Jules Verne - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

Anonymous - "The London and Country Brewer"

Josef Israels - "Rembrandt"

Various - "Georgian Poetry 1920 22"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Unwritten Literature of Hawaii

N >> Nathaniel Bright Emerson >> Unwritten Literature of Hawaii




[Translation]

_Song_

CANTO V

(To be recited in bombastic style, or, it may be, distinctly)

Big with child is the Princess Ku;
The whole island suffers her whimsies;
The pangs of labor are on her;
Labor that stains the land with blood,
5 Blood-clots of the heavenly born,
To preserve and guard the royal line,
The spark of king-fire now glowing:
A child is he of heavenly stock,
Like the darling of Hitu-kolo,
10 First womb-fruit born to love's rainbow.
A bath for this child of heaven's breast,
This mystical royal offspring,
Who ranks with the heavenly peers,
This tender bud of Liliha,
15 This atom, this parcel, this flame,
In the line Kuhi-hewa of Lola--
Ka-lola, who mothered a babe prodigious,
For glory and splendor renowned,
A scion most comely from heaven,
20 The finest down of the new-grown plume,
From bird whose moult floats to heaven,
Prime of the soaring birds of Pokahi,
The prince, heaven-flower of the island,
Ancestral sire of Ke-oua,
25 And of King Kui-apo-iwa.

[Page 82]

The heaping up of adulations, of which this mele is a capital
instance, was not peculiar to Hawaiian poetry. The Roman
Senate bestowed divinity on its emperors by vote; the
Hawaiian bard laureate, careering on his Pegasus, thought to
accomplish the same end by piling Ossa on Pelion with
high-flown phrases; and every loyal subject added his
contribution to the cairn that grew heavenward.

In Hawaii, as elsewhere, the times of royal debasement, of
aristocratic degeneracy, of doubtful or disrupted succession,
have always been the times of loudest poetic insistence on
birth-rank and the occasion for the most frenzied utterance
of high-sounding titles. This is a disease that has grown
with the decay of monarchy.

Applying this criterion to the mele above given, it may be
judged to be by no means a product wholly of the archaic
period. While certain parts, say from the first to the tenth
verses, inclusive, bear the mark of antiquity, the other
parts do not ring clear. It seems as if some poet of
comparatively modern times had revamped an old mele to suit
his own ends. Of this last part two verses were so glaringly
an interpolation that they were expunged from the text.

The effort to translate into pure Anglo-Saxon this vehement
outpour of high-colored phrases has made heavy demands on the
vocabulary and has strained the idioms of our speech
well-nigh to the point of protest.

In lines 1, 2, 4, 8, 14, and 23 the word _Lani_ means a
prince or princess, a high chief or king, a heavenly one. In
lines 12, 13, 18, and 20 the same word _lani_ means the
heavens, a concept in the Hawaiian mind that had some
far-away approximation to the Olympus of classic Greece.

_Mele_

Ooe no paha ia, e ka lau o ke aloha,
Oia no paha ia ke kau mai nei ka hali'a.
Ke hali'a-li'a mai nei ka maka,
Manao hiki mai no paha an anei.
5 Hiki mai no la ia, na wai e uwe aku?
Ua pau kau la, kau ike iaia;
Ka manawa oi' e ai ka manao iloko.
Ua luu iho nei an i ke kai nui;
Nui ka ukiuki, paio o ka naau.
10 Aone kanaka eha ole i ke aloha.
A wahine e oe, kanaka e au;
He mau alualu ka ha'i e lawe.
Ike aku i ke kula i'a o Ka-wai-nui.
Nui ka opala ai o Moku-lana.
15 Lana ka limu pae hewa o Makau-wahine.
O ka wahine no oe, o ke kane no ia.
Hiki mai no la ia, na wai e uwe aku?
Hoi mai no la ia, a ia wai e uwe aku?

