I’ve learned a great deal from Patricia’s two-part conversation with Janice Doppler about the concept of zoka in haiku. I think it’s her best workshop yet! Be sure to check it out, so you’ll be ready to submit your haiku when the submission period opens.
Looking Ahead to Season 3 I’m already preparing for Season 3 of The Culinary Saijiki. I want to create a full 52 weeks of blog posts and podcasts episodes centered around the theme of “Feasts and Festivals.” My goal is to curate a global celebration of food and haiku in 2024, focusing on everything from bombastic national holidays to sacred religious traditions. To do that, I need your help! Start thinking about blog posts or podcast episodes you’d like to create, and be on the looking for full details soon.
Before I commence with this week’s post, I want to take a moment to thank Kimberly Kuchar for buying me three coffees in support of this work. I’m grateful for the support! I’m working on some late summer and early autumn bonus content. If you want to contribute financially, you can do so using the button below.
I recently stumbled on a 178-page PDF of Bashō’s poetry compiled by Hungarian writer and artist Gábor Terebess. What I find remarkable about his work is that virtually every haiku includes three or more translations of the same poem. I wish I’d happened upon it sooner! You can view the document for yourself here: PDF.
In focusing on classical haiku this season, I’ve naturally given a great deal of thought to translation. One of the things that I’m interested in is translational range: the ways in which one poem can seem similar or different based on who translates it. Terebess’ PDF is an excellent resource because it allows the reader to see a number of translations of the same poem, illustrating the range in form and content.
I’ve admittedly neither taken as in-depth a look at classical haiku or thought this much about translation as I have before this season of the project. (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but it’s true.) And in reviewing Terebess’ PDF, I had a realization that was new to me but perhaps an old idea to people who have been studying haiku longer than I have. It finally occurred to me that not only does translation affect the tone and emotional resonance of the poem, but it can change the ways in which readers perceive the subject matter of the poem.
Here is the romaji version of Bashō’s haiku:
aki chikaki kokoro no yoru ya yo jō han
Matsuo Bashō
Terebess offers seven different translations of this haiku1. In five of the variations, there was nothing that suggested to me that I should include this poem in my database2.
Autumn is near; The heart inclines To the four-and-a-half mat room.
R.H.Blyth
as autumn approaches our hearts are drawn together– a four-and-a-half mat room.
David Landis Barnhill
Autumn nearing Inclination of my mind! A four-and-a-half-mat room.
Robert Aitken
Autumn approaches and the heart begins to dream of four-tatami rooms
Sam Hamill
Smell of autumn – heart longs for the four-mat room.
Lucien Stryk
However, two of the translations meet my definition for inclusion in this project:
sensing autumn’s approach four hearts draw together in a small tea room
Makoto Ueda
as autumn draws near our hearts feel closer to this small tearoom
Jane Reichhold
As I’ve mentioned at various points during this project, I take a broad view when collecting poems for this project. Planting and composting, cooking and cleaning, feast and famine are all part of the spectrum. So a tea room merits inclusion, but a general room does not.
At the time of this writing, my Japanese is not strong enough for me to make an informed decision of my own regarding the original. (I let my Duolingo streak lapse in the midst of moving last year, and at this point starting over just feels overwhelming.) This example shows me just how much I am at the mercy of translators (in pretty much any language) to accurately and poetically convey the subject matter.
One might ask whether or not this issue truly matters if one is simply reading for the sake of reading, rather than collecting material for a large project. But I believe that it does. While the issue of the tea room versus the general tatami room is my primary cause for concern, the translational range for this poem is wide. Blyth, Aitken, Hamill, and Stryk have translations that imply a single person and a sense of longing, whereas Barnhill, Ueda, and Reichold mention multiple people. I perceive the latter three poems having a greater degree of intimacy.
