Honolulu Weekly

Ka Mo’olelo O Hi’iakaikapoliopele The Epic Tale Of Hi’iakaikapoliopele
Text & Translations by: Puakea Nogelmeier Illustrations by: Solomon Enos
Awaiaulu Press, 2007, 500pp, $40

Over the course of one year, the 400-page story of Hi’iaka’i'ka’poliopele, Pele’s beloved younger sister, ran as a daily column in the Hawaiian language newspaper Ka Na’i Aupuni from Dec. 1, 1905 through Nov. 30, 1906. This epic tale follows Hi’iaka on her odyssey across the Hawaiian Islands to find Pele’s lover Lohi’auipo and bring him back to Kilauea. Draped in her magical fern pa’u, Hi’iaka engages in one fantastical encounter after another, slaying demons, conjuring storms and casting spells. Love, lust, jealousy, justice–the heroes are subject to very human whims, and this version (one of 10 or more existing but untranslated versions) gives deep insight into the social conventions of ancient times.

One hundred years later, Hawaiian language specialist Puakea Nogelmeier has revived the original Hawaiian text and produced an English translation that is being offered as a two-volume set by Awaiaulu Press, the product of three years of intensive work.

‘Hawaiians were almost universally literate,’ Nogelmeier says, explaining that the newspaper served as a public repository and a national archive. ‘They really urged people to write things down and send it in. They had a sense of ‘we’ve got to get these written down, because the youth will need to know.”

If a function of storytelling is to pass on knowledge, the glut of yet-to-be translated Hawaiian texts holds a wealth of secrets waiting to be discovered.

‘There are 2 million pages of Hawaiian writing, and we have access to about 5 percent,’ says Nogelmeier, pointing out that only 2 percent of Hawaiians today speak Hawaiian. ‘If people were willing to go sit in a dusty archive, how many could actually digest this material?’

Therein lies the urgency of mentoring young scholars to process and translate the raw material that lies dormant in the dusty bowels of the state archives, the Bishop Museum Archives and the Hawaii Historical Society, and it’s Nogelmeier’s hope that the Hi’iaka project will spawn similar efforts.

From Hawaiian to English

The Hi’iaka translation is actually a story within a story. One of the bigger editorial decisions Nogelmeier and his assistants Sahoa Fukushima and Kamaoli Kuwada had to make was whether to include the 1906 storyteller’s comments.

‘There’s narrative, and then there’s the story,’ he says, explaining that his purpose was not to retell the Hi’iaka legend (as Nathaniel B. Emerson did in 1915, the only version of the Hi’iaka story to appear since 1906), but to re-present what was originally presented to the newspaper’s readers. ‘There must be 100 ‘Dear Reader,’ notations. It clearly inserts the 1906 voice into what was supposed to be an ancient taleÖ. The author repeatedly spoke about the need for subtlety and veiled language, as in this quote from the story: ‘Whereas this is an era that fancies ladylike and gentlemanly manners, bound by the tentacles of law that command angelic wording for distribution in the newspapers, the writer, therefore, dons the cloak of riddles at this point.”

According to Nogelmeier, the author was both funny and intelligent, agreeable traits for turning an oral story into a written text, a daunting task that imposes changes in the language, flow and content that a listener might experience. The original story surely includes what Hawaiian historian Martha Beckwith describes in Hawaiian Mythology as ‘erotic allusions so dear to Hawaiian ears but which escape the foreign interpreter,’ but Nogelmeier does a fine job of making them accessible:

Pahulu seized the paddle and thrashed the sea with gusto. The canoe hurtled along toward the shore to finally land on the sand. Excitedly he grabbed two red uhu, one in each hand, and the two of them climbed up almost to the middle of the cliff, to the edge of the road, where Pahulu quickly urged Hi’iaka, saying, ‘Hey, here’s a good place. This spot is flat.’

‘It will be fine,’ answered Hi’iaka.

She lowered herself to the ground and Pahulu came down upon her with all his strength, enamored by the thought that he would witness for himself the beauty of Halema’uma’u and the sweet sensations of Maunaloa’s roiling stern.

But as he lurched forward, Hi’iaka’s supernatural powers blinded him, leaving him in complete darkness. Then she moved from where she had lain, and left a large stone in her stead. The smooth texture of the stone made Pahulu assume it was the sleek smoothness of the stunning woman he so hungered for, so he moved on to his work.

As for Hi’iaka, she got up, grabbed the two uhu and went back to her companion, saying, ‘Here is what you longed for: the uhu that I happened upon. So now, you eat this treat of yours. Eat it all, from head to tail, the only drawback being that there is no taro to eat along with it.’