[Page 83]

[Translation]

_Song_

Methinks it is you, leaf plucked from Love's tree,
You mayhap, that stirs my affection.
There's a tremulous glance of the eye,
The thought she might chance yet to come:
5 But who then would greet her with song?
Your day has flown, your vision of her--
A time this for gnawing the heart.
I've plunged just now in deep waters:
Oh the strife and vexation of soul!
10 No mortal goes scathless of love.
A wife thou estranged, I a husband estranged,
Mere husks to be cast to the swine.[203]
Look, the swarming of fish at the weir!
Their feeding grounds on the reef
15 Are waving with mosses abundant.
Thou art the woman, that one your man--
At her coming who'll greet her with song?
Her returning, who shall console?

[Footnote 203: In the original, _He mau alualu ka, ha'i e
lawe_, literally "Some skins for another to take."]

This song almost explains itself. It is the soliloquy of a
lover estranged from his mistress. Imagination is alive in
eye and ear to everything that may bring tidings of her, even
of her unhoped-for return. Sometimes he speaks as if
addressing the woman who has gone from him, or he addresses
himself, or he personifies some one who speaks to him, as in
the sixth line: "Your day has flown, ..."

The memory of past vexation and anguish extorts the
philosophic remark, "No mortal goes scathless of love." He
gives over the past, seeks consolation in a new
attachment--he dives, _lu'u_, into the great ocean, "deep
waters," of love, at least in search of love. The old self
(selves), the old love, he declares to be only _alualu_,
empty husks.

He--it is evidently a man--sets forth the wealth of comfort,
opulence, that surrounds him in his new-found peace. The
scene, being laid in the land Kailua, Oahu--the place to
which the enchanted tree _Maka-lei_[204] was carried long ago,
from which time its waters abounded in fish--fish are
naturally the symbol of the opulence that now bless his life.
But, in spite of the new-found peace and prosperity that
attend him, there is a lonely corner in his heart; the old
question echoes in its vacuum, "Who'll greet her with song?
who shall console?"

[Footnote 204: _Maka-lei_. (See note _b_, p. 17.)]

[Page 84]

_Mele_

O Ewa, aina kai ula i ka lepo,
I ula i ka makani anu Moa'e,
Ka manu ula i ka lau ka ai,
I palahe'a ula i ke kai o Kuhi-a.

5 Mai kuhi mai oukou e, owau ke kalohe;
Aohe na'u, na lakou no a pau.
Aohe hewa kekahi keiki a ke kohe.
Ei' a'e; oia no palm ia.
I lono oukou ia wai, e, ua moe?

10 Oia kini poai o lakou la paha?
Ike aku ia ka mau'u hina-hina--
He hina ko'u, he aka mai ko ia la.
I aka mai oe i kou la manawa le'a;
A manawa ino, nui mai ka nuku,

15 Hoomokapu, hoopale mai ka maka,
Hoolahui wale mai i a'u nei.
E, oia paha; ae, oia no paha ia.

[Translation]

_Song_

Ewa's lagoon is red with dirt--
Dust blown by the cool Moa'e,
A plumage red on the taro leaf,
An ocherous tint in the bay.

5 Say not in your heart that I am the culprit.
Not I, but they, are at fault.
No child of the womb is to blame.
There goes, likely he is the one.
Who was it blabbed of the bed defiled?

10 It must have been one of that band.
But look at the rank grass beat down--
For my part, I tripped, the other one smiled.
You smiled in your hour of pleasure;
But now, when crossed, how you scold!

