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
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
A Metaxic Analysis of a Haiku by Seishi by Jamie Edgecombe
We asked Jamie Edgecombe to write an analysis of a haiku using the ontological concept of metaxy currently under discussion by various philosophers and increasingly applied to literary works (see Gravity and Grace: Seamus Heaney and the Force of Light, by John F. Desmond). We believe this tradition of metaxy, which comes down from Plato, provides crucial insights into poetry, including haiku. -- Ed.
The Poem
kaidō ni shōji ni shimete kami hitoe
highway [preposition denoting on, to or along] / paper doors shut / paper single sheet
Kigo: shōji (winter)
Translation by Mark and Kodaira from The Essence of Modern Haiku, Manajin, Tokyo, p.218:
along the high road,
sliding doors closed to the world,
but one page away
Translation by author
on the old highway
shōji are shut –
a single sheet of paper
Critical Analysis
First, to identify the components of the haiku: the prepositional phrase initiates the base, which is completed by the image of shut shoji, while the image of the sheet of paper, of which the shōji is constructed, forms the superposed image.
The house , whose walls are formed by the shoji, is a habitation along, or situated on a road. Mark’s and Kodaira’s translation makes reference to the ‘world’ surrounding the house. My own translation stresses the house-over-against the world: perception arises within and against this world. This stress on situation – of the house’s being in the midst of the world – receives an unexpected analogue in the emphasis on the thinness of the door.
In the base, the gap between exterior and interior is definitive. And yet, with the superposition of the single line, the poem invites imaginative participation in the space between – the metaxy. The walls are walls, but are only paper thin, the interior life of the house is barely separated from the world beyond and around that life.
Life in the metaxy is equivocal: there are constant and varied horizons all about the bodily-located psyche. These horizons can be engaged imaginatively, as by this poem, and the going-out and return journeys can illuminate the tensions of the metaxy, just as these tensions illuminate the “reality” of the scene. The shōji are paper doors, but become symbols of the tension between the objective (here, synonymous with the immanent) and subjective (which is both imaginal, but not removed from the world).
The structure of traditional haiku requires that both section “reverse” the other: informed by metaxic tensions comprising the middle, each part echoes the other while the overlap creates an impossible unity – impossible, that is, except for the act of participation that the poem, structure and diction, makes possible.
Here, the superposed line, ‘kami hitoe,’ also has its own polarities that, when brought into the dynamic complex of the poem’s structure, reveal further depths to the seeming simple act of observing the paper door. It is an idiom in common speech that denotes a degree of difference, due to the thinness of a single sheet of paper (kami - paper, hitoe - a single sheet). It would be instantly recognisable as such by a native reader. This choice of idiomatic phrase is significant because it directs the reader towards the 'language' dimension of the poem's dynamics, without reducing the ‘single sheet of paper,’ which it denotes, to an abstract afloat in the cultural memory. This line further illuminates, within the context of the poem’s tensions, the thinness of the paper and also the thinness of the divide between language, the cultural memory and that which it represents.
The way in which the verb ‘shut’ (written in the ‘te’ form in the original; a verb form that denotes the process of the verb, similar to the continuous tenses) emphasises an act of volition (the doors have been shut / or are being shut), and that reveals the boundary between exterior and interior to be even ‘thinner.’ The interior life of the house (its inhabitants), have the choice as to whether the doors, the symbol of their lives’ separation from the poetic subject, the stranger walking the street, are shut. There is the intuitive possibility of the barrier opening, of the dissolution of the external / internal sensible dualism. However, such an act wouldn’t prevent the road from being outside, or beyond, the house’s interiority. None-the-less, such speculation is invited, but of course, it is imaginary.
The choice of kaidō in the original is interesting because it implies an old, and therefore rural, highway. The word was archaic even in 1966 and was seldom used for highways.
I have not yet dealt with the kigo aspect of the phrase “paper doors.” As kigo, the phrase is not obviously of the natural world. And yet, the fact that the paper doors are shut (as opposed to open – which would indicate hot weather), implies winter.
The poet’s subtle combination of words creates a vivid scene. Kaidō, in connection with the kigo, places the poetic subject on a harsh wintery road in the countryside (adding to a sense of desolation and silence), and thus makes the boundary that separates him from shelter and warmth all the more prominent and definitive, despite its thinness. Again, the paper thinness of the walls is at once able to be penetrated, but also obstinate.
The kigo then broadens the sense of the poetic subject’s journey by places them within the cycles of the natural world, but through a symbol of semi-permanence. His journey is finite, but the world is not; just as he must walk on and leave the house.
