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Sakutarō Hagiwara Quotes

1886–1942 Japan

Sakutarō Hagiwara (萩原朔太郎, Hagiwara Sakutarō, 1 November 1886 – 11 May 1942) was a Japanese writer of free verse, active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. He liberated Japanese free verse from the grip of traditional rules, and he is considered the "father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan".

Japan
Essayists
Poets

Random Sakutarō Hagiwara quote

32 quotes

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.

Cat Town (2014)

In the face of all kinds of derisions of all the many people, I still firmly believe in my mind that that unique village on the Japan Sea of which oral legend has handed down, the town where only cats' spirits live, must surely exist somewhere, in some part of the universe.

Cat Town (2014)

[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.

Cat Town (2014)

Ah what's asleep in this large city night
is the shadow of a single blue cat
the shadow of a cat that speaks of the sad history of mankind
the blue shadow of the happiness I never stop longing for.

Cat Town (2014)

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.

Cat Town (2014)

The Hirose River flows white.
Time passes and all illusions must fade away.
Wanting to catch my life,
one day in the past I cast my line in the river,
but ah that happiness was too far away
and I didn't see tiny fish even in a flash.

Cat Town (2014)

And my heart senses tears
it's the heart that always plays quietly alone
the heart is lonesome
the heart, early in its youthful boyhood, cast a shadow on my life
the gradually enlarging shadow of solitude
the shadow of terrifying melancholy grows.

Cat Town (2014)

[Poetry] is the voice of a blue heron calling in the marshes of life, the sound of a wind darkly whispering over the reeds on a moonlit night.

Cat Town (2014)

[A]ll philosophers must surrender to the poet when they arrive at the end of their intellectual exploration. Only the universe that the poet intuits far above the common senses is the true metaphysical reality.

Cat Town (2014)

Poetry is the intellect's product of one second. A certain type of sentiment that one ordinarily has touches something like electricity and for the first time discovers a rhythm. This electricity is, for the poet, a miracle. Poetry is not something anticipated and made.

Cat Town (2014)

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.

Cat Town (2014)

Where is our happiness?
The more we dig the sand in the mud
the deeper the fountain of sorrow becomes, doesn't it?
The spring wavering in curtains' shadow
has gone away into the distance, rocking on a rickshaw.

Cat Town (2014)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sakutarō Hagiwara (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.