15 Avoiding the house, averting the eyes--
You make of me a mere stranger.
Yes it's probably so, he's the one.

A poem this full of local color. The plot of the story, as it
may be interpreted, runs somewhat as follows: While the man
of the house, presumably, is away, it would seem--fishing,
perhaps, in the waters of Ewa's "shamrock lagoon"--the
mistress sports with a lover. The culprit impudently defends
himself with chaff and dust-throwing. The hoodlums, one of
whom is himself the sinner, have been blabbing, says he.
[Page 85]
His accuser points to the beaten down _hina-hina_ grass as
evidence against him. At this the brazen-faced culprit
parries the stroke with a humorous euphemistic description,
in which he plays on the word _hina_, to fall. Such verbal
tilting in ancient Hawaii was practically a defense against a
charge of moral obliquity as decisive and legitimate as was
an appeal to arms in the times of chivalry. He
euphemistically speaks of the beaten herbage as the result of
his having tripped and fallen, at which, says he, the woman
smiled, that is she fell in with his proposals. He gives
himself away; but that doesn't matter.

It requires some study to make out who is the speaker in the
tit-for-tat of the dialogue.


_Mele_

(Ai-ha'a)

He lua i ka Hikina,
Ua ena e Pele;
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
5 Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo i akea;
A ninau o Wakea,
Owai nei akua e eli nei?
Owan no, o Pele,
Nona i eli aku ka lua i Niihau a a.

10 He lua i Niihau, ua ena e Pele.
He haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo i akea;
A ninau o Wakea,
15 Owai nei akua e eli nei?
Owau no, o Pele,
Nana i eli aku ka lua i Kauai a a.

He lua i Kauai ua ena e Pele.
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
20 Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-Ialo i akea;
Ninau o Wakea,
Owai nei akua e eli nei?
Owau no, o Pele,
25 Nana i eli ka lua i Oahu a a.

He lua i Oahu, ua ena e Pele.
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo i akea;
30 A ninau o Wakea,
Owai nei akua e eli nei?
Owau no, o Pele,
Nana i eli ka lua i Molokai a a.

[Page 86] He lua i Molokai, ua ena e Pele.
35 Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo, i akea.
Ninau o Wakea,
Owai nei akua e eli nei?
40 Owau no, o Pele,
Nana i eli aku ka lua i Lanai a a.

He lua i Lanai, ua ena e Pele.
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
45 Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo i akea.
Ninau o Wakea,
Owai nei akua e eli nei?
Owau no, o Pele,
Nana i eli aku ka lua i Maul a a.

50 He lua i Maui, ua ena e Pele.
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo, i akea.
Ninau o Wakea,
55 Owai, nei akua e eli nei?
Owau no, o Pele,
Nana i eli aku ka lua i Hu'ehu'e a a.

He lua i Hu'ehu'e, ua ena e Pele.
Ke haoloolo e la ke ao,
60 Ke lele la i-luna, i-lalo;
Kawewe ka o-o i-lalo, i akea.
Eli-eli, kau mai!

[Translation]

_Song_

(In turgid style)

A pit lies (far) to the East,
Pit het by the Fire-queen Pele.
Heaven's dawn is lifted askew,
One edge tilts up, one down, in the sky;
5 The thud of the pick is heard in the ground.
The question is asked by Wakea,
What god's this a-digging?
It is I, it is Pele,
Who dug Mihau deep down till it burned,
10 Dug fire-pit red-heated by Pele.

Night's curtains are drawn to one side,
One lifts, one hangs in the tide.
Crunch of spade resounds in the earth.
Wakea 'gain urges the query,
15 What god plies the spade in the ground?
Quoth Pele, 'tis I:
[Page 87] I mined to the fire neath Kauai,
On Kauai I dug deep a pit,
A fire-well flame-fed by Pele.

20 The heavens are lifted aslant,
One border moves up and one down;
There's a stroke of o-o 'neath the ground.
Wakea, in earnest, would know,
What demon's a-grubbing below?
25 I am the worker, says Pele:
Oahu I pierced to the quick,
A crater white-heated by Pele.

Now morn lights one edge of the sky;
The light streams up, the shadows fall down;
30 There's a clatter of tools deep down.
Wakea, in passion, demands,
What god this who digs 'neath the ground?
It is dame Pele who answers;
Hers the toil to dig down to fire,
35 To dig Molokai and reach fire.

