Kawahigashi Hekigodo

http://happyhaiku.blogspot.com/2004/08/kawahigashi-hekigoto.html

ringo o tsumami ii-tsukushite mo kurikaesaneba naranu

munching apples ....
even after all is said,
it needs to be repeated
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

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Hugh Bygott

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/597

5 Holding an apple - [between thumb and fingers]
10 Even if having said all I have said,
6 still, I must repeat it.

This philosophical haiku by Kawahigashi Hekigodo is light years ahead
of anything written by Shiki or Kyoshi.

Shiki claimed, in one of his many inconsistent statements, that
involving logic or intellectual ideas in haiku was banal. Perhaps
this is a mistranslation of Shiki. Banality is not about realism but
is about trivia. That is how the word banal has been used in the
English language since 1864. Hekigodo’s haiku is as far from trivia as
Shiki or anyone else could imagine.

This is a haiku which has many other points of interest. The
postposition particle [o] which follows the word “apple” indicates the
objective case. [There is the rarer case that it indicates the subject
of an intransitive verb. I do not believe that this applies here since
each of the four verbs is transitive.]

The first verb is implied by the noun “tsumami,” [ = pinch]. There is
a verb “tsumamu” meaning “pick up between thumb and fingers” and a verb
“tsumamiageru” meaning “holding between thumb and fingers.”

What are we to make of “apple pinch”? Susumu Takiguchi translates the
phrase as “eating an apple.” Gabi Greve says the phrase is “munching
apples.” Both translations fit into shasei theory and concentrate on
the image. Why did Hekigodo introduce the kigo in this way? Ideally
a kigo must integrate into the haiku. How does the kigo integrate in
this particular haiku? I think that the speaker is holding an apple,
eating and speaking intermittently. This idea emphasizes the verb
“kurikaesu” a compound verb with the components, turn around and
return implying repetion. For this reason, I am taking the liberty of
translating the phrase “apple [objective particle] pinch” as “holding
[and intermittently eating] an apple.”

The next verb is the compound verb “iitsukuseru.” The component parts
are the verbs “say” and “exhaust.” It seems that everything has been
said about the subject. This is a fatal mistake in any debate. Always
there will be new nuances, ramifications, new evidence, and
particularly, reworking of the premisses. Hekigodo has used the
TE-form of the verb. The process is continuous. He follows this
implied statement with the particle MO. In the first Japanese-English
dictionary, Hepburn in 1867 recognized its adverbial function. George
Sansom in 1928, in his Grammar of Japanese, recognized it in some uses
as having the sense of “even” in English.

We now come to the second compound verb “kurikaesu.” It is in the
conditional construction with the suffix “reba.” This is followed by
the modal construction with the sense of necessity; If A, then B must
follow. The meaning is very clear: EVEN IF STATEMENT A IS TRUE,
STILL STATEMENT B MUST FOLLOW.

Even though the speaking has exhausted the subject, still it must be
repeated.

The technical details are as follows:

2590.17 o tsumami 74 -1408 kushite mo kurikasareba naranu

It is typical of the classical Japanese haiku that we get this richness
in verbs. In this haiku, the image passes quickly and the
concentration is on the philosophy. Unlike much of modern haiku in
English, something is being said, something which is very important.

Susumu Takiguchi cites this haiku as an example of Hekigodo’s movement
toward unintelligibility. On the contrary, Hekigodo shows the great
potential of philosophical haiku. Other Japanese poets followed him in
this respect. Regretably, in English language haiku the influence of
Imagism combined with the philosophical naivity of the early
translators has lead to much of the trivia which is presented as modern
haiku.

This is a superbly concise haiku expressing one of the great problems
of epistemology. Those who have studied and taught philosophy know
only too well how every philosophical statement will ramify. This is
why the great philosophers such as Aristotle and Aquinas go over their
work so thoroughly, refining and re-expressing what has already been
said.

Hugh Bygott

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/598

Dear Hugh,
it is always entertaining to read your philosopical comments on the classical haiku.

Here is the text again, which I had send you last week :

munching apples ....
even after all is said,
it needs to be repeated

(Tr. Gabi Greve)

this reminds me of the neighbours, I call this the "three times discussion"
We sit munching senbei crackers, and they start on a subject, say all about it and happily after a munch, start again,... this goes on three times (exactly three times, here with my obaachan grandmothers) and then the subject is finished.

apples, maybe he is talking about Northern Japan in Tsugaru, where they grow most of the apples...

Here again I see a lot of shasei, of rural Japan ...

Today, let me add a bit more about *tsumamu* ...

we have
*o*-*tsumami,* a snack, eaten between meals or with a beer at night ...
could be a cracker or some green soy-beans (edamame) or a small piece of fish

*tsumami-gui* ... eating a snack (gui .. kui .. kuu means eating in a
lowlevel speach)

I think with the apples, it does not reflect the ...pinching between the fingers .. version of this verb, but the simple process of snacking ...

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Dear Gabi

I concede the difficulty of interpreting Hekigodo痴 tsumami. However,
there is no doubt that an apple is the only image. Whether he is eating or
holding the apple, the really important thing is the intention of the poet.
Shasei theory always distracts from the real business in hand. I have to
keep repeating a piece of modern philosophy because few are listening.

