The Complete Haiku of Basho (translated by Andrew Fitzsimons)
University of California Press 2024 £23
ISBN-13: 978-0520400733
The poet Mosaka Shiku (1867-1902) was a critic of Basho (1644-1694). He invented the term haiku to replace hokku (Basho’s term). Shiku reproached Basho’s hokku for “their lack of poetic purity and for having explanatory prosaic elements”. This is nitpicking for Basho is always textual illuminating when explaining the circumstances of his lucid (my word for pure) poetry written in the moment: then Shiku criticises Basho’s exemplary travel diaries of prose and poetry – most notably The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Yet what was more absurd was Shiku’s accusation of Basho for a “withdrawal from moral human concerns.”
As Andrew Fitzsimons says in the excellent introduction to his The Complete Haiku of Basho, Basho was the great poet “of lonesomeness as well as the desire to be alone. The dynamic interiority out of which many of these poems emerged has much to say to us…” And this is no introspective withdrawal from the world. For Basho is very humanly concerned with a shared sensual apprehension of the environment. “The great poet of the weather. Of the refreshing and the lashing rain” when he’s travelling. And en-route his encounters with people are always greatly emphatic and humanistic. This is fine and correct but Fitzsimons wants to play down Basho as philosopher and Zen mystic in search of Buddhist enlightenment, saying that previous translators have heightened these roles rather than Basho’s “dynamic interiority.”
Why can’t you have both Basho the contemplative philosopher and Basho the eloquent recorder and barometer of small things and happenings? Fitzsimons’s translations tend to emphasise Basho as a master of the here and now. I think you can have both identities – the seer and the one who experiences so acutely.
Another difference with Fitzsimons versions of Basho is to use no punctuation. Having grown up with the Penguin translation, done by Nobuyuki Yuasa, I initially found a lack of punctuation to be unsettling. However I quickly got used to it and Fitzsimons free flowing approach for Basho’s poetic minutiae.
I’d like to point out the constant beauties of these translations yet with a caveat – they would have worked even better visually if the poem’s annotation had been placed on the facing page of each haiku. The poetry has been placed in chronological order. But I will just plunge in and select some gems.
I’d liken a flower
to a single child but none
in the summer field
That’s so sad and beautiful a comparison between child and flower. The sense of conveyed absence is haunting.
So appropriate
beanflour – dusted rice balls for
the Blossom Hunting
Blossom Hunting is, according to the notes, another name for blossom viewing: a lovely blend of food stuff with a national respect for blossom as a Japanese icon.
Here’s where art begins
in a rice field in the wilds
the rice planting chants
I love the way “art” naturally runs into the world of the rice fields and we hear chants of the people planting rice. Such an easy flow, no punctuation is necessary.
Sometimes the effect of no punctuation creates a sense of the haiku dangling on an edge, captured at the moment of change.
From on high falling
the cuckoo’s calling at the
inn at Takaku
Such a dangling of the word “the” on line two effortlessly becomes a bridge between the falling and the calling of the cuckoo. That kind of exactness in the face of change is so well caught in haiku 461. Its details have such warmth and depth.
Autumn departing
Scrunching my body under
the bedding too small
Scrunching is so right here. Full stops or commas would have disrupted Basho’s efforts to pull the duvet over himself!
Amidst much that works so well there are artistic mistakes from the translator. I frequently had a problem with the words lonesome and lonesomeness to describe Basho’s interiority.
Turn your face this way
I am a lonesome one too
The autumn evening
My issue with these words is their very American connotation. Too often I was thinking of American cowboys and country music lyrics. It was hard for me to take the haiku seriously.
I’ve mentioned my disappointment at having the annotation on the same page of each haiku. This crowding is compounded by occasionally having Bash’s own comments as well. Yet I suspect that any rearranging would have meant more pages and more expense for the publisher. But if this wasn’t possible could we not have had some illustrations to break up the layout?
I was fortunate to review a copy of the handsome looking hardcover of The Complete Haiku of Basho. As you can see from the picture in this review it’s lovely. And if you can afford it I do recommend it over the paperback edition. If you already own other translations of Basho’s haiku then they are not all displaced by this edition (You can agree or disagree about what translated haikus work or don’t work for you. All translators have their insights.) What this book does contain is all of Basho’s haiku with splendid annotations and glossary. What we need now is for Andrew Fitzsimons to produce translations of Basho’s travel sketch books. All Bashophiles will have to acquire this book.
Alan Price©2024.
