Poems of Summer—Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)
I think many of us know the drill with Bashō at this point, don’t we, readers?
No particular source for this selection, although most of the Japanese orthography is that of the Haiku International Association website.
I think many of us know the drill with Bashō at this point, don’t we, readers?
No particular source for this selection, although most of the Japanese orthography is that of the Haiku International Association website.
❦
ほととぎす鳴く鳴く飛ぶぞ忙はし
hototogisu naku naku tobu zo isogawashi
Yack yack yack, how busily the cuckoo flits around!
鳴く naku is “to call,” as an animal, but the reduplication makes it sound a bit like the chatter of a constantly-on-the-go person.
❦
五月雨や桶の輪切る夜の声
samidare ya oke no wa kiruru yoru no koe
A voice in the night! A cooper’s hoop, cracking in monsoon rains.
“Cooper’s hoop” is an inexact rendering, fundamentally for euphony in English; an 桶 oke is more of a tub than a barrel.
❦
湖や暑さを惜しむ雲の峰
mizuumi ya atsusa wo oshimu kumo no mine
The clouded peaks shirk the heat we feel on the muggy lake.
湖 mizuumi just means lake, but it is a compound of words meaning “water” and “sea,” furthering the feeling that this is the dreaded wet heat.
❦
朝露によごれて涼し瓜の泥
asatsuyu ni yogorete suzushi uri no tsuchi
Splattered in morning dew, the coolness of the melon-patch…
The verb 汚れる yogoreru indicates a dirty, indiscriminate splattering, as of mud.
❦
夏の夜や崩て明し冷し物
natsu no yo ya kuzurete akeshi hiyashimono
Summer evening; the leftovers from our cold dinner? The dawn.
I’ve taken somewhat less liberty in the order of the thoughts in this one than in the others.
❦
夏草や兵どもが夢の跡
natsukusa ya tsuwamono-domo ga yume no ato
The summer grasses soldiers’ dreams leave behind…
This is a well-known one from the legendary おくのほそ道 Oku no hosomichi. I was reluctant to touch the conventional translations. I certainly don’t think mine is better than, say, Donald Keene’s.
A Poem by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)
Matsuo Bashō is one of the most famous, popular, and influential poets in Japanese history, one of the early masters of the haiku form as a sort of truncated waka (5-7-5 rather than the traditional 5-7-5-7-7). He is a philosopher of some stature due to his poetry’s tendency to capture the sublime in the particular and immediate. His best-known writing is probably found in Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to Oku), a prose travelogue interspersed with haiku about the sights and culture of what was at the time far northeastern Japan.
Currently I miss my parents’ cat, Papako, herself named after a cat whom we met at a hotel in more or less the same part of Japan in 2013. (I highly recommend visits to Aomori especially for people who, like me, like snow, apples, and dramatic seaside landscapes.) Thus I decided to translate a Bashō haiku about a cat. This one touches on cats’ tendencies to be finicky about their food, one of the first things I ever noticed about them when my family got our first cat in my early childhood. It’s also arguably a bit sexist, but that’s a problem with most older literature in general, Japanese or otherwise. The poem appears in Aya Kusch’s lovely collection Cats in Spring Rain: A Celebration of Feline Charm in Japanese Art and Haiku. Her translation philosophy is a bit different from mine but still well worth a look.
Matsuo Bashō is one of the most famous, popular, and influential poets in Japanese history, one of the early masters of the haiku form as a sort of truncated waka (5-7-5 rather than the traditional 5-7-5-7-7). He is a philosopher of some stature due to his poetry’s tendency to capture the sublime in the particular and immediate. His best-known writing is probably found in Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to Oku), a prose travelogue interspersed with haiku about the sights and culture of what was at the time far northeastern Japan.
Currently I miss my parents’ cat, Papako, herself named after a cat whom we met at a hotel in more or less the same part of Japan in 2013. (I highly recommend visits to Aomori especially for people who, like me, like snow, apples, and dramatic seaside landscapes.) Thus I decided to translate a Bashō haiku about a cat. This one touches on cats’ tendencies to be finicky about their food, one of the first things I ever noticed about them when my family got our first cat in my early childhood. It’s also arguably a bit sexist, but that’s a problem with most older literature in general, Japanese or otherwise. The poem appears in Aya Kusch’s lovely collection Cats in Spring Rain: A Celebration of Feline Charm in Japanese Art and Haiku. Her translation philosophy is a bit different from mine but still well worth a look.
麦飯にやつるる恋か猫の妻
A cat’s wife—has a lean diet worn thin her love?