One of my favourite books, The Tales of Ise, mixes up history, poetry and timeless gossip, some of my favourite things, stretching perceptions and experience.

Growing up as I did from country to country, floating from Dutch to Italian, French, English, Indonesian, German (and my own hybrid, incomprehensible jumble of them all), I’ve always loved finding new expressions and new ways of thinking – unique, without equivalents in other languages.

The Tales of Ise has lots of that, and more – inexpressible, seldom-thought-about topics, described in words that don’t exist in other languages, whose meaning is hard to pin down.

Writing the inexpressible in non-existent words is as good a definition of poetry as any you’ll hear.

Long ago, I wrote about this in a haiku, an almost untranslateable form in itself:

between any two

untranslateabilities

we find more meaning.

In episode 21 of the Tales, two lovers exchange poems, seven in all.

The final one has the image of:

… a cloud in mid-air

that vanishes in the sky

leaving not a trace.

The translator, Peter Macmillan, comments: “The word ‘mid-air’ (na-kazora), referring to the space between the sky and the earth, is a metaphor for being in a state that is neither one thing nor another.”

Elsewhere, I’ve seen “nakazora”  described as “a Buddhist word” meaning “empty air” or “a state where the feet do not touch the ground”.

Elsewhere still, the etymology of なかぞら is explained as being made up of “naka” (middle, or centre) and “zora” (sky, or empty space).

The range of meanings has made the word understandably popular in Classical Japanese literature and, obviously, to me.

I’m not sure whether the romanisation of the word, hyphenated as “na-kazora”, is strictly correct, but I prefer it to “nakazora”. The word’s dismemberment furthers the ethereal, ungraspable aspect of its meaning.

My tanka poem:

na-kazora

blue sky, wide and still

—all in solitude, so rare,

floats a single cloud,

seen by all, na-kazora,

so untouchable.

*

Untouchable – something (or someone) everyone can see, but out of reach, like a star (either in space or a famous person).

Ethereal, in suspension, between states, shape-shifting, untranslateable.

Like lovers estrangeing, as in the Tales’ episode (or are they really finding true love)?

Or readers reading something new and strange?

In this game, only the reader can tell.