I focus on food because it’s a useful lens for me to explore larger topics. Yet the challenges I find and the themes I come across are ultimately not specific to my area of focus. The challenge of whether or not to classify this as a culinary haiku is just a small component about the broader issues that readers face when reading in translation.
Translation is an art unto itself, and like all arts, it is subject to human foible and human preference. There is no perfect approach, and even if there was, an ostensibly perfect translation wouldn’t necessarily resonate with all readers. I think it’s worth embracing that imperfection. That doesn’t mean being uncritical; rather, it means that our criticisms are grounded in this knowledge of translational fallibility.
I think that the best thing that we can do as readers and practitioners is to read translation as widely as possible. If we can study translation the way we study poetry written in our native language(s), we can learn to appreciate the spectrum of what’s available. Identifying what we enjoy and do not enjoy in a translated work is a useful aesthetic exercise that can not only yield insights about our own poetic values, but also help us recognize potential blind spots. For example, I’ve learned to appreciate R.H. Blyth as a product of his time. I don’t think any of his translations will be my favorite, but I can still find value in his work, as well as gratitude for his anthologies, and the groundwork he laid for future haijin writing in English.
Ultimately, I will add Ueda’s and Reichold’s translations to my database. I admit that the Ueda version is the one I find most aesthetically pleasing. Beyond that, though, I have decided that I want to simply live with the contradiction of culinary and non-culinary versions of this haiku. Existing with contradiction is one of the driving forces of this project.
On the day I write this, every coffee shop (chain or local) is selling pumpkin-flavored beverages. Students have gone back to school, the days are getting shorter, and those who care about such things have put their white clothes away. But summer vegetables are still in abundance, and I worked up a serious sweat on my lunch hour walk. We’re nearly at mid-autumn on the haiku calendar, but are still in summer based on the Gregorian calendar. Working on this project, I am constantly aware of how I am always existing within the contradictions of seasons and cultures. So it makes sense to accept the contradictions of working in a form whose foundational texts I must (for now, at least) read in translation.
I’ve slowly started to build up an interesting collection of mid- to late-twentieth century classical haiku translations. Many of these anthologies are by people that, at least to me, are obscure. Perhaps those more experienced are familiar with them, but these are not translators I regularly see cited in essays, blogs, podcasts, or presentations. Ultimately, upon reading them, I’ve developed a better sense of why R. H. Blyth remains a standard reference point. Though certain stylistic elements of his frustrated me, especially when I was first delving into haiku, ultimately, when I read these less-popular translators, I start to see more of what Blyth did well. I will focus more on Blyth’s translations in a later post. This week, I wanted to talk about a text that took me by surprised: Full Moon is Rising: “Lost Haiku” of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) and Travel Haiku of Matsuo Basho a New Rendering by James David Andrews (Boston: Branden Press, 1976).
I picked up this book a few months ago at Prairie Archives bookstore in Springfield, Illinois. The poetry section at Prairie Archives is where I’ve picked up a number of my obscure(ish) classical haiku translations. I was intrigued when I saw the title of the book, but also didn’t think much of it. At $5.00, it was cheap enough to justify adding it to my collection. I do recall having a vague assumption that Andrews might have uncovered some of Bashō’s haiku that, in 1976, had not before been seen. However, I also figured that, given the book’s age, the hypothetical discovery was no longer novel.
(Note: Because Bashō’s name does not include diacritical marks in Andrews’ book, I have omitted them in direct quotation.)
I finally picked up Full Moon Rising earlier this month as part of The Sealey Challenge. Within the first page, I realized I had overlooked the signifier of the quotation marks in the title: Andrews was referring to the haiku as lost, but using the quotation marks to indicate that was not actually true. (How did I miss this? Given the ways in which people put quotation marks around things for emphasis, or in some cases with a total lack of logic, I no longer assume they mean anything when I see them in anything other than a direct quotation.) Which, by the way, is a huge pet peeve of mine. When I taught technical writing, I implored my students to instead use the correct word rather than use quotation marks as a form of negation.
