Sanzôshi 7 - Twilight of Autumn

Some more favorite verses from Akazôshi. It's way too early in the year for aki no kure, but I suppose it's always twilight on the earth, somewhere.

people’s voices —

coming home on this road

twilight of autumn

hito koe ya kono michi kaeru aki no kure

人声やこの道かへる秋の暮

on this road

no one else travels

twilight of autumn

kono michi ya yuku hito nashi ni aki no kure

この道や行く人なしに秋の暮

About this verse: Someone asked, “Which is better?” Later, he decided on “no one else travels,” and published it under the topic “Inner Thoughts 所思.”

Sanzôshi 6 - Six Hokku

A set of hokku from Akazôshi. Dohô lists them together as verses that Bashô revised. They're not autumn verses, but I post them in honor of the equinox and first day of autumn, as Bashô was a rather autumn/winter kind of person. 

banana tree in a storm —
a night of listening
to rain in a bucket

bashô nowaki tarai ni ame o kiku yo kana
芭蕉野分盥に雨を聞く夜かな

see you later

I’ll be snow-viewing

until I’m rolling in it

izasaraba yukimi ni korobu tokoro made

いざさらば雪見に転ぶ所まで

wintry winds —

I am just like

Chikusai 

kogarashi no mi wa Chikusai ni nitaru kana 

木がらしの身は竹斎に似たる哉

coming upon them, on a mountain road

how lovely!

wild violets

yamaji kite nani yara yukashi sumire gusa 

山路来て何やらゆかしすみれ草

a family, all of them

with canes and white hair

visting the cemetery

ie wa mina tsue ni shiraga no haka mairi

家はみな杖に白髪の墓参り　

Buddha’s birthday —

wrinkled hands pressed together

sound of rosary beads

Kanbutsu ya shiwade awasuru juzu no oto

灌仏や皺手合する数珠の音

Originally the “storm” verse had two excess morae, “nowaki shite (as it storms).” Originally the “snow-viewing” verse started with “iza yukan (so, let’s go).” “Wintry winds” originally had excess morae, “kyôku kogarashi (mad verse wintry winds).” “Wild violets” originally had “nan to naku nani yara yukashi (why, how lovely!).” “A family, all of them” originally had “ikka mina (the whole family).” “Buddha’s birthday” also originally sounded like “nehan e ya (nirvana painting);” did he revise it later? Surely there are others of this kind. All of them show our Teacher’s changes of heart, and should be appreciated. 

Sanzôshi 5 - Lingering Dreams

This Akazôshi passage discusses one of my favorite Bashô verses, so here it is:

Though a dim light shown from the late-month moon at the dawn of the twentieth day, the base of the mountains was deep in darkness; even the pony’s hooves clomped clumsily and several times I thought I’d fall off. In that way we passed countless miles, with no birdsong audible yet. I thought of Du Mu’s lingering dream in “Early Travel,” and woke up at Sayo-no-nakayama:

dreams linger while sleeping on horseback
the moon, in the distance
a tea-fire’s smoke 

uma ni nete zanmu tsuki tôshi cha no keburi  

馬に寝て残夢月と遠し茶の煙

About this verse: The headnote uses the words of an ancient poet to illuminate a scene. Originally, it read: “on horseback, lingering dreams as I’d like to sleep  / the moon in the distance / a tea-fire’s smoke 馬上眠からんとして残夢残月茶の煙 bajô nemukaran toshite zanmu tsuki” and at one point the first five morae were edited to read, “sleeping on horseback 馬に寝て uma ni nete;” after that, the rhythm did not seem right, so it was amended to “the moon in the distance / a tea-fire’s smoke 月遠し茶の煙 tsuki tôshi cha no keburi.”

Saigyô verse memorial at Saya-no-yamanaka Park | www.city.kakegawa.shizuoka.jp

Sanzôshi 4 - The Red Notebook 2 赤冊子

More Akazôshi. This part includes some of Bashô's famous statements on the balance of high and low culture in haikai, and the importance of objective observation.

