春や来し年や行きけん小晦日
haru ya koshi toshi ya yukiken kotsugomori
is the year over already?
second-to-last-day
—Bashō
("Early Spring" by Tokuriki Tomikichiro)
This is either Bashō's first or second dated hokku (haiku), written when he was only 19. While it bears little similarity with his later hokku after he mastered the form, it does display his wit as well as his knowledge of prior poetry.
The old Japanese calendar was a lunar calendar in which the new year was celebrated with the beginning of spring. Yet the seasons were set according to the movements of the sun. This leads to a situation where the two dates sometimes don't line up. Such was the case when Bashō wrote this haiku. Here Bashō is commenting that risshun (立春), the first day of spring, has begun but there are still two more days of winter according to the calendar. This odd situation happens every few years, often enough that commenting on it in poetry is (or was) fairly common.
He is also alluding to two older tanka poems. The first, from Ariwara Motokawa:
年のうちに春は来にけりひととせをこぞとやいはむことしとやいはむ
toshi no uchi ni haru wa kinikeri hitotose o
kozo to ya iwan kotoshi to ya iwan
still the old year
yet spring has come.
The remaining days:
should we call them
last year or this year?
The second, from the Tale of Isa (the author is not known), a woman to her lover after their first meeting. Bashō is not so much as referring to this one as borrowing phrasing from it.
君や来し我や行きけん思ほえず 夢か現か寝てか覚めてか
kimi ya koshi ware wa yukiken omōezu
yume ka utsutsu ka nete ka samete ka
did you come
or did I go?
I don't remember
was it a dream or reality?
was I asleep or awake?
(translation mine on both this and the previous)
This style of word play, calling back to older works and playing with their words, was something Bashō was a master of, but it was also something he moved away from later in life as he refined his idea of what makes a good haiku.
Interestingly this year we seem to be in the opposite situation, where the lunar New Year has come (Chinese New Year was yesterday) but risshun (立春, the start of spring) is two days away (starting on the 4th). I wonder what Bashō would say about this one?
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| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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