Now morning peeps from the sky
With one eye open, one shut.
Hark, ring of the drill 'neath the plain!
Wakea asks you to explain,
40 What imp is a-drilling below?
It is I, mutters Pele:
I drilled till flame shot forth on Lanai,
A pit candescent by Pele.

The morning looks forth aslant;
45 Heaven's curtains roll up and roll down;
There's a ring of o-o 'neath the sod.
Who, asks Wakea, the god,
Who is this devil a-digging?
'Tis I, 'tis Pele, I who
50 Dug on Maui the pit to the fire:
Ah, the crater of Maui,
Red-glowing with Pele's own fire!

Heaven's painted one side by the dawn,
Her curtains half open, half drawn;
55 A rumbling is heard far below.
Wakea insists he will know
The name of the god that tremors the land.
'Tis I, grumbles Pele,
I have scooped out the pit Hu'e-hu'e,
60 A pit that reaches to fire,
A fire fresh kindled by Pele.

Now day climbs up to the East;
Morn folds the curtains of night;
The spade of sapper resounds 'neath the plain:
65 The goddess is at it again!
[Page 88]
This mele comes to us stamped with the hall-mark of
antiquity. It is a poem of mythology, but with what story it
connects itself, the author knows not.

The translation here given makes no profession of absolute,
verbal literalness. One can not transfer a metaphor bodily,
head and horns, from one speech to another. The European had
to invent a new name for the boomerang or accept the name by
which the Australian called it. The Frenchman, struggling
with the English language, told a lady he was _gangrened_, he
meant he was _mortified_. The cry for literalism is the cry
for an impossibility; to put the chicken back into its shell,
to return to the bows and arrows of the stone age.

To make the application to the mele in question: the word
_hu-olo-olo_, for example, which is translated in several
different ways in the poem, is of such generic and
comprehensive meaning that one word fails to express its
meaning. It is, by the way, not a word to be found in any
dictionary. The author had to grope his way to its meaning by
following the trail of some Hawaiian pathfinder who, after
beating about the bush, finally had to acknowledge that the
path had become so much overgrown since he last went that way
that he could not find it.

The Arabs have a hundred or more words meaning
sword--different kinds of swords. To them our word sword is
very unspecific. Talk to an Arab of a sword--you may exhaust
the list of special forms that our poor vocabulary compasses,
straight sword, broadsword, saber, scimitar, yataghan,
rapier, and what hot, and yet not hit the mark of Ms
definition.

_Mele_

Haku'i ka uahi o ka lua, pa i ka lani;
Ha'aha'a Hawaii, moku o Keawe i hanau ia.
Kiekie ke one o Malama ia Lohiau,
I a'e 'a mai e ke alii o Kahiki,
5 Nana i hele kai uli, kai ele,
Kai popolo-hu'a a Kane,
Ka wa i po'i ai ke Kai-a-ka-Mna-lii,
Kai nu'u, kai lewa.

Hoopua o Kane i ka la'i;
10 Pa uli-hiwa mai la ka uka o ke ahi a Laka,
Oia wahine kihene lehua o Hopoe,
Pu'e aku-o na hala,
Ka hala o Panaewa,
O Panaewa nui, moku lehua;
15 Ohia kupu ha-o'e-o'e;
Lehua ula, i will ia e lie ahi.
A po, e!

Po Puna, po Hilo!
Po i ka uahi o ku'u aina.
20 Ola ia kini!
Ke a mai la ke ahi!
[Page 89]

[Translation]

_Song_

A burst of smoke from the pit lifts to the skies;
Hawaii's beneath, birth-land of Keawe;
Malama's beach looms before Lohian,
Where landed the chief from Kahiki,
5 From a voyage on the blue sea, the dark sea,
The foam-mottled sea of Kane,
What time curled waves of the king-whelming flood.
The sea up-swells, invading the land--

Lo Kane, outstretched at his ease!
10 Smoke and flame o'ershadow the uplands,
Conflagration by Laka, the woman
Hopoe wreathed with flowers of lehua,
Stringing the pandanus fruit.
Screw-palms that clash in Pan'-ewa--
15 Pan'-ewa, whose groves of lehua
Are nourished by lava shag,
Lehua that bourgeons with flame.

