The Seashell Game - Round 4

[David Lanoue]

Hello Judges (and by "judges" I mean anyone who happens to be reading these words - if you're here, I hope you vote and give your reasons!). Are you ready for some Seashell Gaming? In Basho's day little Japanese girls liked to amuse themselves at the beach, collecting shells and then matching them one-on-one in beachcomber beauty contests. Basho applied this technique to haiku in his earliest haibun, The Seashell Game (Kai ōi:1672). In that text Basho was the one and only judge, proclaiming his decisions and backing them up with reasons that shed light into the young haiku master's mind. Our game invites the world to play Basho's role, but just as in the 17th century, the important thing is to articulate justification for our choices.

For this round, we return to Japan, but for reasons that I will reveal later on, I won't give the poets' names right away. Let's call them Poet LEFT and Poet RIGHT.

Poet LEFT:

とりやげ婆が右の手也の紅葉哉
toriyagebaba ga migi no te nari no momiji kana

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

Poet RIGHT:

紅葉ぬと来て見よ樫の枝の露
momijinu to kite miyo kashi no eda no tsuyu

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew

The English versions are my translations. Let's give ourselves a week to chat about these haiku (till 2/27/11), at which time I promise a Mystery Guest will weigh in.

[Gabi Greve]

based on Peters comments on
Reply #6 on: Today at 01:35:34 AM »
I deleted my post.


I am still struggeling with the Japanese ...
Gabi


紅葉ぬと来て見よ か 樫の枝の露
momijinu to kite miyo kashi no eda no tsuyu

.

[Lorin]

Interesting...what is the difference between momiji and momijinu? The -nu at the end of the second word must change the word, but from what to what?

- Lorin

[John Carley]

It makes it a negative Lorin. Like Gabi I am struggling with some differences of interpretation. I get the first to be something like

the midwife's right hand
has taken on
all the tints of autumn

and the second to be somewhere in the region of

no autumn tints here
come and see the dew
on the evergreen oak

The only thing I know for sure is that the first poem is 7/7/5. And I've dropped out the word bough/branch in the second poem in order to balance the English (and 'cos I think its a make-weight in the source text). For the rest - I really don't know, although I think the 'green' flag of か樫 (evergreen oak) is important in order to make 'autumn tints' (momiji) work. Or rather 'no autumn tints' (momijinu)

As the Piemontese say: Boh?!

Best wishes, John

[Gabi Greve]

based on Peters comments on
Reply #6 on: Today at 01:35:34 AM »

I, for one, intend to respond based on what David has presented. He has said they are "versions", not literal or close translations. I don't know how else to proceed. I'll check in later.


I deleted my post.

Gabi

[John Carley]

maple leaf ... does not show the red momiji - effect, it could be the green leaf in spring/summer .

But in the poem about the midwife, using a translation including "leaf" would make more sense, since one leaf looks very much like the hand of a person - Gabi

Hi Gabi, my understanding was that momiji as 'maple' (and hence the more direct connotation of leaf) is usually written in kana: もみじ

Given that one of the synergies between these poems is momiji , and that we are engaged in the shell game, a counter argument is that it makes most sense for the translations to voice equivalent terms.

Best wishes, John

[Peter Yovu]

I, for one, intend to respond based on what David has presented. He has said they are "versions", not literal or close translations. I don't know how else to proceed. I'll check in later.

[John Carley]

sorry for treading on the sacrosanct Peter.

bye bye John

[Peter Yovu]

Yes, my tone no doubt sounded disapproving and in some measure was. I'm just kinda into these Seashell Games. But mostly, if we are to engage this time around, we need to start somewhere, and it seems like going with David's versions could work. No?  (Insert somewhat conciliatory emoticon here).

[David Lanoue]

Hi Everyone,

There was a typo in the Japanese. Gabi alerted me to it, and so I went back and deleted the hiragana "ka" before "kashi" (oak tree).

I don't mind at all if we discuss translation issues, as long as we then steer our attention back to what the poets are saying and then try to judge their work comparatively. Momiji is a challenging word. It can mean:

red leaves
crimson leaves
autumn leaves
autumnal tints
Japanese maple

As a translator, I had to make a choice, so when you read these poems, keep in mind that all of this is suggested.

If these poems seem "retro" compared to the ones we have been looking at so far, this is because they were written in the 17th century. In fact, they are two haiku that appear in the original "Seashell Game" of Basho. I wanted you to see them without knowing this, at first, so that you could form your own opinions--looking at them as if they were written yesterday and submitted to a journal. Which one would you accept for publicaiton? One? Both? Neither? And...the key question: WHY?

