塚も動け 我が泣聲 は秋の風 tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze bashō 芭蕉 Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind

Shake even the grave,
My wailing is
the autumn wind ^[1]

塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風 (tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze): grave-mound, move too: my weeping voice is the autumn wind. 塚 is the burial mound and も makes it too, so the mound is to be shaken along with everyone at the graveside; 動け is the command, move; 我が泣く聲 is my weeping voice; 秋の風, the autumn wind, is the season word. The voice does not resemble the wind. It is the wind, and the wind is told to move the mound. The poet it mourns, Kosugi Isshō, was a tea dealer and the most prolific poet in Kaga, dead the winter before at thirty-six. The two had never met; Isshō had hoped to, and Bashō arrived to find him gone. On one of the designs Master Takase brushes うごけ and わが in kana; the words are the same.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) In older works, one most commonly sees waga written as a single kanji 我. The modern form adds the hiragana が which makes it 我が. As an example, Miyamori has 塚も動け我泣聲は秋の風, and the readers of 1926 to 1936 write 塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風. We consider both to be correct and use both.

Translation Notes:

塚も動け
我が泣聲
は秋の風

1) 塚 (tsuka) means "(1) mound; heap; hillock; (2) burial mound; tomb; tumulus; barrow;". The particle も (mo) means "also" or "even". This is important and is not reflected, in our opinion, in most of the translations. We capture this by using "even" as in "shake even the grave" 塚も動け.

2) 動け (ugoke) is the imperative form of 動く (ugoku) meaning "to move".

3) 我が (waga) means "my; one's own; our". As a fun fact, by itself 我 has eight different readings!

4) 泣聲 (naku koe) would today be written 泣き声 (nakigoe) meaning "cry; crying voice".

5) 秋の風 (aki no kaze) meaning "autumn wind" is composed of 秋 (aki) meaning "autumn" and 風 (kaze) meaning "wind".

References:

^[1] After Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern (Maruzen, 1932), p. 12.

The verse was composed by Bashō at the memorial for the poet 一笑 in Kanazawa, on the twenty-second day of the seventh month of Genroku 2 (5 September 1689), printed first in 1691 in the memorial anthology 西の雲 and in 其角's 雑談集, and recorded in his own travel book おくのほそ道.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風.

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