“These are “lost haiku” by being poems that (in some instances) Basho might well have chosen to write, but did not.”
p. 11
I admit that I was confused. I couldn’t tell if this was some sort of creative writing exercise, an attempt at serious engagement with the haiku tradition, or an act of utter hubris. After all, it’s not as though any of us could ask Bashō’ what he did or did not intend.
Fortunately, Andrews provides context. His inspiration came from reading Nobuyuki Yuasa’s translation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Unfortunately, that explanation didn’t improve my feelings toward Andrews’ work. I began to feel more reticent.
Reading the book in English, I was also impressed by the poetic vividness of many of Basho’s prose narrative sections. And I asked myself what would happen if some of the prose jewels in Basho’s narrative were transformed into haiku — especially in those places where Basho could have given us a haiku but did not.
pp. 11-12
What I find disheartening here is the seeming lack of knowledge of the haibun form, or an understanding that the prose and haiku are supposed to work together to create a unified whole. In addition to Andrews repurposing many of the haibun passages into haiku, the second section of Full Moon is Rising consists largely of Bashō’s Narrow Road haiku completely divorced from their prose counterparts. I am well aware that many of Bashō’s haiku available today were excised from the context of renga. Yet Bashō created the haibun. I do not have a copy of Yusasa’s translation, so I do not know if he has any introductory matter that explains the haibun form. Even so, the idea of Andrews taking the haiku out of context, translating them, and adding his own haiku in place of some of the prose just doesn’t sit right with me.
I also find myself caught in the balancing act of allowing for remix and reinvention, and the hubris of trying to revise someone’s work, especially in a form that they invented. Certainly, without the option of riffing and repurposing, there would be a void in the creative world. Percival Everett’s novel Erasure more or less cribs a whole scene from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. People have written entire essays about the ways in which sampling in hip-hop and pop music creates a sense of engagement between compositions. The world of haiku is an allusive one; certainly, even with the glut of frog/pond/water imitations, you’ve found one that made you smile. I know that I have.
Ultimately, I might be less frustrated by this book if I felt either the translations or the original poems were particularly well-done. However, I take several issues with Andrews’ approach to haiku. The three examples below are all translations of Bashō; Andrews’ original poems are stylistically the same. (The examples are displayed as screenshots because it’s the 21st century but apparently indenting poems is a feature that’s just too hard for blogs.)
The primary issue I have with these poems is that Andrews’ commitment to the 5-7-5 structure compromises the poetic integrity of the haiku. Just as Andrews appears to be ignorant (at best) about haibun structure, he seems rigidly committed to 5-7-5 even though he admits in his own introduction that other people were not adhering to that.
What I have done is, first, to provide a new rendering of each of the haiku that Basho did write in his travel sketches. It happens that in his 1966 translation [. . .] Mr Yuasa did not put Basho’s travel haiku into the classic seventeen-syllable (5-7-5) form. Instead, he used a four-line form of varying quantity. In my new rendering here, the 5-7-5 form is used throughout. So far as I know, this complete group of Basho’s travel haiku has never, until now, appeared in English in the 5-7-5 form.
p. 12
While I do not know Yuasa’s motivation for using a four-line form for the haiku, I will say that the four-line structure for classical translations is not uncommon; I’ve found a number of examples in English-language translations from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. What frustrates me is Andrews’ apparent pride at his devotion to 5-7-5, even though it wasn’t used across the board, even in 1976. He seems proud of his work and seems to think that Yusasa’s is inferior. Yet it’s hard for me to imagine that Yusasa would have less expertise in the matter than Andrews.
The other aspect of Andrews’ work that I struggle with is his rejection of English articles (a, an, the). I’m not sure if it’s due to his devotion to 5-7-5 or a desire to make English seem more like Japanese, which does not contain grammatical articles. My guess is that it’s a combination of both. Regardless of intention, the choice to avoid articles further compromises poetic integrity. At best, the text is choppy; there is no flow. At worst, the poems could be construed as racist.