Finally, as the journey into the metaxic tension arises from this subtle juxtaposition, the reader’s journey towards narrative unity moves through the difference between the closed door, facing out towards the highway, and the materials of the doors themselves. Above all, the metaxic journey respects boundaries and differences, including the universal difference between this moment and all possible moments, this moment and some visionary resolution of the tension that informs life in the middle.
The Poem
kaidō ni shōji ni shimete kami hitoe
highway [preposition denoting on, to or along] / paper doors shut / paper single sheet
Kigo: shōji (winter)
Translation by Mark and Kodaira from The Essence of Modern Haiku, Manajin, Tokyo, p.218:
along the high road,
sliding doors closed to the world,
but one page away
Translation by author
on the old highway
shōji are shut –
a single sheet of paper
Critical Analysis
First, to identify the components of the haiku: the prepositional phrase initiates the base, which is completed by the image of shut shoji, while the image of the sheet of paper, of which the shōji is constructed, forms the superposed image.
The house , whose walls are formed by the shoji, is a habitation along, or situated on a road. Mark’s and Kodaira’s translation makes reference to the ‘world’ surrounding the house. My own translation stresses the house-over-against the world: perception arises within and against this world. This stress on situation – of the house’s being in the midst of the world – receives an unexpected analogue in the emphasis on the thinness of the door.
In the base, the gap between exterior and interior is definitive. And yet, with the superposition of the single line, the poem invites imaginative participation in the space between – the metaxy. The walls are walls, but are only paper thin, the interior life of the house is barely separated from the world beyond and around that life.
Life in the metaxy is equivocal: there are constant and varied horizons all about the bodily-located psyche. These horizons can be engaged imaginatively, as by this poem, and the going-out and return journeys can illuminate the tensions of the metaxy, just as these tensions illuminate the “reality” of the scene. The shōji are paper doors, but become symbols of the tension between the objective (here, synonymous with the immanent) and subjective (which is both imaginal, but not removed from the world).
The structure of traditional haiku requires that both section “reverse” the other: informed by metaxic tensions comprising the middle, each part echoes the other while the overlap creates an impossible unity – impossible, that is, except for the act of participation that the poem, structure and diction, makes possible.
Here, the superposed line, ‘kami hitoe,’ also has its own polarities that, when brought into the dynamic complex of the poem’s structure, reveal further depths to the seeming simple act of observing the paper door. It is an idiom in common speech that denotes a degree of difference, due to the thinness of a single sheet of paper (kami - paper, hitoe - a single sheet). It would be instantly recognisable as such by a native reader. This choice of idiomatic phrase is significant because it directs the reader towards the 'language' dimension of the poem's dynamics, without reducing the ‘single sheet of paper,’ which it denotes, to an abstract afloat in the cultural memory. This line further illuminates, within the context of the poem’s tensions, the thinness of the paper and also the thinness of the divide between language, the cultural memory and that which it represents.
The way in which the verb ‘shut’ (written in the ‘te’ form in the original; a verb form that denotes the process of the verb, similar to the continuous tenses) emphasises an act of volition (the doors have been shut / or are being shut), and that reveals the boundary between exterior and interior to be even ‘thinner.’ The interior life of the house (its inhabitants), have the choice as to whether the doors, the symbol of their lives’ separation from the poetic subject, the stranger walking the street, are shut. There is the intuitive possibility of the barrier opening, of the dissolution of the external / internal sensible dualism. However, such an act wouldn’t prevent the road from being outside, or beyond, the house’s interiority. None-the-less, such speculation is invited, but of course, it is imaginary.
The choice of kaidō in the original is interesting because it implies an old, and therefore rural, highway. The word was archaic even in 1966 and was seldom used for highways.
I have not yet dealt with the kigo aspect of the phrase “paper doors.” As kigo, the phrase is not obviously of the natural world. And yet, the fact that the paper doors are shut (as opposed to open – which would indicate hot weather), implies winter.
The poet’s subtle combination of words creates a vivid scene. Kaidō, in connection with the kigo, places the poetic subject on a harsh wintery road in the countryside (adding to a sense of desolation and silence), and thus makes the boundary that separates him from shelter and warmth all the more prominent and definitive, despite its thinness. Again, the paper thinness of the walls is at once able to be penetrated, but also obstinate.
The kigo then broadens the sense of the poetic subject’s journey by places them within the cycles of the natural world, but through a symbol of semi-permanence. His journey is finite, but the world is not; just as he must walk on and leave the house.
Finally, as the journey into the metaxic tension arises from this subtle juxtaposition, the reader’s journey towards narrative unity moves through the difference between the closed door, facing out towards the highway, and the materials of the doors themselves. Above all, the metaxic journey respects boundaries and differences, including the universal difference between this moment and all possible moments, this moment and some visionary resolution of the tension that informs life in the middle.
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