Category: Haiku and Beyond

I’m enjoying reading Ueda’s Basho and His Interpreters, though at times it seems more like being immersed in a mini-class than casually reading a poetry book. The more I read, particularly the commentary, the more I realize how much I don’t know about Japanese literature and culture, though I am finding many new ideas to explore.

As I’ve noted in past commentary, I may enjoy haibunas much as I do haiku. One of my favorite haiku in this section seems much more effective to me when the “headnote” is included:

I arrived at my native town at the beginning of the ninth month. Nothing of my late mother remained there anymore. All had changed from what I remembered. My older brother, now with white hair in his side-locks and wrinkles around his eyebrows, could only say, “How lucky we are to meet alive again!” Then he opened a keepsake bag and said to me “Pay your respects to Mother’s white hair. They say the legendary Urashima’s hair turned white the instant he opened the souvenir box he had brought back from the Dragon Palace. Now your eyebrows look a little white, too.” We wept together for some time.

should I hold it in my hand
it would melt in my hot tears-
autumn frost

te / nil toraba / kien / namida / zo / atsuki / aki / no / shimo
hand / in / if-take / will-vanish / tear / ! / hot / autumn / ‘s / frost

NOTE

Written in Ueno on October 16. Urashima was the young hero of a legend who visited a Dragon Lady’s palace under the sea. Returning to his native village and finding nothing there that he could remember, he disobeyed the lady’s order and opened a jewel box she had given him. Instantly he turned into an old man.

COMMENTARY

The comparison here is between frost and white hair. The word “hot” connotes an infinitely deep sorrow, while the words “would melt” -kien–have a sonorous sound. -Tosai

The poet is saying he cannot take the white hair in his hand because if he were to do so his hot tears would melt it away like autumn frost. In brief, this is a hok1 that depends far too much on a logical connection of ideas. In addition, it still retains something of the old style that characterized Minashiguri. I do not find it poetically appealing. – Meisetsu

An excellent poem which, without any verbal adornment, fully reveals the poets honest, sincere personality. -Kobayashi

The poet just could not contain his grief. -Ebara

The poem’s central metaphor-that of autumn frost-is a failure. In particular, the statement that the frost would melt in hot tears sounds hollow and unconvincing. We can visualize the grieving poet, but the poem does not convey the grief in a manner that moves the heart. – Shüson

I think it can safely be said that few other poems make us so sublimely conscious that nature and humanity are one. -Komiya

The underlying emotionality of the poem is manifest in the wave-like rhythm of the verse. However, if we read the hokku independently of the headnote, we get the impression that the wording of the poem does not do justice to the intensity 0f the poet’s emotion. A poem of this kind needs to be read with its headnote to be fully appreciated. -Iwata

While the haiku may be able to stand on its own, I agree wholeheartedly with what Iwata says in the last comment. With the headnote it reminds me of one of Thoreau’s essays which he concludes with a powerful aphorism. I suppose you could even consider it a unique type of prose poem.

Things are slowly returning to “normal” around here. I’ve managed to take Skye out for his walk two days in a row, and I’ve even managed to find some time to start reading poetry again. I’ve had Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary by Makoto Ueda lying around for quite awhile, since, as I remember it, Jonathon Delacour suggested it was the best version of Basho out.

If you’ve come here for awhile you’ll remember that Chinese and Japanese poetry are favorites, though I’ve only had one college course that centered on them. In fact, most of my interest has arisen since I’ve retired. I’ll continue to include them under the heading “Haiku and Beyond” because I still don’t feel comfortable discussing them in the same depth I discuss English-speaking poets.

One of the reasons I’m particularly fond of this translation is that Ueda includes his translation, a Japanese translation directly under that, and a word-by-word translation after that. He follows that with what he considers significant commentary on each of the hokku. Occasionally, I even find that my initial interpretation of the poem matches at least one of the commentaries.

a fool in the dark
grabs a bramble-
firefly hunt


go / ni / kuraku / ibara / wo / tsukamu / horatu / kana
folly / in / dark / bramble / [acc.] / grab / firefly / kana

NOTE

Kuraku, as is the English word dark,” can mean either physical or metaphorical darkness.

COMMENTARY

Unable to see in the darkness of night and absorbed in an exciting firefly hint, a man accidentally grabbed a bramble. Reading this hokku, we should remind ourselves of those pleasures that will do us harm if we are too absorbed in them. – Duuto

This hokku seems to satirize a person who falls into an error because of his own greed. -Tosai

The poet saw a firefly that had settled not on a soft blade of grass but on a thorny bramble. Thereupon he speculated that the firefly muse be none too brilliant during daylight hours, although at nighttime it flits about freely by its own light. That, I think, is what the poet meant by the hokku’s opening phrase. – Komiya

The meaning of the poem centers on the loss of judgment suffered by is person who was too intent on catching a firefly. The lesson can be applied to life in general. The poem utilizes an allegorical device borrowed from Chuang-tzu, a device that was central to the art of the Danrin school. -Shuaon

An allegorical poem on the folly of a person who is too preoccupied with one thing to reflect on other things. Probably self-derision. – Kou

Though he didn’t do so in this example, Ueda also consistently points out lines in the hokku that reference poetry or literature that preceded Basho’s hokku. It’s clear Western readers of hokku miss much in these poems because they don’t have the literary background to pick up on such subtle references. On the other hand, the poems reveal Basho’s genius because they are able to stand on their own. Even without a literary background, the best of these poems create a moment that reveals its own eternal truth.

