Fleurs du Mal (悪の華)
I’m drunk
WAHA HA HA HA
Why am I not allowed to laugh?
It doesn’t matter if I’m in a church or a gambling den
I stamp down on sighs of pain
and chase women’s legs with both hands outstretched
Not yet Not yet I can’t quite reach her
I’ll try mocking her with a more resentful laugh
One more time one more drink
私は醉つてゐる
ワハ ハ ハ ハ
なぜ 嗤つてはいけない
教会であらふと 賭博場であらふと
靑い吐息を路みにじつて
兩手で女の脚を追ふ
未だ 未だ 女の姿に達しない
もつと憤恨の嗤で侮蔑してやれ
復た 酒杯を傾むける
The Japanese title of this poem, “Aku no hana,” is the most frequent Japanese rendering of the title of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, or The Flowers of Evil (first published in French in 1851). [1] Where Baudelaire presented scenes from la vie moderne in the streets of Paris, Hayashida appears to take a similar tack with immigrant life in Prohibition-era Los Angeles. Early Japanese translators of Baudelaire often rendered his poems in a classical “written” or “decorative” style. [2] By contrast, Hayashida’s poem, which pays homage to Baudelaire without pretending to provide any direct translation of his work, adopts a more spoken, colloquial style. This style makes use of direct onomatopoeic depiction of laughter (“WAHA HA HA HA”) as well as vulgar auxiliary verb endings such as shiteyare (“to try”). Although other Hayashida poems might venture into more complex visual symbolism, this poem emphasizes the auditory, placing the reader into the soundscape of a drunkard’s monologue in a rowdy bar or gambling den.
[1] For a review of the Japanese translation history of Baudelaire, see Toru Hatakeyama, “Oté Takuji, Baudelaire, and the Poetics of Symbolism” in Ameriquests 13.1 (2017).
[2] Kazuhiko Suzuki, “The Flowers of Evil in Prose,” in Ameriquests 13.1 (2017).