Vinushka - a proper translation
And still about translations: the official translation of my favourite song, Vinushka makes my skin crawl. This is a poem, not a dadaist succession of individual sentences with no rapport to each other. Let me put my Japanese MA to good use - told you I’m a pretentious motherfucker - and give you a proper translation. You’re welcome.
Vinushka, or Dear guilt (1)
Holding my breath as I trade whispers with the clouds,
It dawns on me that I am but a blind shell,
a body scorched by shadows,
who longs to forget,
- with a desire to sink into anthills -
and to be born again.
May tomorrow sleep,
may I take comfort in looking back,
and may it carry me back,
back into the jagged swell of feeling.
Even though the undulating current
proves that I am still alive,
it beckons a tomorrow that drowns
in its tears.
I have become
but this writhing(2) Dogra Magra(3),
my mottled hurts,
have eyes that no longer revel in the spectrum of all colours,
- will I too, be swept away by hypocrisy?
Standing alone on a crimson stage,
wishing upon rising stars,
- only in them lies my truth.
And yet I can’t hide,
in the remote corners of my heart,
that I still want to be here,
- so who is it that I cannot bring myself to forgive?
With my voice gone cold,
I send out its ringing sound,
as I make my vows.
Walking hand-in-hand with my karma,
with this I shall go,
with my body separating Heaven and Earth
I shall scream,
with my punishment carved in me,
I shall give myself over to the wind,
- and what proof of me shall remain?
I have now gazed at the unchanging moon,
for so long that I grew tired,
watched it fail to turn me to wolf.
Instead I went mad,
instead, it made want to devour necks,
instead, it made me want to turn them to fragile wreckages,
instead, it made me want to keep you awake,
for I have reached an age where I crave tenderness,
and for you, my Lady of the Night(4),
I’d go mad.
Everyone, fooled into thinking it is happiness,
reaches out a hand,
only it makes them turn to demons
lurking in the dark,
forms born from the void,
crawling back into the womb,
to rot.
And there is a truth
that no one dares to touch,
an ear-shattering truth,
a truth of repressed wills,
and for that sin you should atone,
and begone from this life!
Fleeting antitheses to the weeping Earth,
my bones I bury,
in the mass grave
submerged in the thesis,
- the melancholy I shoulder,
shall be swept away
by a caustic deluge.
For I am a man who found no value in life,
- I spent it laughing through bitter tears -
I shall hang myself at the top of my thirteen steps(5),
facing you, a crowd that cheers
in complacent concord
privy to your weak-willed ideologies that do nothing but wound.
You, are far too sad.
You, crush underfoot your blood-splattering primal instincts.
You, speak of death.
Walking hand-in-hand with my karma,
with this I shall go,
with my body separating Heaven and Earth
I shall scream,
with my punishment carved in me,
I shall give myself over to the wind,
- and what proof of me shall remain?
And there is a truth
that no one dares to touch,
an ear-shattering truth,
a truth of repressed wills,
and for that sin you should atone,
and begone from this life!
You, crush underfoot your blood-splattering primal instincts.
You, speak of death.
Walking hand-in-hand with my karma,
with this I shall go,
with my body separating Heaven and Earth
I shall scream,
with my punishment carved in me,
I shall give myself over to the wind,
- and what proof of me shall remain?
And there is a truth
that no one dares to touch,
an ear-shattering truth,
a truth of repressed wills,
and for that sin you should atone,
and begone from this life!
If I too, am a villain,
am I guilty
if I want to live?
(1) According to Kaoru in an interview I wasn't able to find again (so you'll just have to trust my word for it), the word Vinushka is a creative spin-off of the Russian word вина (guilt). Since -ушка is a diminutive used to make a name or word sound more endearing, I chose to translate the song title as “Dear guilt”. Yes, I took some artistic liberties here because I find that’s the title that fits best.
(2) In this verse Kyo uses a made-up word, うえつく (uetsuku). Unsurprisingly, he often uses made up words. I took the liberty of translating it as “writhing” because it sounds like it derived from the verb 飢える (ueru), which means to writhe. It fits the rest of the stanza, so why not.
(3) Dogra Magra is the title of a notorious Japanese avant-garde horror novel by Yumeno Kyosaku. The phrase in itself means nothing. In the context of the book, it can be read as some sort of incantation that fits the novel’s themes of psychosis and dissolution of the self. Fun fact: the band Sukekiyo borrowed its name from an eponymous character in this novel. I wrote a whole post about it here.
(4) I translated 小夜 as “Lady of the Night", which is a bit of a shot in the dark. The kanji spells the female name Sayo, and Kyo does sing "Sayo". But because the literal meaning of the name is “small night”, and since there are no other references in the poem to "Sayo", I took some creative liberty to translate it as “Lady of the Night” because it fits the theme of the stanza.
(5) In Japan’s modern penal history, prisoners are hung from a platform reached by a staircase that has 13 steps.
--
A few words on Vinushka. This is a work of great stylistic brilliance. It has a very complex structure, which is uncommon in the corpus of Japanese poetry that prefers simplicity over intricacy. What refers to the narrator and what refers to the "others" he is trying to address lies in very subtle indications that I tried to transpose as accurately as I could. The narrator oscilates between wanting to remain and wanting to be gone. He despises "the others", probably humankind, but recognises that he is one of them. This generates a sense of guilt, thus the title of the song. References to being reborn, karma and crawling back into the womb can be inferred to be an allusion to eternal recurrence. Through the times, humankind repeats the same sins, the same cruelty and the same blindness to the truth, but also the same survival instinct, the wish to remain.
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