The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
I aim to reproduce Basho's words in clear natural English with a consistant rhythm of four beats to a measure (including silent pauses) and lots of empty space for your imagination to work.
Japanese for a thousand years before Basho wrote poetry in alternating stanzas of 17 and 14 “syllables,” the former in three segments of 5 – 7 – 5, the latter in two segments of 7 – 7. I put “syllables” in quotes because in Japanese these are merely single sounds; usually two of them form what English calls a “syllable” – as in the very well-known Japanese word raman which is two syllables with four sounds: ‘ra-a’ and ‘me-n. The Japanese sound unit would better be called a “half-syllable.”
Words
The average basic Japanese word has two sound-units, so 17 Japanese syllables is room for just about seven words plus a few particles for grammar. The upper segment has two words, the middle three, and the lower two words
Kao bakari Only my face sanae no doro ni by rice-seedling mud yogorasazu is not soiled
With just seven words (plus a few particles ) Basho cannot explain anything. The art of Basho lies in NOT SAYING what is meant. As one Japanese poet told me “A verse must not be overly understandable.”
Basho’s seven words suggest so much because they say so little. We feel the discomfort of this rice-planting woman from having mud all over her body and clothing, along with her satisfaction that her face remains clean. We come to his meaning through actual experience of femininity, work, dirt, and cleanliness. In a way, Basho verses are like riddles. Use the clues in his words to find the hidden meaning. The translator should not give away the answer.
In his 1681 letter to his follower Biji Basho presents five points foroetic expression, which for Basho meant avoiding oldness and heaviness. Here are two of them:
Without a sense for using ordinary words, you will get mixed up in an old style.
Years later he said something similar to his follower Doho:
Poetry benefits from the realization of ordinary words
Haikai wa eki no zokugo o tadasu nari 諧は益の俗語を正すなり
A stanza may have extra sounds, 3, 4, even 5 or 7;
if the phrase resonates, it is okay – however if even one sound stagnates in your mouth,
you must scrutinize the expression.
Basho advises to speak the verse out loud to insure that the phrase does not “stagnate” in the mouth -- like water in a stream stuck behind a wad of fallen leaves, old and heavy -- but rather emerges to resonate in the minds of readers.
I came to appreciate the power of active lively words from an example in a small paperback, The Golden Book of Writing, I once had: Consider the phrase “when Elizabeth was queen:” The inactive verb “was” has no power to give the phrase which falls flat. Now, change that to “when Elizabeth reigned” and feel the glory and dignity comes from the active verb “reigns.”
The words in Yesterday are short, simple Old English words. William Strunk, Jr. in The Elements of Style points to the “vigor” in the short, simple words of Ecclesiastics;
I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong… but time and chance happen to them all
Strunk says,
“ To arouse and hold the reader’s attention” words must be “specific, definite and concrete … the greatest writers – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare – are effective largely because… their words call up pictures.”
People use fancy academic words to show off their higher education but actually the grade school words carry the power. Strunk illustrates:
He showed satisfaction He grinned as
as he took possession he pocketed the coin
of his well-earned reward
Ordinarily “pocket” is a noun, but by converting it into an active verb, Strunk realizes the power of the word.
Consider a tanka in Ki no Tsurayuki’s semi-fictional Tosa Diary: A government official and his family are returning to their home in the Capital after a five year absence in which his little daughter died. Compare the lyrical and academic translation on the left versus my ordinary words on the right:
What sadness to see She was born how young pines have sprung up but shall not return inside the garden to our home Of one who is bereft where the young pines even of a child once born we watch in sadness
Helen Craig McCullough has gone to great trouble to make her translation “poetic” and so has lost the simple unadorned beauty of the original. Her refusal to use pronouns (because the Japanese has no pronouns) makes the English grammar especially difficult (“even of a child once born”). She challenges us to figure out “bereft,” the past-participle of ‘bereave,’ although the original simply says miru ga kanashisa, “watching is
sadness.” There are too many words for us to find a beat or to feel the grief of losing a child.
My translation has exactly the same ordinary words as the original in essentially the same order; the only words I have added are the personal pronouns which allow the English to flow smoothly and ‘shall’ for the
future tense.Many translators avoid personal pronouns because the Japanese has none. In Japanese this is natural; in English stilted, depriving the words of their native power. The pauses which occur naturally after “born” and “home” are crucial; here is where the feeling emerges. The words and pauses naturally take on a 4 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 4 pattern of beats, as does the original.