All observation is theory laden.

Shiki, Kyoshi and the moderns are simply mistaken. No amount of
pontification by the HSA or the British Haiku Society will make a scrap of
difference. Shiki and Kyoshi are wrong in thinking that pure, objective
observation is possible. The real meaning of a haiku cannot be reached
through either the poet making such supposedly simple pure observations or
the reader interpreting through shasei images.

Many people talk of the humour of the haiku and start looking for humour.
They claim they 都ee・it in Sixth:Hekigodo IVA. They are wrong. I agree
entirely with Shiki when he argues against humour in haiku. Perhaps, if
Shiki had lived, he would have been disappointed in the direction Hekigodo
tried to take haiku. What would he thought of these haiku? [translations by
Makoto Ueda]

After the riot
an incomparably beautiful
moonlit night.


Clawing the void
lies the corpse of a crab:
mountains of cloud.

My view of Hekigodo痴 apple/speaking haiku is influenced by my life in
philosophy. I quote here a piece from Plato痴 Symposium. Apollodorus is the
narrator reporting a conversation of many years before.

We pick up the argument as Socrates tries to show the errors in Agathon痴
thinking.

And the admission has already been made that love is of that which a man
wants and has not? [Socrates]
True, he said. [Agathon replies]
Then love wants and has not beauty?
Certainly, he replied.
And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty?
Certainly not. [Agathon replies]
Then would you still say that love is beautiful?
Agathon replied: I fear that I did not understand what I was saying.
Nay, Agathon, replied Socrates; but I should like to ask you one more
question : - Is not the good also the beautiful?
Yes.
Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the good?
I can not refute you, Socrates, said Agathon. And let us suppose that what
you say is true.
Say rather, dear Agathon, that you can not refute the truth; for Socrates
is easily refuted.

[Translated by Benjamin Jowett]

So there we have it. It is necessary to repeat what has been said.
Hekigodo has written a deadly serious haiku.

Hugh Bygott
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/602

Quote from:
http://haiku.cc.ehime-u.ac.jp/nobo/20060710/17888.html

Is there a fixed rule in modern haiku forbidding the imperative mood,
and another rule that demands the eternal present tense using only the indicative mood?

Hugh Bygott

No.


Earl  (Glad I could help.)
I marvel at how you start a fire and then run, shouting--fire!

Your theories are marionettes strung with you own intentions. Wittingly or unwittingly your translations are warped to fit your own philosophy (As exampled in the fly swatter haiku). If observations are theory laden -- and I don't think anyone would argue the point, even those you disparage—then your eyelids must be too heavy to see anything at all.

I think you might be the anti-poet.
I am so astonished at your inability to understand shasei theory, that I doubt you are serious.

And I don't give a wit for the poet's intentions, only the impact of the work. No matter how much in error the thought, the final proof is in the work.

If you repeat something often enough you and the simple minded might believe it, but I'm going to count some teeth.


connecting flight--
my only luggage
an empty stomach


Earl

........................................

The ominous Fly-Swatter
http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2005/06/fly-swatter.html

from: Helen Ruggieri:

Re "the writer's intention"

an error of judging the meaning of a work by the author's expressed
intention in producing it

from a Handbook to Literature Thrall/Hibbard and Holman

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from GABI

Well Hugh,

how do you know HE is holding/eating the apples?
It could be the apple-caretakers in Aomori, these old people who always talk and talk and talk some more ...

You say : Hekigodo has written a deadly serious haiku.

WELL,
you should come here and I will introduce to the rural grandmothers, who
take three turns at saying what has been said ... saying it again ... and
start the same story when you meet them next time ... ii-tsukusu, they never
can ... and I doubt they are serious about it ... Hekigodo must have been
frustrated at their ways too, like I sometimes am, hahaha


Here
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/598


Let us enjoy the apples when they are ripe ... and the haiku about them
http://worldkigo2005.blogspot.com/2005/01/apple-ringo-05.html

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Larry Bole

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/translatinghaiku/message/603

Dear Hugh,

Hmmmm...

1) Hekigodo also wrote more traditionally simple haiku. Does this
mean that this 'apple' haiku is also lightyears ahead of most of the
14,400 other haiku he wrote as well?

2) Not being a philospher myself (although my wife majored in
philosophy in undergraduate school, and did graduate work in
philosophy, so I have had some exposure to it), could you re-state
your argument in layperson's terms?

3) Does this strike you as a humorous haiku? I picture someone
talking animatedly, interrupting himself to take bites from the apple
he is holding, repeating himself as most of us do from time to time
in conversation, saying the same thing, no matter how un-
philosophical, four or five times in slightly different ways, trying
to convince the other person/people of the point being made, and
perhaps even occasionally spraying bits of chewed apple as he does so.

4) Maybe I missed it, but could you give your uncluttered translation
of the haiku, perhaps comparing it to the other translations you
mention?

5) Are you sure this is in fact a 'philosophical' haiku?

I agree Gabi, people repeat themselves all the time; just ask my wife
regarding me! (or ask me about her!) In other words, people often say
the same thing they've just said, only in a slightly different way.
People repeat themselves in conversation because they want to be
listened to and acknowledged, and its a way for someone to mull over
the thing said, only out loud.

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