Sotoba Komachi

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Scene from the drama

Sotoba Komachi ( Japanese 卒 塔 婆 小 町 ), Komachi at the grave , is the title of a Nō drama by Kanami Kiyotsugu, edited by Zeami . The piece is a fourth play within the Nō category, dispensing with the usual interlude between the 1st and 2nd act.

Preliminary remark

This Nō is about the old and lonely lady in waiting and poet Ono no Komachi .

The following people occur:

  • Waki: A monk
  • Wakitsure: Another monk
  • Shite: Ono no Komachi

action

  1. act
    1. Prelude: A priest and two accompanying monks appear with an orchestral sound. You hike from the monastery mountain Kōya to the capital. The priest: "In a quick hurry we came to the pine forest of Abeno (安 倍 野) in the province of Settsu ."
    2. Ono no Komachi appears with an orchestral sound and complains about her life in a long monologue: Once highly admired as a poet, she has now become old and poor, a beggar. “I'm so tired, I want to rest here on this old log,” she says.
    3. Conversation, increasing to an exchange speech, finally a choir. The priest: “What do I see there, a beggar woman on a stupa !” He confronts Komachi. This is followed by a long conversation between the monks and Komachi, in which the position of the monks who follow esoteric Buddhism and Komachi's position, which represents the Zen direction, is presented.
    4. The monks are impressed by Komachi's knowledge and ask her about names and origins. She answers, and the monks are shocked to see what has become of the once proud lady.
  2. act
    1. The monks ask about what they have with them: poor belongings. Choir: "... You beg, and if nobody gives you anything, the madness grabs you and speaks from you." (The spirit of the deceased lover Fukakusa no Chōshō now speaks from her.) Komachi: "Oh, there were many who did you Heart lost to Komachi. She was most loved by Fukakusa Chōshō. Every night he hurries to win her love. ”(The Komachi dressing up, who, possessed by Fukakusa's spirit, represents his nocturnal love chants and in resentment and frenzy.) After alternating chants with the choir, Komachi comes back out of obsession, distress and death to oneself.
    2. Final chorus: "... I want to tread the path to enlightenment."

Post Comment

Because of its depth of content, this no-drama was translated early by the French missionary Noël Péri (1865–1922), by Waley , Fenollosa and others.

Mishima Yukio published in 1956 a modern version of Sotoba Komachi in Five Modern Nō Games , which Ishiketa Mareo (石 桁 真 礼 生; 1916-1996) set to music. The composer Marvin David Levy created the opera Sotoba Komachi in 1957 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Woodcut by Tsukioka Kōgyo (月 岡 耕 漁; 1869–1924).

literature

  • Peter Weber-Schäfer: Komachi at the grave . In: Twenty-four Nō games. Insel Verlag, 1961. ISBN 3-458-15298-X . Pp. 129 to 138.
  • Hermann Bohner: Sotoba-Komachi In: Nō. The individual Nō. German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia, Tōkyō 1956. Commission publisher Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Pp. 440 to 442.
  • Ernesto Fenollosa: Sotoba-Komachi In: Nō - From the genius of Japan. Ezra Pound, Ernest Fenollosa, Serge Einstein. Die Arche, Zurich, 1963. ISBN 3-7160-1912-7 .