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language: Hawaiian (English tr. Martha Warren Beckwith)
country: Hawaiʻi
year: 1863
form: novel (sort of)
genre(s): speculative
dates read: 26.1.24-1.2.24
The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai (originally Ka Moʻolelo o Lāʻieikawai), by S.N. Haleʻole, was translated in 1918 by Martha Warren Beckwith, and god you can tell it was 1918 and Beckwith was a white anthropologist. there is a more recent revised version of the translation edited by Dennis Kawaharada, Richard Hamasaki, and Esther Mookini — if you’re interested, you should probably seek out that one, which I imagine avoids some of the pitfalls of Beckwith.
the biggest flaw in the translation is that Beckwith was working under the assumption that Haleʻole intended to document an “authentic” — that is, oral — version of the story of Lāʻieikawai; as such, any anglicisms or anachronisms must be errors on Haleʻole’s part.
in fact, though, as is obvious even from reading Beckwith’s translation, Haleʻole was very consciously setting out not to document a tradition but to rework that tradition, using the new aesthetic tools provided by the arrival of writing and print culture in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in order to present it to a new audience — literate, educated Hawaiʻian readers. while Beckwith is busy leaving little notes objecting to Haleʻole’s use of mare and other “anachronistic” anglicisms, Haleʻole is having an absolute blast with this new form and the flexibility it offers.
in particular, you can tell the story was originally a newspaper serial because he regularly cues his readers about what came before and what’s coming next, as in this note at the beginning of chapter VI:
Ma ka Mokuna V o keia Kaao, ua ike kakou ua hiki aku a Aiwohikupua ma Laupahoehoe; maanei e kamailio iki kakou no Hulumaniani ka Makaula nana i ukali mai o Laieikawai, mai Kauai mai, ka mea i olelomuaia ma ka helu mua o keia Kaao.
In chapter V of this story we have seen how Aiwohikupua got to Laupahoehoe. Here we shall say a word about Hulumaniani, the seer, who followed Laieikawai hither from Kauai, as described in the first chapter of this story.
I love all of these, as I often love direct addresses to the reader in 19th-c fiction. here in particular the inclusive-plural kākou feels almost conspiratorial, as if we’re all actually hanging out watching the story unfold. great vibe.
the downside of this is that frankly it feels like Haleʻole was having too much fun, because in his enthusiastic jumping back and forth between threads of the plot the actual narrative becomes…a bit difficult to follow. I’d love to know how oral versions of the story managed the, like, ten intersecting romantic and sexual intrigues, because they were a lot to keep track of even in this format — I can’t imagine tracking all of them without a written reference, unless they were presented substantially differently.
the title character, Lāʻieikawai, is the child of an aliʻi (which Beckwith renders mainly as “chief”, except when it’s referring to a woman, in which case they become a “princess”, underrepresenting the amount of political power that even women aliʻi explicitly hold and exercise in their own right within the text) who must be raised in secret. when rumor of her incredible beauty begins to spread, a series of suitors come seeking her hand in marriage. the most notable of this is probably Aiwohikupua, an aliʻi from Kauaʻi who tries to get to Lāʻieikawai using his sisters as go-betweens only to disown them when they fail. Aiwohikupua’s sisters, and especially his youngest sister Kahalaomāpuana, are kind of the main characters of the bulk of the novel, which is about a series of attempted marriage alliances (mostly thwarted or subverted) and jockeying for social status — this makes sense, since after they have been disowned by Aiwohikupua his sisters seem to be excluded from the aliʻi class and so to need the protection or alliance of an aliʻi whose status is not in question to secure (or re-secure) their position.
it’s not boring, by any means, but it’s a bit overwhelming. if I were going to choose one word to describe the text, it would be “exuberant”.
the other highlight was when I started paying more attention to the Hawaiian and noticed that some of the relationships Haleʻole describes are aikāne, and despite Beckwith translating this mainly as “friend” (but in one case “favorite”, which otherwise she mainly reserves for the word punahele, which seems to also maybe have a sexual connotation here) it seems pretty clear that these are very much the strong sense of aikāne that Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio and kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui (among others) have discussed. also it turns out I can, like…kind of read Hawaiian, with a dictionary, which was an unexpected surprise.
this was a lot, and kind of messy! but an engaging — if at times confusing — messy.
moods: adventurous, wacky