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The Fan

higurashi ya     kyu ni akaruki     umi no kata

is a haiku by Issa which RHBlyth translates

   The lake
Is bright over there suddenly:
   A higurashi sings.

The higurashi is a kind of cicada and in the original poem, as you can see, it opens the poem. This English version of mine shows the correct order of the images:

A cicada!
Suddenly it grows light
over the lake.

When the poet hears the song of the cicada, the light over the lake changes, growing brighter. The sound seems to affect the light.

In Blyth’s version the air suddenly grows lighter over the Lake, after which comes a possible explanation: a higurashi is singing. This retrospective explanation is so unclear that readers have to recall the lake before they can alter the first image - the image which portrayed the increasing light objectively rather than subjectively.

In the Japanese poem we hear a sound and brightness suddenly spreads over the Lake; it is like a fan opening up before our eyes. But in Blyth’s version the landscape is actually diminished by the arrival of the cicada.

*

kono michi ya     yuku hito nashi ni     aki no kure

This is a famous haiku by Bashō and Blyth makes of it

   An autumn eve;
Along this road
   Goes no-one.

The mood of desolation and loneliness is apparent already in the first line. The second and third lines reinforce this mood. Where is the surprise, where is the extension of the theme?

The Japanese original, on the other hand, starts with the image of the road. The road may lead anywhere, to fortune or disaster or to neither, in mood it is more or less neutral. It provides a strong ‘earth line’ which stimulates curiosity and the imagination: where does this road go? Who or what is on it?

The second line provides an answer: there’s no one on it. The road becomes empty and desolate.

In the third line the mood darkens into an autumn evening. At the same time the road disappears into the trees, swallowed up in the landscape and becoming part of the cosmic cycle of the seasons. Similarly, the mood of human desolation dissolves too; the figure who must be on the road to see that it is empty (poet, reader) also becomes part of the eternal cycle. A picture of universal meaning emerges:

Along this road
goes no one.
Autumn eve.

This poem could also be interpreted more pessimistically: we are all of us alone on the path through life which leads inevitably to death (autumn eve). But even in this interpretation the view is cosmic, which is not in Blyth’s version, where the opening image of the autumn evening is never transformed or enhanced with greater symbolic value. In his version the autumn evening remains just an autumn evening.

A few pages later on in his A History of Haiku, Blyth makes another attempt at translating Bashō’s poem:

   No-one
Walks this road;
   Autumn evening.

But not even this translation is particularly happy. The opening fails to provide an ‘earth line’; the inner eye or mind can rind no fixed point in No-one. In the second line, no-one acquires a meaning as it is linked to walks, but this means that walks assumes too great an importance at the expense of this road. No one walks this road; perhaps they always go along it on horseback or in a carriage?

Rather surprisingly, Blyth gives us a third translation in the same volume:

   Along this autumn road
Goes no-one,
   This autumn eve.

This version comes closer to the original, but by calling the road an autumn road the later effect of autumn eve is diminished.

*

Let us close this series of discussions by looking at Bashō’s other famous ‘autumn evening’ haiku, with Blyth’s translation:

kare-eda ni    karasu no tomari keri    aki no kure

   Autumn evening;
A crow perched
   On a withered branch.

The first line sets a mood, but the scene lacks precision. In the second and third lines this mood is clarified and the eeriness and transitoriness of an autumn evening are brought into play. We feel the chill, damp, dark. However, true haiku never closes on such a dark and hopeless note. Even in its most melancholy mood we are always left with a glimmer of light, the possibility of a new opening. And so it is in the original version of Bashō’s poem:

On a withered branch
a crow has landed.
Autumn evening.

Line 1 fills us unmistakably with the mood of autumn, using concrete detail. In line 2, while the emphasis shills from the withered state of the branch to the living crow, the mood is reinforced by a symbol of transience and death. Landing (tomari) implies a dynamic interplay between the silhouettes of branch and crow which is not caught so well in Blyth’s perched.

The final image, autumn evening, is at once concentrated and tensing, but at the same time expansive. We are invited to look beyond the crow on its withered branch and to see whatever else is in our imagination - an autumn landscape, darkening, perhaps cloudy, sky? Though the forbidding crow and branch remain as points on the earth line, our senses draw away into a landscape where there is still a possibility of light.