You can probably guess by now that our "Mystery Guest" will be Basho, who will give his judgment--later. Let's see if your 21st century thinking matches up with his ideas!

[Peter Yovu]

Though it indicates on the ID panel that I am "Global Moderator", this is an error which will be rectified soon. in fact, I aspire more to being Global Dominator, but until this is the case, I hope no one feels a need to modify anything on my behalf.

I respond to poems in a very text-based manner-- exactly what is said, the very words in the order they are used, is all important to me, even with translations. So different translations are essentially different poems for me.

Well, I'll just do the best I can.

[Gabi Greve]

coming from the English, I have the following musings:

maple leaf (kaede no ha) ... that could be a green leaf in spring and summer and is not a kigo.
red maple leaf is a kigo, on the other hand.

So maybe the poet is observing a delivery in the garden or the veranda  of a home in summer?

. . . . .on the other hand

I remember a haiku set about a red pepper, add some wings and you get a dragonfly ... or worse
a dragonfly, take away the wings and you get a red pepper.

There  was a time when poets just wrote clever images.

...

oak branch dew ... I wonder if the Japanese poet just thew in three words without any connection between them.
Dew on the branch of the oak ... now I wonder
Is this one branch with dew (as opposed to all the branches with dew? Why only one?)
. . . . or could it be
dew on the branches of the oak

. . .

red right hand ... I am looking forward to David explaining this !!


Gabi

[Karen Cesar]

Poet LEFT:

とりやげ婆が右の手也の紅葉哉
toriyagebaba ga migi no te nari no momiji kana

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

Poet RIGHT:

紅葉ぬと来て見よ樫の枝の露
momijinu to kite miyo kashi no eda no tsuyu

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew


Poet Left:

*On the surface, shasei level, a maple leaf has five 'divisions' which with a little imagination resemble a hand. The midwife's hand in the course of birthing a baby would become bloody. Then there is the contrast between something dying and something being born. Temporality. I don't know what the significance of 'right hand' would be for someone in 17th century Japan and am resisting googling so as to approach the poem on its own merits and within the translation given. But, considering most people are right handed, it may deal with with strength. How would life be brought forth from something dying? Tone is more somber/reflective.


Poet Right:

* Autumn reddening is the beginning of the dying off for winter. I am picturing the poet as male in early middle age when one is still strong (oak) and yet with all the apparent denial of line one, there is the 'dew' on the branch signaling the approach of winter and decline/death.

Poet Left seems to be embracing the cycles of birth and death and their relationship to one another while Poet Right is denying them while at the same time recognizing their inevitability with a certain sadness as in court poetry and 'sleeves wet with dew'?

I am left to wonder if Poet Left and Poet Right might not be the same poet in different moods? Or perhaps it is just that the two poems are taken from the same time period and culture?

Not yet ready to vote.  8)

[Peter Yovu]

Note: the following was written while Karen was posting her response. I'll read hers when I've hit the "post" button below.


I now think it was useful that John and Gabi worked a little on the translation. I was impatient, at first, because I thought the thread could get sidetracked, and maybe because  I was rather taken up by some thoughts I had on the verb "to become", and didn't want to lose that.

Still, I'll go with what David has presented.

LEFT has a gendai feel to it, maybe because of that verb "becomes", which seems a common usage. As said, I have some thoughts about that which I'll save.

One sense I have of this poem is that any intense experience tends to "color" other experience. The vividness of birth-- the shock of blood on a midwife's hand, will imprint itself for a time so sharply that something like a maple leaf will take on those qualities.

Image: a leaf attached to a tree by its umbilical stem. This is illogical, as a leaf feeds a tree; and a leaf is, microcosmically, fractally, a tree unto itself-- and yet the shock of blood and birth may not incline one to logic.

Image: a red leaf-- about to fall-- about to be delivered to the earth.... And so, the poem seems to say,  birth is also a long floating back to the earth-- could take 70 years, or much shorter in old Japan.

Didn't Thoreau say:  "nature but patented a leaf" or something like?

RIGHT. I agree more or less with what Melissa has said. It contrasts custom (or stale perception) with freshness. It contrasts, I'm tempted (and will succumb) to say-- the density or solid thingness of a leaf with the transparence and light gathering quality of dew. In other words, it seems to say: go beyond your reified concepts-- orient yourself to what's alive. Well, I like that approach, and may be imposing it.

So we seem to have one poem involving blood, and the other involving water.

I'll come back with my vote later.