The Complete Haiku of Basho (translated by Andrew Fitzsimons)
University of California Press 2024 £23
ISBN-13: 978-0520400733
The poet Mosaka Shiku (1867-1902) was a critic of Basho (1644-1694). He invented the term haiku to replace hokku (Basho’s term). Shiku reproached Basho’s hokku for “their lack of poetic purity and for having explanatory prosaic elements”. This is nitpicking for Basho is always textual illuminating when explaining the circumstances of his lucid (my word for pure) poetry written in the moment: then Shiku criticises Basho’s exemplary travel diaries of prose and poetry – most notably The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Yet what was more absurd was Shiku’s accusation of Basho for a “withdrawal from moral human concerns.”
As Andrew Fitzsimons says in the excellent introduction to his The Complete Haiku of Basho, Basho was the great poet “of lonesomeness as well as the desire to be alone. The dynamic interiority out of which many of these poems emerged has much to say to us…” And this is no introspective withdrawal from the world. For Basho is very humanly concerned with a shared sensual apprehension of the environment. “The great poet of the weather. Of the refreshing and the lashing rain” when he’s travelling. And en-route his encounters with people are always greatly emphatic and humanistic. This is fine and correct but Fitzsimons wants to play down Basho as philosopher and Zen mystic in search of Buddhist enlightenment, saying that previous translators have heightened these roles rather than Basho’s “dynamic interiority.”
Why can’t you have both Basho the contemplative philosopher and Basho the eloquent recorder and barometer of small things and happenings? Fitzsimons’s translations tend to emphasise Basho as a master of the here and now. I think you can have both identities – the seer and the one who experiences so acutely.
Another difference with Fitzsimons versions of Basho is to use no punctuation. Having grown up with the Penguin translation, done by Nobuyuki Yuasa, I initially found a lack of punctuation to be unsettling. However I quickly got used to it and Fitzsimons free flowing approach for Basho’s poetic minutiae.
I’d like to point out the constant beauties of these translations yet with a caveat – they would have worked even better visually if the poem’s annotation had been placed on the facing page of each haiku. The poetry has been placed in chronological order. But I will just plunge in and select some gems.
I’d liken a flower
to a single child but none
in the summer field
That’s so sad and beautiful a comparison between child and flower. The sense of conveyed absence is haunting.
So appropriate
beanflour – dusted rice balls for
the Blossom Hunting
Blossom Hunting is, according to the notes, another name for blossom viewing: a lovely blend of food stuff with a national respect for blossom as a Japanese icon.
Here’s where art begins
in a rice field in the wilds
the rice planting chants
I love the way “art” naturally runs into the world of the rice fields and we hear chants of the people planting rice. Such an easy flow, no punctuation is necessary.
Sometimes the effect of no punctuation creates a sense of the haiku dangling on an edge, captured at the moment of change.
From on high falling
the cuckoo’s calling at the
inn at Takaku
Such a dangling of the word “the” on line two effortlessly becomes a bridge between the falling and the calling of the cuckoo. That kind of exactness in the face of change is so well caught in haiku 461. Its details have such warmth and depth.
Autumn departing
Scrunching my body under
the bedding too small
Scrunching is so right here. Full stops or commas would have disrupted Basho’s efforts to pull the duvet over himself!
Amidst much that works so well there are artistic mistakes from the translator. I frequently had a problem with the words lonesome and lonesomeness to describe Basho’s interiority.
Turn your face this way
I am a lonesome one too
The autumn evening
My issue with these words is their very American connotation. Too often I was thinking of American cowboys and country music lyrics. It was hard for me to take the haiku seriously.
I’ve mentioned my disappointment at having the annotation on the same page of each haiku. This crowding is compounded by occasionally having Bash’s own comments as well. Yet I suspect that any rearranging would have meant more pages and more expense for the publisher. But if this wasn’t possible could we not have had some illustrations to break up the layout?
I was fortunate to review a copy of the handsome looking hardcover of The Complete Haiku of Basho. As you can see from the picture in this review it’s lovely. And if you can afford it I do recommend it over the paperback edition. If you already own other translations of Basho’s haiku then they are not all displaced by this edition (You can agree or disagree about what translated haikus work or don’t work for you. All translators have their insights.) What this book does contain is all of Basho’s haiku with splendid annotations and glossary. What we need now is for Andrew Fitzsimons to produce translations of Basho’s travel sketch books. All Bashophiles will have to acquire this book.
Alan Price©2024.
By Alan Price • authors, books, literature, poetry reviews, year 2024 • Tags: Alan Price, books, poetry