Montage #20, presented by Allan Burns, is now up here on The Haiku Foundation website. This week’s theme is “Moonstruck” and features the work of Margaret Chula, Taneda Shōichi 種田 正一 (Santōka 山頭火) and Natsume Sōseki 夏目金之助.
Walking under the moon, carrying moonlight
Sōseki has forgotten into the house
All about his wife. the white peony
—夏目金之助 — Margaret Chula
Moon’s brightness I wonder where they’re bombing
— 山頭火
{ 15 comments }
Next Comments →
tsuki ga akarukute kaeru
(the) moon is bright
I go home
……
Well, will I speak only as a translator, not a poet.
Since Haiku is the poetry of the first person, as my haiku teacher uses to repeat …
this verb identifies the first person, Mr. Santoka
With reference to TE in the AKARUKU TE …
it could mean simply
I go home as long as the moon is bright (so I can find my way)
A lot of Santoka “poems” that I know are simple statements of his way of life.
Gabi
(being German, but I try my best in English … grin … so forgive any mistakes )
Ha! Allan, Hoisted am I by my own petard (painful, let me down, please).
I am grateful to you and Gabi for a glimpse at the Japanese, content and order. I do understand that any article (opening “the”) is interpolated. I also find it interesting that the personal “I” is used in translation. It is my understanding (based on no Japanese skill or scholarship, just reading others’) that I, me, my are very rarely written out in Haiku. Such words are in the dictionary but are not often a part of Japanese haiku. Note too: not too frequent in English haiku but used for emphasis when the poet is also an actor, not just observer.
Is saying out loud “I” before “go home” one of those conventions in that language even if not in the wording?
So, before we get to “my” English, the poem — no capitals in Japanese — may or may not have “the” before moon and the use of “I” before the verb “go” is questionable. It might be: bright moon — go home
Is Santoka in a ditch or by a bridge trying to sleep off the sake, and he is disturbed by the moon — he is in effect cursing it? If the first person reference is included, then it might be the poet tottering off, no curse.
Might be, may be — so much to guess at with no signposts as to the original experience . . . sigh.
I reply again that in Hiroaki’s wording, if a cut WAS after: moon bright I / go home — Santoka might be revealing he was fed up with this moon, and wished it to set. He had been brightly lit long enough. That is with the interpolated translation of “I” in the poem.
Yes the Japanese is very abbreviated — what I tried to ask in the first place.
Another one Gabi provided the romaji for was 22 or 24 “on.” Santoka was unconventional: tsuki no akarusa ………..
If it boils down to what Allan and Gabi have shown … call or paint me foolish and judgmental . . . but I find very little “there” there in the 4 or 5 word version. I have not a supple enough mind to find greatness in this example of this poet. Others of his haiku are appealing, quite a few — please don’t ask which and why — I am not a Santoka fan, in the main. It is hard to assess and discuss what I do not know in a language I do not know. If this Japanese wording or this translation could be put to all anonymously? Genius? Obviously many folks know the Japanese original and a few would know the English hence the attribution to the Famous.
Gabi, I never meant the Japanese was Tonto-speak. Just the English.
Which brings me to the point from which Allan was so able to pounce! (Be it known, to all far and wide, that Allan and I are good friends. His points were intellectual, not personal — and he and I both know this. Now you do too.)
This time the varlet wins!
I still think the translation is well, errrr abbreviated. “good” English was not terribly well put on my part. Smooth as opposed to my original “choppy.” Smooth English? Lacking in at least a few of the little polite words and spacing that allow English to be spoken.
Yes my published and prize-winning “August heat” (ha! such an Ego!) has no punctuation and no verb. And I like the poem. Touche, Allan. Would an em dash or ellipsis points make the whole into “good” English? More like Western Poetry? Line breaks are a part of some poetry forms, are they not, beside haiku? Isn’t “is” also understood here as it was for Santoka? Anyway, yes I followed formulae I have learned and trust that readers also know them. As to the verb? What I like about my construction is that this is a very active haiku with no verb(s)! The nose and the bird move at the same pace — a constant distance. An eternal dance of predator and prey, the huge bulk and rapid strength of the alligator is all hidden from view — the little duck is like the one on the pond in “Peter And The Wolf”– and I tried to leave most of that to the reader. I seem to have no room for that kind of entry into Santoka’s. No room to expand within the framework of his few, terse words. No mention other than moon is bright. So, a clear night? Or, is it full? Did it just rise? Is it about to set? So much to describe the moon is available and we get only bright. “go home” must be describing the future as written …poet is about to go home. I will go home now. Or as I mentioned, he is telling off that moon… but not a hint, not a clue. Are we to take such a thin framework, call it poetry, and make up in our minds what is lacking — for all parts of the poem? Only brightness to go on? I cannot hang my hat on that alone. What about in English?
bonfire I go home
train headlight I go home
Jupiter I go home
bonfire go home
train headlight go home
Jupiter go home
perhaps art, just perhaps, but great Art?
You ask, Allan:
“But has the essential poetry been changed?” [by one version or another]
bright moon/ go home OR EVEN bright moon/ I go home
I reply, perhaps just to shock, perhaps not — “what poetry?” Should I soften it to: “what good poetry?” – Paul, solemn lament, head down
Sato gives the original as
Tsuki ga akarukute kaeru
–sames as what Gabi Greve provided (except the opening capital Paul objects to).
Btw, it’s 11 sound symbols (“on”) not 17.
