Issa's Metaxy

ISSA (1763 -1828)

over my legs
stretched out at ease,
the billowing clouds

nagedashita ashi no saki nari kumo no mine

Translated by R.H. Blyth


In this haiku written in 1813, the base contains an image that places the poet and the reader at the same vantage point. One imagines being slouched in a deck chair, on a lawn or in a field. Studied carefully before reading and connecting the superposed line, the base becomes grounded and forthright. The tone is one of assurance. “Stretched” is reassured by “at ease” and the phrase “over my legs” has an intimate feel to it. The reader doesn’t know what to expect. What could animate this blissful fragment?

The superposed line holds for a moment and then connects back to the first line. Instantly, there is a more emphatic sense of “stretched out at ease” and yet the base is still stable. The clouds then resume their metaxic otherness as they float in the sky despite the illusion that they are close by.

David Lanoue cultivates the most extensive on-line listing of Issa’s haiku (9200 out of over 20,000 written in his journals ) and 31 of them use “billowing clouds” as the superposed line. His translation of this haiku goes like this:

on the tips
of my outstretched toes…
billowing clouds

Here the clouds are pictured as touching the tips of the poet’s toes. The haiku is a univocal experience made possible by the hyperbolic use of “outstretched toes” and “tips” may explore the epiphanies for the translator but they close the gap of the haiku.

--Madeleine Findlay