Sanzôshi, Waseda Library

One of his teachings was, “Awaken to the things of elite culture, but return to the things of the everyday life.” He said, “Always strive to awaken to aesthetic authenticity; at the same time, you must return to the haikai of the present moment.”

Because poets who always concentrate on poetic elegance unify the object about which they write with the emotion that they feel and fix it in the form of a verse, the theme they take up emerges naturally and without preconceptions. If you do not refrain from adorning your emotional response to the object, you end up with superficially decorative language. That is what is known as the spiritual vulgarity of failing to constantly strive for aesthetic authenticity. 

In striving after aesthetic authenticity, you must learn from the minds of the people of the past who mastered poetry (fûga); and, closer to our own time, comprehend the mind of our Teacher. If you do not know his mind, there is no means by which you may achieve the Path of authenticity. In order to know his mind, you must track back through the evidence of his writings, and study them well. That is to say, correcting the failings in your own mind, directing yourself towards understanding our Teacher, and working towards achieving insight is what we may call striving for authenticity.

It is poetic egocentrism to not seek the essence of what our Teacher longed for; and to instead find pleasure in his Way according to one’s own biased way of thinking, and feign being one of his disciples.  Disciples must sufficiently reflect on and correct their own shortcomings.

Our Teacher’s statement “learn about the pine from observing the pine, learn about the bamboo from observing the bamboo” also was an admonition to separate yourself from egocentrism. This admonition to “learn” refers to the fact that people usually depend on preconceived notions and in the end do not learn by observation. “Learn” means writing your verse after you immerse yourself in exploration of an object so that its particular characteristics appear and stimulate your emotion. No matter what object you write about, if the emotion is not one that emerges from that object spontaneously, object and the self remain separate, and that emotion does not achieve aesthetic authenticity. It remains a creative impulse rooted in egocentrism.

Sanzôshi 3 - The Red Notebook 1 赤冊子

Here's a bit of Dohô's Akazôshi for a cloudy September Sunday. I'm working on this to get ready for a conference at the University of Connecticut in October:

Our Teacher’s haikai (fûga 風雅) possesses both the changelessness of countless aeons and the change of a single moment; looking carefully into each reveals that they both share a single foundation. This single foundation is called the aesthetic of authenticity (fûga no makoto 風雅の誠). If you are ignorant of changelessness, you cannot truly understand haikai. Changelessness means the quality of verse that is established by sincerely seeking aesthetic authenticity that is apart from being either new or old, and is of course not influenced by changeableness or fashions.

If you read the verse of waka poets over the generations, you see that each era had its own changes. There are many waka poems that are evocative regardless of whether they are new or old, or whether their readers are those of the present day or those of the past. It is important to understand this aspect of changelessness. 

Akazôshi at Waseda University Library

Moreover, transformation is a fundamental principle of Nature. Without change, style stagnates. Style does not change when poets only match their habits of writing to what happens to be fashionable at the time, without singlemindedly striving to achieve aesthetic authenticity. Poets will not understand the aesthetic authenticity of change without singlemindedly striving for and focusing their minds on it. All they can do is imitate others.  Poets who strive for aesthetic authenticity find it difficult to be content just with covering the same ground that was previously walked by others; as a rule, haikai style naturally keeps moving forward.

Regardless of how many changes there are in the future, the aesthetic authenticity of all change belongs to our Teacher’s haikai.  He said, “Do not for a minute swallow the dribblings of the ancients. All things renew themselves like the four seasons progressing forward; haikai is like everything else in this regard.” 

When our Teacher was on his deathbed, a disciple asked him about the future of haikai (fûga). Our Teacher said, “There have been numerous stylistic changes since I embarked on this Path. However, we can speak of them overall in terms of three: standard 真, semi-cursive 行, and cursive 草. Of those three, I have not yet achieved mastery of one or two.” Among the light-hearted remarks that he made during his life, something he said many times was, “The rice sack of haikai has only barely been opened.”