I further speculated that Chūya’s ‘music’ in a couple of poems (“A Poem for Morning” and “This Moment of Passing”) was perhaps influenced by his having composed them as lyrics for the classical music group Suruya, which he befriended in late 1927. (...) Over the last few decades, many of Chūya’s poems have been set to music (including a fabulous disco track). Could Chūya have assumed more of his poems would be adopted as lyrics and could he have composed them accordingly? We can only wonder, but I feel that I previously overemphasized that possibility. The problem with my original assertion is that he composed “A Poem for Morning” and showed it to Kobayashi before even meeting Suruya. Also, through his friend, the literary and music scholar Kawakami Tetsutaro (1902-1980), Chūya apparently asked Suruya to set his poems to music. In short, Chūya’s brief relationship with Suruya and a misinterpretation of the title of his book could lead one to believe there was a stronger relationship between music and his poetry than what actually existed.
Chūya was a poet. Most evidence points to Chūya prioritizing poetic endeavor in his life; music was an afterthought.
- Nakahara Chuya, "Poems of the Goat", Introduction by Ry Beville
Remembered about this after a million years and the fact that the translator gave me an answer about the disco track that he mentioned. So maybe there's someone else that would like to check that as well! The music is lovely, listened while rereading some poems on Nakahara's birthday🌹
And some calligraphy for my beloved poet