Night, it is night
O'er Puna and Hilo!
20 Night from the smoke of my land!
For the people salvation!
But the land is on fire!

The Hawaiian who furnished the meles which, in their
translated forms, are designated as canto I, canto II, and so
on, spoke of them as _pale_, and, following his
nomenclature, the term has been retained, though more
intimate acquaintance with the meles and with the term has
shown that the nearest English synonym to correspond with
pale would be the word division. Still, perhaps with a
mistaken tenderness for the word, the author has retained the
caption Canto, as a sort of nodding recognition of the old
Hawaiian's term--division of a poem. No idea is entertained
that the five _pale_ above given were composed by the same
bard, or that they represent productions from the same
individual standpoint. They do, however, breathe a spirit
much in common; so that when the old Hawaiian insisted that
they are so far related to one another as to form a natural
series for recitation in the hula, being species of the same
genus, as it were, he was not far from the truth. The man's
idea seemed to be that they were so closely related that,
like beads of harmonious colors and shapes, they might be
strung on the same thread without producing a dissonance.

Of these five poems, or _pale_ (pah-lay), numbers I, II, and
IV were uttered in a natural tone of voice, termed _kawele_,
otherwise termed _ko'i-honua_. The purpose of this style of
recitation was to adapt the tone to the necessities of the
[Page 90] aged when their ears no longer heard distinctly. It would
require an audiphone to illustrate perfectly the difference
between this method of pronunciation and the _ai-ha'a_, which
was employed in the recitation of cantos III and V. The
_ai-ha'a_ was given in a strained and guttural tone.

The poetical reciter and cantillator, whether in the halau or
in the king's court, was wont to heighten the oratorical
effect of his recitation by certain crude devices, the most
marked of which was that of choking the voice down, as it
were, into the throat, and there letting it strain and growl
like a hungry lion. This was the ai-ha'a, whose organic
function was the expression of the underground passions of
the soul.


[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
BULLETIN 33 PLATE VIII
MAILE PAKAHA
NIHI-AU-MOE
MARIONETTES]

[Page 91]




XI.--THE HULA KI'I


I was not a little surprised when I learned that the ancient
hula repertory of the Hawaiians included a performance with
marionettes, _ki'i_, dressed up to represent human beings.
But before accepting the hula _ki'i_ as a product indigenous
to Hawaii, I asked myself: Might not this be a performance in
imitation of the Punch-and-Judy show familiar to Europe and
America?

After careful study of the question no evidence was found,
other than what might be inferred from general resemblance,
for the theory of adoption from a European or American
origin. On the contrary, the words used as an accompaniment
to the play agree with report and tradition, and bear
convincing evidence in form, and matter to a Hawaiian
antiquity. That is not to say, however, that in the use of
marionettes the Hawaiians did not hark back to their
ancestral homes in the southern sea or to a remoter past in
Asia.

The six marionettes, _ki'i_ (pls. VIII and IX), in the
writer's possession were obtained from a distinguished
kumu-hula, who received them by inheritance, as it were, from
his brother. "He gave them to me," said he, "with these
words,' Take care of these things, and when the time comes,
after my death, that the king wants you to perform before
him, be ready to fulfill his desire.'"

It was in the reign of Kamehameha III that they came into the
hands of the elder brother, who was then and continued to be
the royal hula-master until his death. These ki'i have
therefore figured in performances that have been graced by
the presence of King Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) and his
queen, Kalama, and by his successors since then down to the
times of Kalakaua. At the so-called "jubilee," the
anniversary of Kalakaua's fiftieth birthday, these
marionettes were very much in evidence.

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