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IX. Review: On Love and Barley, Haiku of Basho by Lucien Stryk
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Reviewed by: Andreas Schoter (asch@cogsci.ed.ac.uk)
Judging from the profile of Stryk that appears in the beginning
of this book he is well qualified, academically, to translate the
work of Basho: he has translated, and written extensively on, Zen
and poetry, has held two visiting lectureships in Japan, and is
currently a research professor teaching Asian literature at
Northern Illinois University. What is more important, though, is
that he also has the delicacy and poetic insight required to
bring the spirit of Basho to us in late twentieth century
English.
The book is very small: it runs to only 92 pages including an 11
page introduction and 8 pages of notes at the end. In total
there are 253 haiku in the collection arranged 6 to a page,
interspersed with 9 double-page reproductions of paintings by
Taiga. The haiku are numbered, but it's not clear if they are in
any particular order, although the last haiku is the one reputed
to be Basho's final composition:
Sick on a journey -
over parched fields
dreams wander on.
The introduction is brief and to the point. Matsuo Basho is one
of Japan's most famous poets revitalizing the form of the haiku
in the seventeenth century. Stryk outlines his life and places
his work within the historical context of Japanese poetry. We
learn of the importance of the banana tree from which Basho takes
his name, of Basho's itinerant life style, and of the esteem in
which his contemporaries held him. We are also shown the close
connection between the spirit of haiku and the path of Zen.
Stryk clearly understands the vital nature of haiku; they are "a
moment, crystallized, distilled, snatched from time's flow, and
that is enough." He says that "Basho strove to place his reader
within an experience whose unfolding might lead to revelation"
but at the same time Stryk emphasises that a haiku "demands the
reader's participation: without a sensitive audience it would
appear unimpressive." This is how Stryk leads the reader into the
haiku: initiating the newcomer into, and reminding the more
experienced of, the commitment and openness needed to get the
most from these works.
I do not read or speak Japanese, so I know nothing of these works
in the original and I am usually very wary of translations,
particularly of poetry. I've seen enough translations of
"furuike ya" now to realize the breadth of variation that occurs
(Dogwood Blossoms, Issue 1 contains 15 different versions of this
poem). It seems to me that what Stryk has done is to enter into
each experience which Basho captures, internalize it, and then
recreate it for us. This is, I think, a very different process
from simply translating the words. In a sense Stryk reincarnates
Basho for us in twentieth century English. I'd be very
interested in the opinions of bilingual Japanese speakers amongst
our readers on Stryk's translations.
The 253 haiku presented encompass a tremendous range of
experience. Some touch closely on my own life:
Spring - through
morning mist,
what mountain's there?
This *is* my morning walk into the department here in Edinburgh.
Through Holyrood Park, the volcanic outcrop of Arthur's Seat
disappearing into the morning damp... Alternatively, some of
these haiku take us directly into Basho's own personal life, very
distant from my own experience:
Squalls shake the Basho
tree - all
night my basin echoes rain.
What romance is there in poverty here? The closest I come to
this are the temporary privations of camping.
If I have one criticism of Stryk's translations then it is,
occasionally, his use of enjambment. I can only assume that he's
reflecting something of Basho's own organization of the material,
but on occasions it seems odd and disrupts the reading. The
poem immediately above is one example, and here is another:
Bright moon: I
stroll around the pond -
hey, dawn has come.
Why has that pronoun been stranded on the first line? These
enjambments draw me back again and again to the poems, trying to
understand what Stryk has done, and maybe this is what he wants.
However, I feel that in these examples the poetic structure is
occluding the haiku moment.
But, overall, I find Stryk's translations resonant. There are so
many of them that are outstanding, it's hard to choose what to
share with you here. We see how Basho's irreverence finds
expression:
Clouds -
a chance to dodge
moon-viewing.
What a chore moon-viewing must be! We also see Basho's human
desires, expressed with an engaging humility:
If I'd the knack
I'd sing like
cherry flakes falling.
What's important here is how the desire is expressed. It's not a
case of "I wish I could" but rather, "if I could, then I would" -
a much gentler form of longing. We see his intimate and detailed
eye for nature again and again. Here he finds an unexpected
unity:
Early autumn -
rice field, ocean,
one green.
And here he presents us with a juxtaposition of images:
Sound of rapids -
silent yellow petals
of the mountain rose.
The obvious silence of the petals only gains significance set
against the roar of the water. But most of all we see, in a
thread running through the whole collection, Basho's passionate
involvement with the haiku:
Mad with poetry
I stride like Chikusai
into the wind.
Here it finds explicit expression but it bubbles in most of the
translations presented in this volume.
There are some criticisms to be made of the book itself.
Firstly, I would like to see the romanized transliterations of
the original Japanese included. Comparing these translations
with those by other writers, I'm sometimes not sure if I'm
reading two very different translations of the same poem, or two
translations of different, but similar poems. Transliterations,
included by some other writers, would solve this problem.
Secondly, the book itself (at least the edition I have) is
printed on rather poor quality paper and I'm not sure how well it
will withstand the passage of time. No doubt this helps to keep
the price of the book low, but it seems to me a false economy.
The reproductions of Taiga's paintings in particular suffer
because of it.
Finally, a minor gripe is that I'd have liked more detail in the
end notes. Not every haiku has an associated note, and on more
than one occasion I turned to the back for information only to
find nothing. For example:
Chestnuts of Kiso -
mementoes for
the floating world.
A note for a previous poem mentions the Kiso river, but what is
the floating world? Is it a reference to seventeenth century
Edo's red-light district? If so, I'd like the connection
explained. I want more detail of the background of the poems.
Whilst they can be read in ignorance of their context and still
contain a lot of meaning, rereading them would be enhanced by
more information.
Overall, though, I must stress that I find this an excellent
collection. I'll leave you with Stryk's interpretation of
"furuike ya", Basho's most famous poem:
Old pond
leap-splash -
a frog.
"On Love and Barley, Haiku of Basho", translated by Lucien Stryk,
published by Penguin Books in the Penguin Classics series, 1985.
ISBN 0-14-044459-9. U.K. #4.99, CAN. $7.99, U.S.A. $6.95
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