さびしさの うれしくも有 秋の暮 sabishisa no ureshiku mo ari aki no kure buson 蕪村 In loneliness, there is joy too, An autumn eve

In loneliness,
there is joy too,
An autumn eve ^[1]

さびしさのうれしくも有秋の暮 (sabishisa no ureshiku mo ari aki no kure): loneliness, and there is gladness in it too; autumn dusk.

Yosa Buson's verse catches a rare moment at the close of an autumn day. The loneliness a person has dreaded comes, and it turns out to be welcome. There is no image and no scene, only a feeling named and then the hour. That plainness is the art of it.

In the Japanese, the whole verse turns on one small word, も, which means too. The gladness sits inside the loneliness, not in place of it. 秋の暮 means autumn dusk and also the end of autumn, and the phrase holds both. The designs write the word ari with the kanji 有, where the printed editions spell it in kana; the word is the same.

References:

^[1] After R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1 (Hokuseido Press, 1949), p. 229.

The verse is Buson's, known from the 蕪村遺稿, the book of his verse gathered after his death and published in 1801, where it opens the run of autumn-dusk verses; no witness dates its composition.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of さびしさのうれしくも有秋の暮.

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Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase