白梅に 明る夜ばかりと なりにけり shiraume ni akuru yo bakari to nari ni keri buson 蕪村 To white plum blossoms. Each night just dawning. Evermore.

To white plum blossoms.
Each night just dawning.
Evermore.

白梅に明る夜ばかりとなりにけり (shiraume ni akuru yo bakari to nari ni keri): white plum blossoms, and nights that now do nothing but dawn on them. 白梅 is the white plum, the first flower of the year and a word for early spring; 明る夜 is the night that dawns; ばかり is only, nothing but; となりにけり, it has come to this, is the old perfect with its weight of realization. It is the last verse Buson made. Kitō's account of Buson's last night has him calm and speaking as he always had, calling for a brush and dictating from his bed: two verses on a bush warbler, a pause, then this one, to be headed early spring, a season he would not see. He died before morning, aged sixty-eight. Gekkei, who took the verse down, wrote that the master finished it and closed his eyes. Blyth read it as a verse with no further meaning: every day now, the dawn comes from the direction of the white plum. Other translators, Shirane among them, read a single dawn rather than every night. On two of the designs Master Takase brushes しら梅 in kana, as the 1784 print does. The English is Timothy L. Jackowski's, made for Takase Studios.

Buson died not seeing the dawn and not seeing again the plum blossoms that he envisioned in his poem. He died on the last month of winter and the plum blossoms outside, the harbinger of spring, perhaps spoke to him of what was to come.

Whether all Buson was saying was that it would be enough for him to see the plum blossoms just one more time in the morning or that he is speculating on the afterlife ... forever in our hearts will be Buson's image of night breaking into dawn, winter into spring ... and the promised hope of plum blossoms.

This is for Victoria.

Calligraphy Notes:

1) 明る (akuru) today is more commonly written 明くる (akuru).

2) For purely artistic reasons I have used kana for shira. So sometimes I use 白梅 (shiraume) and others しら梅 (shiraume).

Translation Notes:

白梅に
明る夜ばかりと
なりにけり

1) 白梅 (shiraume) - meaning "white plum blossoms". This combines the kanji 白 (read shira here) and 梅 (ume).

2) に (ni) - As Henderson puts it ni is "A postposition with many uses (at, in, to, by, for, etc.). These are usually indicated sufficiently in the literal translation." Some translators render it "with" here. Shirane suggests "amid" and we have used "to".

3) 明る (akuru) is the verb 明く (aku), meaning "to dawn", in the form that leads into a noun: 明る夜 is the night that dawns.

4) 夜 (yo) - means "night; evening"

5) ばかり (bakari) - meaning, in this case, "just" (as in "just dawning").

6) と (to) - marking what the nights have become.

7) なり (nari) - from the verb なる (naru), meaning "to become".

8) に (ni) - here the auxiliary ぬ (nu), marking the change as complete.

9) けり (keri) - according to Jeffrey's Japanese <-> English dictionary, "(1) indicates recollection or realization (i.e. of hearsay or the past); (2) indicates continuation from the past to the present; (3) end; conclusion". Henderson offers, "A kireji marking either a pause or final stop. It was originally a verb suffix indicating a past tense, but has now no special meaning."

Buson dictated the verse to his disciple 月溪 on the night of the twenty-fourth of the twelfth month of 天明3 (16 January 1784), the last of three verses given before he died toward dawn on the twenty-fifth (17 January 1784), as the account his disciple 几董 printed in から檜葉, 夜半翁終焉記, records.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 白梅に明る夜ばかりとなりにけり.

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