And just add now, that I find David's version of LEFT skilful in presenting the shock of blood-- the physicality of it emphasized:

it's beCOME a MIDwife's
RED RIGHT HAND...
MAple leaf

This kind of accenting puts the poem in another category from the original, of course. It's a tool we have available to us, and which goes relatively unused I think.

[Lorin]

I now think it was useful that John and Gabi worked a little on the translation. I was impatient, at first, because I thought the thread could get sidetracked, and maybe because  I was rather taken up by some thoughts I had on the verb "to become", and didn't want to lose that.

Still, I'll go with what David has presented.

Well, Peter, what David has actually presented is:

Poet LEFT:

とりやげ婆が右の手也の紅葉哉
toriyagebaba ga migi no te nari no momiji kana

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

Poet RIGHT:

紅葉ぬと来て見よ樫の枝の露
momijinu to kite miyo kashi no eda no tsuyu

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew

---

Each English version of the poems is preceded by the Japanese and romanji poems. If the idea is that people are not to take the Japanese into account at all within discussions (both those with no Japanese and those with some) and not to ask questions then it would be clearer to have only the English versions.

The fact that the Japanese and romanji versions are given is an implicit invitation to those who have Japanese to include the Japanese versions in their consideration of the poems, and an implicit invitation to those, like myself, who do not have Japanese, to ask questions. I'm glad I did ask the question because, over the course of Gabi's, John's and David's responses, I learnt a little...enough to allow me to feel more comfortable in orienting myself to the English versions.

I truly regret that Gabi felt it necessary to delete her comments, since some of the conversation now stands without it's full context. I have a distaste for discussion threads with deleted comments, except when the comments are abusive or just plain off-topic, such as advertisements for oneself.

(two sentences deleted, Sunday, 27th Feb. AEST)

---

Goodness knows what Basho's thinking was when comparing these two, and I look forward to reading about it.

it's become a midwife's
red right hand...
maple leaf

... but I will vote now: this is my preferred poem of the two.

It goes beyond the striking image, the comparison of leaf shape and colour with a midwife's hand. A midwife's main job is to deliver babies, assist in birth; her 'right hand' (given that most are right handed, this is a norm, but I also think of the expression 'right hand man' and the sense of 'right hand' being that of one's strongest support) supports the baby's head, and yes, there is blood involved, especially with the afterbirth, the source of all nutrition for the baby up until birth, which the midwife also assists in 'delivering'. That blood is life-blood. Until our modern ages, the afterbirth was buried in the earth where it composted and again provided nutrition, this time for the soil organisms and the green things, the plant life. Or in the case of animals such as even domestic cats, eaten. (Even now, the best way to ensure a good, healthy and fruitful passionfruit vine is to bury an animal's liver beneath the roots of a new plant)

For new leaf buds to develop, old leaves must fall. A red maple leaf, soon to fall, prepares the way for a new birth, a new leaf. Further, it composts, providing nutrition for soil organisms and eventually the tree and the new leaves. The maple leaf, compared to the midwife's right hand, will assist the new leaf birth by falling, then continue to assist by providing nourishment for a new leaf. It actually goes further than a midwife.

Autumn, traditionally a time of a certain sadness about endings, aging, the immanence of cold Winter is incorporated into a meditation on the necessity of endings in the scheme of things in this poem, and the focus is of the 'endings are beginnings' kind, the continuous cycle of life.

---

no autumn reddening for me -
come look!
oak branch dew

To me, this is the inferior of the two poems.  It could be a poem written in answer to the first poem. It speaks of denial in the first line, and the author declares that there is a greater revelation in the sight of dew on an evergreen oak (btw, I did not know there were such things as evergreen oaks until this 'seashell game', so another thing learnt) 'Dew' is a major kigo for Autumn, and its significance is that of transience. I think especially of Issa's heartbreaking dew poem, written after the death of his child, "and yet...".

This world of dew
is only a world of dew. . .
and yet

- trans. Sam Hamill

Neither of these poems achieve the fullness of humanity in the Issa poem.  Poet RIGHT seems to revel in the transience of dew on an evergreen oak (is it something like, "Ha! I can show you something more brief in its transience than autumn leaves and show a contrast with an evergreen tree to boot. Top that!" ?)

Poet LEFT's finding of an identity between a maple leaf that has become red and a midwife's right hand goes further than a superficial (clever) comparison of colour and shape. It's an 'earth poem', aware of the processes by which one thing (midwife, midwife's hand or leaf) ages and dies and yet becomes something else, or really, has always been and continues to be part of something else, life itself and it's processes.

- Lorin