I have tried to follow Basho’s originals of Basho. Scholars or literary types may find my translations too simple, not ‘poetic’ or ‘educated’enough, but I believe Basho gives us a different, more simple beauty than
that in Western poetry. He joins the Elements of Style in advocating simple ordinary words “to call up pictures.”
Cherries in bloom
again she climbs the hill to his grave
The active verb “climbs” in the center of the verse gives it life and activity.
Syllables
In the 20th century it was widely assumed that a haiku translation must have 17 syllables because the Japanese has 17 sound-units. The 21st century brought the realization that 17 syllables are much longer in actual sound duration than 17 sound-units, and recent translators have abandoned the 5-7-5 syllable pattern, but thereby abandoned all fixed form, so syllable counts of recent haiku vary as freely as the wind.
I, on the other hand, insist on a steady even rhythm of beats in every line of every translation although the syllable count does vary somewhat; the syllables expand or contract to fit into a consistant four-beat rhythm
(including silent pauses).
If we reproduce Japanese directly into English, adding nothing and removing nothing, however smoothing out the grammar, the segments of five Japanese sounds usually come out to three syllables in English, while the Japanese sevens become four or five English syllables. Many haiku translations in this book have exactly a 3 – 5 – 3 syllable pattern; others have a few more or less syllables. Unaccented syllables have no beats, so for rhythm we count only the accented syllables. The syllables expand or contract to fit into this rhythm of beats.
Beats
I maintain that Japanese poetry, and in particular Basho poetry, is a form of music. Basho said,
The physical form must be graceful then the musical quality makes a superior verse
The 20th century novelist and haiku poet Akutagawa Ryunosuke (author of
Rashomon) said about a Basho verse
“During that long span of three hundred years Basho alone
was capable of creating such solemn verbal music.”
My research assistant Shoko, from her long years of practice on the piano, showed me that this is how
Japanese musician score haiku: two sound units pair off into a single beat, and the odd sound stretches to a full beat, so five sound units becomes three beats, and seven sound units becomes four beats -however there is a one-beat pause following the three-beats, so every measure have four beats. I aim to give each one of my translations the same four-beat as it has in Japanese.
The beats in Japanese line up perfectly with the beats in English:
Kao baka -ri ( ) // sanae no doro ni // yogo-rasa- zu ( )
I I I I // I I I I // I I I I
Only my face ( ) // by rice-seeding mud // is not soiled ( )
3 beats and pause, 4 beats without pause, 3 beats and pause.
In Japanese as in English, the same four beats to a measure, the rhythm of most of the world’s music, with pauses to “regulate the rhythm” so every line an even steady four beats. Japanese score a haiku with all
notes on the same pitch, so the haiku is a sort of chant or mantra. The four beats per measure strike with perfect regularity to calm and steady the mind.
Lake ripples and the wind’s fragrance one rhythm
To sense the rhythm of four-beats to a measure, consider the score for two measures known everywhere in the world:
(I-I) (say) (pause)
(some) (thing) (wrong) (now I)
The first “I” stretches out to two beats, “I-ye,” a half- note, Said” is one beat followed by a one-beat pause
“Some,” “thing,” and “wrong” each take one beat while “now” and “I” combine to form the final beat of this measure Listen to or sing the words to yourself; notice how the first ‘I’ stretches to two beats, while the second “I” is just a half-beat. The first measure is just two syllables, the second is five – but both have four beats. Syllables contract or expand to fill the four beat rhythm.
Although the pauses are silent, they are definitely present. (Laura-Mae’s grade school piano teacher slapped her hand when she ignored them.) Shoko, from her years of experience on the piano, says that
the pauses “regulate the rhythm” (choshi o totonoeru). And so it is: between “I said” and “something wrong,” Paul McCartney gave us a pause to regulate the rhythm. The pause fills out the measure so it comes to an even four beats
Among women one allowed to lead them in chorus
A “solemn verbal music” is what I feel coming from the four-beat rhythm in Basho’s originals, and the four-beat rhythm in each and every line of poetry in this trilogy is my attempt to recreate that graceful
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