Once Wahine’oma’o had scaled the fish, the rubbish was tossed, and the whole fish was cleaned, she said to her friend, ‘My friend, this delicacy you found might be more lovely if there were some poi to go with it, but it has its own full flavor when eaten alone. The flesh of the uhu is moist to bite into, and slides right down every time.’

Wahine’oma’o was busy devouring her treat, and Pahululawai’anuiokai was busy making love to the stone form left by Hi’iaka, so ignorant in his futile passion that he never recognized this was a stone he was violating.

Pahulu was still ravishing the stone when some men arrived; as they approached and clearly saw this peculiar man making love while embracing a stone, they called out, ‘Hey! Pahulu, what are you doing assaulting a rock?’

Pahulu answered haughtily with a pretentious manner, ‘Hush, you ignorant travelers of the night! I am making love to our wife!’

‘Is that supposed to be a woman you are lying with, Pahulu? That is a stone.’

At that point the man raised up, and saw clearly that it truly was a stone he was ardently embracing, to which he said, ‘What a blundering fool! To be so stupid in believing the sweet talk of that beautiful woman that I would lie down to embrace a stone, like some mo’o. Oh what a loss, for my fat uhu fish were taken by that scoundrel!’

‘We tried to stay with the exact sequencing of language, but not of words, so within the framework of keeping the paragraphs in order, we tried to keep the flavor of it, the pacing of it. It’s sort of an extended literal translation,’ says Nogelmeier. He says doing the rough translation was really fun, but the tedious editing of the incredibly dense work–both the Hawaiian and English versions went through five complete proofs–was ‘enough to make you tear your hair out.’ He jokes, ‘I’ve gone bald in the process.’

From words to pictures

What Nogelmeier puts onto the pages is visually interpreted through handsome, full-color illustrations by native artist Solomon Enos, who recently received the 2006 Ka Palapala Po’okela award for excellence in illustration for Akua Hawai’i: Hawaiian Gods and Their Stories. Nogelmeier calls Enos’s contribution to the project ‘massive.’

‘Working with Puakea was such a powerful and easy collaboration,’ says Enos, who recalls sitting at Nogelmeier’s writing desk often for eight hours a day ‘next to his collection of books–some of them more than 100 years old–right at my brow.’

‘He came to us and said ‘Pick the places you want illustrated and give me thumbnails.’ The three of us were only capable of stick figures,’ Nogelmeier recalls.

‘There’s an infinite number of perspectives on a sphere. Having their initial sketches allowed me to get to exactly what they wanted to communicate,’ Enos explains. From their sketches, he would then form a composite. After the skeleton layer was complete, the accuracy of the details had to be matched to the story.

‘What do the kapa prints look like, what’s her left hand doing, what’s her right hand doing, what does the sky look like? Every square centimeter had to be analyzed,’ Enos says.

‘We had to negotiate the difference between our artistic license and cultural and historical necessity. It had to look Hawaiian–the way somebody sits, the length of skirts,’ Nogelmeier adds. ‘Lohi’au is riding a cowry shell–is it face up or face down?’

For Enos, the project helped him define his approach for his future work, giving him a greater understanding of the range of Polynesian archetypes. ‘It pushed me into new levels of caliber from both a technical perspective as well as a deeper understanding of the culture, a people and the way of thinking.’

From one century to the next

Two versions of the limited centennial edition of Ka Mo’olelo O Hi’iakaikapoliopele and The Epic Tale of Hi’iakaikapoliopele are currently available online at [www.awaiaulu.org]. There are 300 copies of the boxed set, hand-bound by Gregor Campbell in goatskin leather and green moirÈ fabric, numbered and signed, priced at $1,500 per set. Five hundred slipcased sets are also available for $300 each. A hardcover trade edition will be released next spring.

‘You have this ancient Hawaiian story and this extremely contemporary English translation, but they really are a single body of work. The English is not a shadow or a lesser piece, but a reflection,’ says book designer Barbara Pope. ‘We’re using high quality materials that are very durable and will last a long time.’

‘In 100 years, someone can pick it up off the shelf, it will still look virginÖI’ve been a bear with my co-workers, but it’s worth it,’ Nogelmeier says. ‘It’s the largest example of the untapped body of Hawaiian literature to be pulled out in almost a century and a good example of large manuscripts that still lie there.’

Underscoring the relevance and cultural significance of these ancient mo’olelo, Nogelmeier continues, ‘All of those great stories, whether they’re Shakespeare or Homer, reflect the human condition, and even if they are told for their time they continually adapt to the present. If someone raised a mirror–it’s got jealousy, self-aggrandizement, it’s got all of the things that exist today.’