Mori Ōgai: Translation Transforming the Word / World

At first glance, two large-scale works by Mori Ōgai 森鷗外 (1862–1922) seem to make an odd contrastive pair. On the one hand, we have the gorgeous prose of Sokkyō shijin 卽興詩人, Ōgai’s adaptation of the novel by Hans Christian Andersen, Improvisatoren (The Impromptu Poet, 1835), beautifully cast in gabun-style Japanese replete with classical phrasing, lush diction, and entire passages in sōrōbun. On the other hand, there is Ōgai’s complete translation of Faust, the classic work by Goethe, transposed into a much more plain, unadorned, and sometimes highly colloquial Japanese. There would appear to be some sort of disconnect here, especially if one thinks of Ōgai as the stick-inthe-mud conservative he was reputed to be in terms of language policy. Sokkyō shijin was first published in its entirety in 1902, after nine years’ work (with one major interruption). Fausuto ファウスト was completed in early 1912, after only six months’ work, but with a year of revisions before its publication in 1913. This article will approach Sokkyō shijin and Fausuto via a third type of work by Ōgai, namely his kanshi 漢詩, the 238 poems he wrote in Sino-Japanese.1 They help highlight characteristics shared by the two works. Although lipservice has been paid to the view that Ōgai’s training in kanbun was crucial