Not every piece in the collection is bad. The haiku above is, at the very least, competent. Ultimately, though, Full Moon is Rising leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I will keep it in my collection in the sense that I think it’s worth having access to multiple translations, even those that you don’t like. While I generally avoid teaching by negative example, there is a time and place for it, and understanding what you do not like is important for developing your own writing and/or translation style. I might even reference it again in future discussions of translation. But ultimately, I have concerns about Andrews’ approach and philosophy, and I do not recommend this as a source text.
While saijiki generally focus on contemporary haiku, I also felt called to take a look at classical haiku to see how poets of the past incorporated food into their work. Since I have to rely on translation, and no two translations are the same, I plan to revisit this topic from time to time, exploring different translations of the same poem when I can. For this post, all poems come from The Sound of Water (Shambhala Centaur Editions, 2000), which is Sam Hamill’s collection of classical haiku translations.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how I detected three primary ways that food relates to haiku seasons:
Food words that are a definite seasonal referent;
Food words that are not part of any specific season;
Food words that become seasonal with an additional modifying word
In The Sound of Water, most of the haiku I found fit into the first two categories. I also found that most of the poems connected to food were summer poems. Of course, this is just one small book, so I’m not making definitive statements yet. At the very least, it was interesting to see what turned up in the context of this anthology.
Summer
Breakfast enjoyed in the fine company of morning glories
Matsuo Bashō
I begin each day with breakfast greens and tea and morning glories
Takarai Kikaku
Breakfast is an all-year word. You either eat breakfast, or you don’t. While the Muslim observance of Ramadan requires fasting during the day, this holy period isn’t tied to a specific season. Even the image of “breakfast greens” in Kikaku’s poem doesn’t inherently create a specific season; there are bitter herbs in spring, abundant greens in summer, and hardy greens in autumn. Only in winter is it tough to find fresh greens. Even then, the poem might be referring to pickled greens. It’s the word morning glories in each poem that signify summer.
Wet with morning dew and splotched with mud, the melon looks especially cool
Matsuo Bashō
All by itself, that beautiful melon, entirely self-sufficient
Hattori Ransetsu
Melon is generally a summer kigo. While there can be some early spring melons, and some that appear in autumn as well (you could get a decent cantaloupe shockingly late in Texas), they are generally at their best in the summer. These 17th-century haiku have a timeless feel to them. While there are some stylistic elements that indicate they are classical rather than contemporary, they don’t seem stodgy or old. I love that haiku poets have been writing about cool, beautiful melons for centuries. The above poems show me how food really does connect us to ancestors, whether they be family members, or our artistic lineage.
Singing, planting rice, village songs more lovely than famous city poems
Matsuo Bashō
With the noon conch blown those old rice-planting songs are suddenly gone
Yosa Buson
My noontime nap disrupted by voices singing rice-planting songs
Kobayashi Issa
For rice-planting women there’s nothing left unsoiled but their song
Konishi Raizan
Rice was the food I found referenced the most in The Sound of Water, yet in this collection, poems about it are entirely related to agriculture. Many poets wrote specifically about rice-planting, and about the songs that the field workers sang. (I’m sure it’s an effect of the translation, but Bashō’s rice-planting poem has a certain Whitmanesque quality to it . . . or perhaps “Song of Myself” has a certain Bashōesque aspect.) These poems also illustrate the value of not just having a saijiki, but having a few different ones on hand! It’s easy to make assumptions about a time of year based on your own experience, which is necessarily limited. I associate planting of all kinds with spring, which isn’t even accurate in the United States! There are a number of crops and flowers that get planted in the fall to winter over, and bloom in spring. At first, I was putting these classical rice-planting haiku in the spring category. Then, however, I consulted with Yamamoto Kenkichi’s The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words. There, I found that rice-planting related to summer! It would have been so easy for me to assume these were spring haiku, and I’m glad I had reference material on hand to guide me in the right direction.
