly unknown dog follows me,
shabby, limping on its hind leg, a crippled dog's shadow.
Ah, I do not know where I'm going,
in the direction of the road that I go,
roofs of tenements are being pelted pelted in the wind,
in a gloomy, empty lot by the road,
bone-dry grass leaves are pliantly thinly moving.

My personality, loneliest in the world,
is calling loudly to an unknown friend,
my obsequious strange personality,
looking shabby like a crow,
is trembling on the corner of a deserted, winter-
withered bench.

Nature anywhere oppresses me,
and human kindnesses make me gloomy,
rather I prefer walking in a bustling city park until I get tired,
and find a bench under some lonely tree,
I prefer to be looking at the sky absentmindedly,
ah, I prefer to be looking at the smoke and soot flowing away far and sad over the city sky,
or at a swallow flying away over the roofs of buildings, into the distance, small.

Body half buried in sand,
still it's lolling its tongue.
Over this invertebrate's head,
pebbles and brine rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle, flowing,
flowing,
ah so quietly as a dream flowing.