from Larry Bole

April is National Poetry Month in the US.
Today, 4/22, I received this Poetry Daily Poet's Pick:

門々の下駄の泥より春立ちぬ
かどかどのげたのどろよりはるたちぬ

Kado kado no
Geta no doro yori
Haru tachinu.

At every doorway,
From the mud on wooden clogs,
Spring begins anew.

Issa

— Translated by Daniel C. Buchanan
One Hundred Famous Haiku
Japan Publications, Inc. (Tokyo and San Francisco 1976)

The poet who picked this haiku, Adria Bernardi, says about it:

The ground was frozen hard all winter and made wooden impact against
the sole of the shoe for the long season, which now lay behind. Ahead,
awaited the progression of plum-trees blossoming and their companion
bush-warblers, cherry-trees and peach-trees blooming, the reviving of
the bamboo, and the arrival of birds. A bird flew past carrying a
single piece of stray to add to a nest. Now it's mud time. The
shoewear of each neighbor sits at another kind of threshold. Kado,
kado, the poet says, repeating the word for a particular kind of
entryway. Gate, gate.
The character for this word, kado　 門　, however, resembles, not as much
a gate, with two swinging doors or panels that drop all the way to the
ground, as much as a turnstile: two stems, with two boxes at the top,
two heads, facing each other, each with a horizontal line through the
middle. At the bottom, on the ground, the space between the stems is
open, and the symbol resembles two people talking.

At everyone's gate, or everyone's doorstep, or at a point near an
entryway or a passageway, into a house, or from a pen or a garden,
from a path or the road, everywhere the poet looks, he sees that his
neighbors have left their pairs of muddied shoes. How muddy? No
sidewalks. Rain. And fields, perhaps, where they have walked in their
geta. For the word, geta, the translator chose, clogs, the elevated,
wooden shoes, which in olden times were carved out of a single piece
of wood. The geta is a platform shoe held up by two stilts and held in
place on the foot by a thong. The symbol for geta is made with a
single vertical stem and with a stroke that looks like a platform
supported on that stem, a little stilt coming out of its body. The mud
is caked thick against the underside of the shoe; it makes a platform
to walk upon. But there is no more frozen ground.

In evening the sounds are soft — o, o, a, u, d, d, r, r, n, u, u. In
spring the sounds begin to soften and play — eta i tachi. Two gates.
Kado, kado. Two shoes. The work for the day is done. Winter is past.
When the poet removes his or her muddied shoes, is he or she trying to
recall which birdcall resembles kado, kado no?

* * * *

Other translations:

Kado-gado no geta no doro yori haru tachinu

At every gate,
Spring has begun
From the mud on the clogs.
trans. Blyth

Blyth's comment:
To see the beginning of spring in the black mud that sticks to
everyone's 'geta',--this especially belongs to Issa. Up to the
present, the mud has seemed only something dirty and unwanted, but as
the harbinger of spring the mud now is not seen as an inconvenient and
ugly thing, but as a delicate happiness for everybody.

* * * *

Kado kado no geta no doro yori har u tachinu.

Spring has come! In the mud of each family's geta.

trans. Max Bickerton
The Transactions of the Asia Society of Japan, Second Series, Vol. IX, 1932

Bickerton's comment:
In his [Issa's] effort to get away from the banal, his conflicts
sometimes are very prosaic. Most people associate spring with new
leaves, and cherry blossoms, but Issa looks down to people's feet, and
sees its arrival in their geta, dirty with the mud of melted snow.

* * * *

kadokado no geta no doro yori haru tachinu

from the mud of geta
going gate-to-gate
spring begins
trans. Higginson
UVA Library Etext Initiative, Japanese Haiku, 'risshun': beginning of spring


* * * *

At every doorway,
From the mud on the wooden clogs
Spring begins anew
trans. Daniel C. Buchanan

I include this translation again because it is also found at the
artist Jo Fallon's website:
http://www.jofallon.co.uk/index.php?/work/haiku/



She has illustrated this haiku there with a nice painting.


* * * *

kado-gado no geta no doro yori haru tachinu

muddy clogs
at the gates reveal...
it's spring!
trans. Lanoue


I read recently someone remark that they liked translations of haiku
that follow the general word order of the original, because the poet
must have had a reason for writing it that way. In light of that, it's
interesting that the only translator who does that for this haiku is
Daniel C. Buchanan.

I like "doorway" more than "gate" in an English version, because
"doorway" doesn't have the same connotations that "gate" has in
English. The connotations associated with "gate" could be misleading
when an English-language reader tries to visualize the scene being
depicted.

I'm curious about 'kado'.
The first kanji in the haiku looks like the kanji for 'mon' (gate) to me.

Further thoughts:

I think "doorstep," found in Bernard's comments, may work better for
me in English than "doorway" does, as an alternative to "gate."

I find the word count of the English translations interesting.
Lanoue's translation comes in with the shortest word count, eight
English words by my method of counting. But the very shortness leaves
me feeling unsatisfied for some reason. And his "...reveal... / it's
spring!" strikes me as being somehow too teasing and too revealing
(explanatory) at the same time.

Bickerton's translation comes in at 10 words. But it leaves out any
mention of some version of "gate." However, his "each family's geta"
implies the multiplicity of geta involved. And a footnote could
mention that the Japanese traditionally leave their shoes outside when
entering their homes. But even in Western countries, very few people
wear muddy shoes into the house, at least not any farther in than the
New England mudroom, so I don't think his translation is asking too
strenuous an interpretive effort from anyone.

Higginson is next shortest at 11 words. However, his translation
strikes me as a joyless effort, not showing much life. And I find his
phrase "going gate-to-gate" confusing. Are the geta in his translation
moving around?

I think the translations that are a little wordier tend to give a
better sense of what is going on in this haiku. It is always
difficult, when translating a form as short as the Japanese haiku, to
decide how brief or how wordy a translation should be. It seems to me
that there are risks for the translator in using either translating
style.


My EL version:

kado kado no geta no doro yori haru tachinu

at gate after gate
mud-caked clogs--
must be spring!

Issa, trans. Larry Bole


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I added a bit more about the GATE (mon / kado) and you can now enjoy it here

http://darumamuseumgallery.blogspot.com/2010/04/mon-kado-gate.html


A BIG thank you to Larry !!

Gabi