Without a sound, munching young rice-plant stalks, a caterpillar dines
Hattori Ransetsu
The only haiku I found related to eating rice didn’t involve humans, nor the grains of rice that make up a staple of the human diet. Rather, a caterpillar is dining on the fresh, young stalks. The young stalks, as well as the caterpillar that is not yet a butterfly, ground us in summer.
When the wild turnip burst into full blossom a skylark sang
Kobayashi Issa
While I’ve never seen a wild turnip in real life, Issa’s haiku reminded me of the giant squash blossoms that appear in the summer, and how glorious they are. Whether in a domestic garden, or something you might forage, the vibrancy of summer is something that endures over the centuries in the haiku tradition.
Autumn
Autumn breezes spin small fish hung to dry from beach house eaves
Yosa Buson
While certain species of fish are best harvested at certain times of the year, that level of specificity doesn’t appear in Buson’s haiku. Rather, the direct naming of the season tells us where we are in the year. The general concept of fish is an all-year term, but the seasonal referent can lend clues to what type of fish they might be. Perhaps Buson is referring to sardines, which are in season late summer and through the fall. The image of the drying fish also reminds the reader that this is the time to preserve food for the long winter ahead.
In this mountain village, shining in my soup bowl, the bright moon arrives
Kobayashi Issa
Here in Shinano are famous moons, and buddhas, and our good noodles
Kobayashi Issa
Neither soup nor noodles are inherently seasonal. As with fish, specific types of soup or noodles better correspond to certain parts in the year. A chilled soup is more appropriate in the summer. Soba noodles are part of the New Year’s ritual. Yet the words “soup” and “noodles” in and of themselves need modifiers. I place these two haiku in autumn because of the presence of the moon, an autumn kigo.
Spring
Plum blossoms in bloom in a Kitano teahouse, the master of sumo
Yosa Buson
As I mentioned in my June post “The Seasons of Tea,” people consume tea year-round. In formal tea ceremony, the dishes you serve varies from season to season. The presence of plum blossoms in Buson’s haiku indicate that we’re at a teahouse in springtime.
Only the shoots of new green leaves, white water, and yellow barley
Yosa Buson
The shoots of young plants, whether leaves or grasses, is a common spring kigo. None of the plants are fully formed. The water is frothy with melted snow and spring rain. There is nothing yet to harvest, whether that be mature barley or fruit from the tree. Yet this haiku points to the sheer amount of potential inherent in springtime.
People, more people scurrying through spring breezes along the rice-field dikes
Ichihara Tayo-Jo
Rice fields once again appear in spring. Here, the emphasis is on humans coming and going on their journeys, walking along the fields that grow their food. The verb “scurrying” suggests that these people are busy, inattentive, perhaps not even noticing that the source of a staple crop is all around them. It turns out it’s not only the modern age that takes people out of the present moment!
Winter
Through frozen rice fields moving slowly on horseback, my shadow creeps by
Matsuo Bashō
One of the things I found interesting while rereading The Sound of Water is the extent to which rice fields can appear in all seasons, but no haiku about people eating rice. That’s not to say those types of haiku don’t exist in the classical tradition; they just didn’t make their way into this book. I’m curious to reread more classical anthologies to see what differences I find. The above haiku also points to how a rice field in and of itself isn’t inherently seasonal; it’s other words, such as frozen, that ground us in a specific time of year.
Walking on dishes the rat’s feet make the music of the shivering cold
Yosa Buson
Maybe the dishes are lying dirty in a basin, because it’s so cold, nobody wants to deal with them. Or maybe the dishes are clean and put away, but the rat is rattling around on them, looking for some warmth. While my mind initially went to the first interpretation, the second is just as valid. Either way, I delight in this haiku because it reminds me that something as simple as doing the dishes are worthy of poetic moments.
