Yet even as it is the poem crackles with layers.Īnd hasn’t our penchant for separating, for categorizing also done the poet a disservice? In Buson’s day a simple haiku didn’t often have to go through the embarrassment of standing alone on a naked white page, exposed to all the world. The second line would then read: “Stopping at Katada” which in English, as opposed to Japanese, removes the additional meaning of the autumnal parched field that Buson wanted to present, though gives us back the feeling of the poet stopping somewhere for the night. Even at that we haven’t really rounded out the poem satisfactorily, for if we were able to completely marry sound, sense, symbol, and meaning, we would know that Katada, which has been translated here literally as “parched field”, is also the name of an actual place in Shiga Prefecture, on the shores of Lake Biwa. Here, with the lightning briefly illuminating the whole scene, we can see to the horizon. Sometimes it seems with Buson as if a mirror has been placed on one side of an object or a person a window on the other. What should slowly be coming apparent, like the camellia unfolding, is the depth of Buson’s verse the way in which multiple meanings are built into the structure somewhat like those “find the hidden object” games where the picture within the picture only surfaces after you have stared at it long enough. ![]() Which leads us to ponder - which is it that stumbles? the wind, or the horse? One can imagine a cold wind blowing ferociously, stopping for a second or two, falling to its knees and catching its breath, then getting up and continuing onward. Yet, in other instances, it isn’t possible to preserve the 5-7-5 syllable structure while maintaining the integrity of the song:Įven still, we’re coming closer to the essence of haiku: the framing stanzas tugging at the center, each claiming it as their own. Here, twin meanings have survived the throes and pangs of birth in the new language, even somehow managing to come dressed in the requisite seventeen syllables. How to cram all of that meaning into seventeen English syllables, when English, with its wave-like rhythms and frequent end stops, its rises and falls, seemingly wants so much more space to move in than the elegantly simple and ascetic, open ended a, ka, sa, ta, na of Japanese? Yet disregard this syllabic constraint, and the rolling prairie seems much too vast a place for a quiet Zen monk.īut good translation certainly isn’t impossible. Deceptively simple in appearance - after all, each one is only seventeen syllables - haiku begin causing tricks as soon we begin trying to give order to our pathetic little scraps of words. Perhaps the difficulties of rendering into English, or some other non-ideographic language, that which may not only carry multiple meanings, but which has been highly condensed, have played their part in warning off other potential visitors. Blyth is pretty good (if one learns to leapfrog the annoying intrusions of English Lit) though with him the oasis isn’t often enough glimpsed. Nor does any exhaustive translation of his work exist. Though attempts have been made by various translators to bring Buson to life, presenting him as a pleasing nature poet, or as a lover of oddities and enchantments, none have really plumbed the depth of him or of haiku. At the end of the first year he emerges from the pupal stage by symbolically changing his name from Saicho to Buson, a name whose compounds mean “cease to be” and “ village.” And under that name he has given us more than 2500 haiku. Thereafter began a period of ten years of wandering - and it is here that for us the real life of the artist begins. ![]() This apprenticeship, which included some practice of haiga, or painting, (an art form for which Buson is now equally, if not better, known), lasted until the death of Soa in 1742. We do know that he was born at Kema, a village which has been swallowed up by the present-day city of Osaka, but beyond that we have only rumor, anecdote, and supposition - until suddenly, at the age of twenty-one, he pops up in Edo (Tokyo), apprenticed to the haikai master Hayano Soa (also variously known as Hajin and the Master of Yahantei). ![]() We know very little of the early life or parents of Buson, and perhaps that’s just as well. Yosa no Buson (1716-1783) was one in a triumvirate of haikai immortals of the Edo era in Japan: before him came the master, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), and after him the “humanist” Kobayashi Issa (1763-1826). Who’s right? Who’s to say? Neither of us? Both of us? Yes. You say “someone dear” is an allusion - a loved one who has died? I say it’s the worthy old woman herself, pushing on gamely through the rising heat. You say earth is being heaped into a straw basket? I say its being hauled upon an old woman’s back.
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