Issa tr. Blyth

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1. 草家は蚤蚊に借て寝たりけり
   sõan wa nomi ka ni karite netari keri
   —Issa

   草家 sõan: hermitage, hut; or kusaya / kusaie, a more rustic term. 草家 is literally ‘grass house’
   は wa topic marker (“as for the grass hut…”)
   蚤 nomi: flea/s
   蚊 ka: mosquito/s
   に ni: particle meaning “to” or “by”
   借て karite: borrowing, having borrowed (te-form of karu, ‘to borrow’). Also has been given as ‘taking over’, ‘commandeering,’
   寝たり netari: have slept (perfective form of neru, ‘to sleep’)
   けり keri classical verb auxiliary marking a completed action (often the equivalent of present perfect in English), also a cutting-word marking awareness or realisation
   寝たり (perfect) + けり (past + realization) gives a retrospective completed past, a pluperfect: “I (had) slept, I now realize.”

   (my) grass hut taken over by fleas and mosquitoes (yet) I slept!
   or:
   borrowing my hut from fleas and mosquitoes I slept!
   or:
   I borrowed my cottage
   From the fleas and mosquitoes
   And slept.
   — Issa tr. Blyth

   Rendered as a single flowing sentence, the cut is at the end, inviting the reader to share Issa’s awareness. The perfective form of the verb and, in addition, ‘keri’ should put the verse in the completed past, leading up to Issa’s moment of awareness, (‘keri’ doubling as cutting-word, often rendered as ‘-ah!’): Issa now realises that he had slept! In another haiku for example, one by Chiyo-ni, this ‘double’ perfective tense construction is rendered in the past by all translators and by at least one in the pluperfect ‘had.’ Yet here, two noted translators have opted to render it in the present:

   borrowing my hut
   from fleas and mosquitoes
   I sleep
   — tr. Lanoue

   My grass hut—
   taken over by fleas and mosquitoes—
   I sleep in it.
   — tr. Ueda

   DeepL in its translation has a slightly different take:

   In the grass hut I slept, borrowing a spot from the fleas and mosquitoes

   The idea that the insects own the place, not Issa who is ‘borrowing’ it from them, is amusing enough. But to me, the notion that Issa wrote haiku even in his sleep is challenging. As I read it, he is not sleeping as he writes the verse, but has just awakened, and has now realised (keri) that against the odds, and the insects, he ‘had slept.’ The verse in a completed past form makes more sense, to me at least, if read along the lines:

   “my hut commandeered by fleas and mosquitoes (yet) I got some sleep!”

   It may be that a rendering in an English past tense is seen as inconvenient for the convention that haiku deal with a present moment. But we do arrive at a present moment. Here we have a single continuous sentence with the cut at the end—a sudden awareness. Which, to me, brings the previous few hours from the recent past into the present moment. The cut is not only Issa’s moment of awareness, but prompts a reader to contemplate. And perhaps respond, with the thought: “Wow, you must have been really tuckered out!”

   Take your choice.

   Next we move on from single flowing sentences to rhyme…

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