At its worst Chia Tao’s poetry, at least as collected in When I Find You Again It Will Be In Mountains, strikes me as formulaic, even repetitious. After all, how many poems do you need to read with “Farewell” or “Mourning” in the title? There’s certainly considerable emphasis on the sorrow that inevitably accompanies life.

At its best, as in

ABODE OF THE UNPLANNED EFFECT

The grass-covered path
is secluded and still;
a closed door faces
the Chung-nan Mountains.

In the evening, the air’s chilly,
but the light rain stops;
at dawn, far off,
a few cicada start.

Leaves fall
where no green earth remains;
a person at his ease
wears a common white robe.

With simplicity and plainness
his original nature still,
what need to practice
calming of the heart?

though, Tao’s poetry embodies what I most admire in poetry — what Sam Hamill in a cover note describes as “the cold, lean Chia Tao.” The poem adheres to those qualities that early Imagists found so admirable.

The poem gives the impression of consisting of nothing more than simple observations. Much of the imagery could probably be captured with a movie camera, even the sound of the cicada in the distance.

At first even the last stanza seems simple observation until we realize it’s really the poet’s commentary on the nature of The Way, just as surely as words like “simplicity” and “plainness” are commentary on the nature of this man.

Normally, I’m strictly a one-book-at-a-time reader, probably a carry over from my younger days when I’d always try to finish a novel in one sitting, generally on a weekend when I could read all night if I needed to.

Lately, though, I’ve actually been reading three books at once. One is the CSS, Dreamweaver book I’m trying to work my way through, another is Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace is Every Step, and the one I’m quoting from today is Mike O’Connor’s When I Find You Again It Will Be In Mountains: Selected Poems of Chia Tao.

It’s actually worked out quite well, since the CSS book demands a lot of time at the computer and attention to detail that is at times frustrating. Hanh’s book, on the other hand, consists of short one or two page observations about life which evoke broad reflection rather than practiced precision.

Mike O’Connor’s book seems to demand both attention to detail and calm reflection. It contains about 80 poems, most of which are 16 lines in length. Though deceptively simple, most of the poems lend themselves to further reflection.

Although this isn’t my favorite poem

MOURNING THE DEATH
OF CH’AN MASTER PO-YEN

Fresh moss covers
the stone bed;
how many springtimes
was it the Master’s?

His profile in meditation
has been sketched;
but the body of the meditator
has been burned.

Snow in the pines
has closed the pagoda courtyard;
dust settles in the the lock
on the sutra library.

I chide myself
for these two tears —
a man who hasn’t grasped
the empty nature of all things.

I found it interesting to compare it to this translation by Stephen Owen, found in my old college text Sunflower Splendor edited by Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo:

WEEPING FOR THE ZEN MASTER P0-YEN

Moss covers his stone bed fresh —
How many springs did the master occupy it?
They sketched to preserve his form practicing the Way,
but burned away the body that sat in meditation.
The pagoda garden closes in snow on the pines,
While the library locks dust in the chinks.
I hate myself for these lines of tears falling —
I am not a man who understands the Void.

I think the eight-line translation is the more traditional, but the shortness of the the sixteen-line translation somehow seems closer to the Chinese characters that O’Conner prints next to each poem — though perhaps it merely reminds me of Imagist poems I admire.

Of course since I can’t read Chinese I have no idea which one, if either, is closer in meaning to the original. After I finished reading O’Conner’s book and looked back in Sunflower Splendor I knew immediately which poems I’d read before, which suggests to me that both translators have tried to render the poems’ meanings as accurately as they can.

The biggest difference between the two is suggested by the titles, O’Conner uses “Mourning” while Own uses “Weeping.” To me “mourning” suggests more restraint than “weeping” does; this restraint is also suggested when O’Conner mentions “two tears” while Owen describes “lines of tears falling.” While the “empty nature of things” may mean the same thing as “void,” the connotations seem rather different.

One wonders if Stephen Owen’s translation was influenced by the opinions he offers in the ‘author notes,” particularly “His early poems affected the bizarre exaggeration of the age, even more so than most, so that his poetic daring became something of a joke.” But he also notes that “as the literary fashion shifted away from the hyperbolic style of the early ninth century toward a characteristically Late T’ang aestheticism, Chia Tao became one of the principal figures in the creation of the new style…” It’s obvious that O’Conner generally holds a higher view of Tao, and this may, in turn, have affected his translation of certain poems.

Aesthetically, I find myself more in tune with O’Conner’s translation than with Owen’s translation, but I suspect that reveals more about me than it does about the poetry itself.