From a book of haiku I see this from Buson:
Cleaning a saucepan,-
ripples on the water:
A solitary seagull.
Buson
Can someone explain this or perhaps a bad translation?
Hi Charly,
Can you tell us which book of haiku you saw this?
Quote from: occhuck13 on April 14, 2023, 06:13:15 PM
From a book of haiku I see this from Buson:
Cleaning a saucepan,-
ripples on the water:
A solitary seagull.
Buson
Can someone explain this or perhaps a bad translation?
I cannot personally locate the 'verse' version you have quoted.
As Buson did not write in English, it's best if the original Japanese, and then a Romanised version, was here, and then the translation attempt after, with the person's name.
There is a bizarre comma and hyphen (an attempt at a dash?) together in the first line, followed by a colon on the second line and an end stop last line. I think it's the Chicago Style Manual that suggests an uppercase letter begin after a colon?
Cleaning a saucepan,-
ripples on the water:
A solitary seagull.
translator unknown?
There's also:
鍋を下ろして淀橋を歩いて雪人へ–与謝 蕪村
nabe sagete yodo no kobashi wo yuki no hito(Yosa Buson)
(Yosa Buson or Yosa no Buson (与謝 蕪村, 1716 – January 17, 1784)
Carrying a saucepan over a bridge in Yodo, someone in the snow. Haiku Master Buson, translated by Yuki Sawa & Edith Marcombe Shiffert.
Published 2007 by White Pine Press in Buffalo, N.Y .
Page 160
https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/haiku-master-buson-translations-from-the-writings-of-yosa-buson-poet-and-artist-with-related-materials.pdf
Also enjoy: https://www.writersinkyoto.com/2016/02/buson-on-kyoto-2/
I saw the first version in a small gift book by Hallmark.
Probably a bad translation.
This one I found on line.
I think he sees a connection between
the ripples and the wild ducks.
Washing the hoe--
ripples on the water;
far off, wild ducks.
Buson
I couldn't find the original.
Hi Charly,
I think you are catching some inferior resources on the internet. Hallmark make fun movies but terrible haiku books, and the weird punctuation is a clue as well:
Washing the hoe--
ripples on the water;
far off, wild ducks.
Two hyphens first line, semi-colon, then comma, then end stop, in such a short clause is odd.
This is the one in Romanised Japanese:
kamotooku kuwa sosogu mizuno unerikana
根元に植えられた桑は、注ぐ水のうねり
Buson 1770
I am shocked to see that the translation/version you gave might be from Robert Hass!
Even having a bash at it, I feel this attempts a poem as well as a translation version:
washing a hoe:
ducks in the distance
and ripples close up
Just a thought.
Alan
Quote from: occhuck13 on April 15, 2023, 02:02:06 PM
I saw the first version in a small gift book by Hallmark.
Probably a bad translation.
This one I found on line.
I think he sees a connection between
the ripples and the wild ducks.
Washing the hoe--
ripples on the water;
far off, wild ducks.
Buson
I couldn't find the original.
鴫遠く鍬すゝぐ水のうねりかな
shigi tôku kuwa susugu mizu no uneri kana
sandpiper distant hoe washing water's waves (kana)
The key word is "sandpiper", many of which have hoe-like beaks.
Hoe washing is then a metaphor for the feeding behaiour of sandpipers,
and the whole haiku is the fanciful notion that sandpipers make waves!
distant snipe washing their hoes makes these waves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV9VI8GGUCo
https://wkdkigodatabase03.blogspot.com/2007/11/snipe-shigi.html