Literal translation, so far as I can tell, would be something like:
“Tsuki” = moon
“ga” = a particle or “situation marker” that doesn’t translate
“akarukute” = bright
“kaeru” = go home (also many other things in different contexts, including “frog”)
So:
moon bright go home
(That’s the dictionary speaking, so to speak; I have no Japanese myself.)
The original is indeed quite terse. It seems Sato has rendered it quite faithfully but with the idiomatic additions of “The” and “I”. The verb “is” is, yes, implied.
You’ll forgive me, but I’m chuckling a bit about the allegation of “poor English” in haiku–haiku, which is made up almost entirely of fragments.
For ex., let’s take this haiku of yours, Paul:
August heat
an alligator’s nose
in the coot’s wake
Now, tell me, my friend, how is that “good English” in any conventional sense? (yes, quite another matter–it’s certainly good haiku)
Let’s start reading:
August heat/ an alligator’s nose
Huh? As a reader of “good English” I’m already lost. Cuts are not part of the concept of “good English” or understood by the overwhelming majority of English readers. Unless I’m already “in the know,” the line break is of no help.
Let’s continue:
August heat/ an alligator’s nose/ in the coot’s wake
And where’s the verb, sir? You are setting this forth as a complete utterance of some sort without a verb? Good English? The teacher’s red pencil whips into action….
My goal here is just to highlight how far from “good English” in a standard, conventional sense virtually all haiku are.
You’re used to the conventions we’ve evolved within the haiku community, Paul. But Santoka and Sato are doing something just a wee bit different by minimalizing further and placing the poem on one line. Hardly radical considering how many original English-language haiku have been and are being written in one line.
Maybe you’re happier with Gabi Greve’s version:
the moon is bright
I go home
?
But has the essential poetry been changed?
The moon bright I go home
tsuki ga akarukute kaeru
(the) moon is bright
I go home
tsuki ga akarukute … in not tontoism in Japanese
kaeru … is not tontoism in Japanese
I found the Japanese romaji here
thehaikufoundation.org/diglib/santoka_grasscairn.pdf
Still looking for the kanji
Gabi
.
I’ll try, Christopher.
As I said in the comment to Allan, I am not sure of the original or the translation. I have met Hiraoki Sato (a fine gentleman) and heard him speak — had breakfast with him in a Greek restaurant, but that is another story.
The moon bright I go home
This is well into Tonto-speak, that the late Paul O. Williams conceived and wrote about in a famous essay. Tarzan -speak is another way it is described.
me Tarzan you Jane
If, for example it was put (by either Santoka or Hiraoki) as: the bright moon
OR the moon is bright it would be smoother English and just as minimal. I am not against minimalism in haiku, just poor English, even if brief by design. The second part — and I’d prefer spaces between the parts to prevent misreadings like: The moon / bright I go home — “I go home” after the “unsmooth” first part, amplifies that quality. I head toward home, I’m going home, etc., might be easier to the Western ear and eye. But, I do not know the original. Santoka is often translated in three lines, is he not? or sometimes two — Burton Watson, John Stevens for examples. Hey, while I’m already hip-deep in alligators, I don’t like the capitalized first word, either. But, again, Santoka may have intended this poem to sound and appear just this way. I do not know. Is there a pidgin, word-for-word of the original? – Paul
For what it’s worth, Allan’s elucidations corresponded with my understanding of these poems when I read them. I found the comment about the poem being “choppy” particularly interesting.
Paul: do you think you could say more about what you mean by this, and in what sense you feel that way?
Natsume Sōseki なつめ‐そうせき【夏目漱石】
Natsume Kinnosuke 夏目金之助
(his real name 本名)
（1867―1916）
月のあかるさはどこを爆撃してゐることか
tsuki no akarusa wa doko o bakugeki shiteiru koto ka
Santoka
Santoka in Japanese
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000146/files/749_34457.html
.
Paul,
Many thanks for your comments. Always glad when Montage selections occasion some discussion here on the blog. Choppiness to some degree may be in the beholder’s eye. In the first Santoka selection (and I’ll address only the translations here, not the originals)
The moon bright I go home
I find a clear cut (and pause) after “bright” and a sense of the poet called home (in his own mind) and guided on his way by the fulgent moonlight.
Through the moonlight’s center I come back
is surely a poem that requires imaginative participation from the reader. Something intense seems to be going on here. I take it the poet has perhaps stepped through a ray of moonlight, looked up, lost himself within (dazzlement? wonder? an epiphany? a sense of oneness?), and then returned to himself from this momentary eclipse of ordinary consciousness. There’s a powerful sense I find here of the relationship between the moon and states of mind–something long believed in and that gave our language the words “lunacy” and “lunatic”. But there may well be other ways of seeing this one.
Moon invisible moonlit water brimming
seems to me more exterior in nature. I read it this way: The moon is hidden from the poet’s line of sight by some unspecified obstruction–but he can see its light on the brimming water. The “haiku moment” involves indirect communion with this celestial presence, the unseen object manifest only in the pale fire of reflected light.
These interpretations could be off because they’re impromptu readings of translations without consulting the word-by-word meaning of the originals or any available commentaries–but that’s what I’m finding in Sato’s translations at this moment. Anyone else like to take a crack at ‘em (or any of the 18 other haiku from this gallery)?
Very enjoyable selections to read, Allan. How _many_ ways to look at the moon! Always good to see some of Margaret’s classics, too. Since Hiroaki is an experienced translator, I can only assume the first by Santoka is that choppy in the original. I think I understand it, nonetheless. Can you give me a little analysis on how the third and fifth of the Santoka examples work, hold together (Through & Moon invisible)? I am in the dark of those moons. – Paul
Next Comments →